by It’s the last day before the clocks go back, and the last vestiges of not-winter.
I played singles tennis tonight with the “good” Florin. After this morning’s rain the court was slippery – dangerously so – and I didn’t enjoy it one bit. The wet patches made it worse than if it was fully wet. I started out at the greasier end. Florin made a fair few unforced errors and I led for large parts of the set, but we landed in a tie-break which I lost 7-3. When that was over I told Florin what I thought – that playing singles on a slippery court and risking a broken ankle is bloody stupid – but he didn’t seem bothered. After the changeover (we only switch sides after each set) I moved to the less horrible end, but still slid in the tramlines and almost fell twice. I won the second set 6-2 and led 2-1 in the third when our time ran out, but amazingly Florin moved around the court at the (to me) lethal end as if nothing was amiss, at one stage even retrieving a deep lob. I was handicapped down there. I asked him how he managed it (was it the shoes?), and he said the secret was being brought up in north-eastern Romania, close to the border with Ukraine. Harsh winters back then, so he soon learnt how to move in the snow and ice. I can see that two years ago I had the same problem.
I’ve been reading Wild Wales, George Borrow’s account of his trek on foot through Wales in the middle of the 19th century. Back then, Wales really was wild and outsiders rarely ventured there. Unusually, Borrow could speak Welsh at a decent level. He liked to show off his intellect (this grates after a while) in his conversations with the locals he met along the way, which were surely embellished. My grandmother had a cottage in mid-Wales which we often stayed in when I was a kid, and necessitated a long car journey which I’ve talked about previously on this blog. In my teens I viewed that part of the country as dull and grey and remote, but really it was beautiful. I haven’t been there since 2001, and I’d like to go back.
I’ve picked up a few words of Welsh while reading Borrow’s book. My grandmother’s cottage was in the small town of Rhayader, a semi-Anglicised version of rhaiadr, meaning waterfall, though in fact there hasn’t been a waterfall there for centuries. The word for “not” or “without” is dim, which has a certain logic to it. People in Borrow’s book are always saying “Dim Saesneg”, meaning “no English (language)”, the word Saesneg literally meaning Saxon. For a while I was dim dŵr poeth (without hot water) and dim arian (without money – arian is literally silver) from Barclays, but those dim days are hopefully over now. Last week I called the complaints team to accept the £200 compensation they offered me, derisory though it was. Getting it all over with has a value.
Dad’s sister has bounced back better than he or anyone else (including her) imagined. He’s been seeing her almost every day. Her children, realising she’ll hang on a while longer, have stopped bothering to see her. Of course, her prognosis is still poor. Tomorrow is her 76th birthday and I will make the effort to give her a call, difficult though that will be.
Yesterday Dad caught up with his friends (and mine too – they visited me in Romania six years ago). The couple are in their mid-70s, similar to my parents, and although he was at death’s door in early 2022 before staging a recovery, they’ve managed to cut out most of the stress from their lives while still travelling and pursuing interests. I wish my parents could do likewise.
The Rugby World Cup final is about to get under way between the All Blacks and South Africa, the historical heavyweights of the competition with three wins apiece. (Two wins for Australia and one for England, so the Southern Hemisphere is going to make it 90% whatever happens tonight.) I vividly remember the 1995 final between the two nations – one of the most famous rugby matches ever because of what the occasion meant. There have been some good matches in the knockout stages but I haven’t watched any of them. My mind has been elsewhere. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was the Irish fans’ use of the immensely powerful Cranberries song Zombie as an unofficial anthem. Not long till kick-off, and I guess I might actually watch it.
