by Today started off with a Romanian lesson. I made my fair share of mistakes, and only got into the swing of things when (alas) the 90 minutes were almost up. If I somehow had whole days of making conversation in nothing but Romanian – something approaching proper immersion – I could make great strides, but in the absence of that I keep hitting an unbreakable ceiling.
After Romanian it was back to English, with four lessons. My 16-year-old student is going to Bucharest tomorrow – a 12-hour journey – to get her hair dyed. As you do. The single pair of twins who live in the dark apartment near Piața Verde wanted to know about Mrs and Miss and Ms. This topic comes up surprisingly often. They were in fits of hysterics every time I said Ms, so of course I kept saying it, and in an increasingly exaggerated way. “So it was really as a result of discrimination that Mmmzzzzzz came about.” The girl said that Ms might even be her new favourite English word, supplanting her previous favourite, queue. One of my adult students says that her favourite English word is the rather banal although, because it sounds so delightfully English. An ex-student of mine, a man of about fifty, said his favourite was foreshadow. When I got home I had two online lessons, one with a man a little older than me and another with Octavian, the teenager who started at British School two months ago and says his classmates are hopelessly spoilt.
I spoke to my parents three times last week. Mum seems tired so often these days, as if she’s collapsing under the weight of life admin. I wish it wasn’t like this. I wish they could simplify everything, financially extricate themselves from the UK forever, and enjoy their remaining years. Their capacity to enjoy anything is hugely reduced by all this crap. I sympathise with them because it’s happening to me too. (I mean, international travel just to sort out a problem with my bank – and there’s no guarantee even of that – is crazy.) We’re all being bombarded by crap from all angles. I don’t do social media, I’m not in any active WhatsApp groups, and even I just want to punch a permanent mute button. I get yet another anxiety-provoking instant message and I’m thinking, what the hell is it this time?
Of course there’s always new tech that forces you to act in a way you’d prefer not to. On Friday, when picking up some overpriced ink cartridges, I was faced with the latest trick – a jumbled-up PIN keypad. Yeesh. For the previous ten years I’d been typing in my PIN instinctively as a series of finger movements without ever thinking what the numbers actually were. But this time the digits were arranged 562 904 317 8 or whatever. What actually is my PIN? I was relieved to get it on my second go.
We’ve had atrocious weather – bad enough to hit the orange alert level and make my phone emit ear-splitting noises. Tennis was a washout on both days at the weekend. This evening I was seriously worried about being struck by lightning on my bike. And there’s no respite in sight.
I’ve been reading Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. For some reason the previous owner of this flat had left a copy of the novel, printed in 1981, several years before she was born. (She left many other books behind and even – weirdly – a load of old photos of her as a child.) Not my thing really, but I’ve been enjoying (in a way) the depiction of Oxford University with all its obscure terminology that, as far as I know, still persists. The vernacular is similar at Eton and some other prestigious public schools. Given that so many senior British politicians took the Eton-and-Oxford route (or something close to it), it’s no wonder the political class over there is so hopelessly out of touch.
At the weekend I read an article about Nick Drake, a folk singer-songwriter who was underappreciated in his lifetime but has found considerable posthumous fame. He suffered badly from depression, and I sometimes listened to him (perhaps unwisely) during my own depressive spells before coming to Romania. He studied at Cambridge. I read an extraordinary letter that his (obviously highly educated and intelligent) father wrote, imploring him not to drop out of university. Nick Drake died of an overdose at the age of just 26.
I said I’d give up looking at cars until I got back from New Zealand, but tomorrow morning I’m going to have a look at a black 1.6-litre Dacia Logan. After that I’ve got my appointment with the neurologist. I wonder if anything will come of that.
