by We had an early – and quite spectacular – flurry of snow on Thursday as I met Dorothy for coffee in Piața Unirii. Half an hour of dense, chunky, fluffy flakes. I can’t remember getting snow quite that early before. The Christmas market had just started – the Capital of Culture might have prompted an earlier start than usual. In my early days here, being among the aromas of mulled wine and chimney cakes and traditional meaty dishes was extremely satisfying. There was the parade for Romania’s national day on 1st December – almost upon us again – and all the lights and fireworks. It was all very new and exciting.
This morning I had an interesting first online lesson with a priest aged around sixty. He’s in the middle of a theological project, as far as I can tell, and wants to brush up on both his English and his Greek. He has a good command of Serbian and a smattering of Russian and French, having studied both those languages at school as was normal back then. It wasn’t an easy session because I had to speak Romanian most of the time (for some reason I struggled there), and we used Zoom which now has a 40-minute limit so we kept stopping and starting.
The evidence from the UK Covid inquiry just gets worse with every witness who speaks. Yesterday it was the turn of the metropolitan mayors. I didn’t realise that mask mandates came in so ridiculously late over there, months after they did in Romania. And finally, someone said it: you won’t magically save the economy by letting a deadly virus run riot. It isn’t a trade-off, for heaven’s sake. It’s amazing how much currency that bollocks had, and still has. It’s also become obvious how dangerously politicised the response to the pandemic was. Today Michael Gove, who was minister of education for four years, is giving evidence. Largely because of him I have to teach those bloody circle theorems that I struggle to remember myself.
I’ve almost given up on a Christmas UK trip. I could manage the seven-hour bus trips if I didn’t have to do the jolly Christmas crap too. One or the other, but not both.
