by I’ve just read that the extremely talented Sergio García has won the Masters. I don’t really follow golf anymore (do I properly follow any sport anymore?) but I certainly used to, and García has always struck me as being a thoroughly nice guy who for whatever reason (probably bad luck, mostly) hasn’t quite managed to take home a major. Until now, at the age of 37. Good on him. I saw that he won in a play-off. In a way, golf play-offs amaze me. Whenever I’ve tried to play golf I’ve generally lurched from one tree to the next, with the occasional air shot thrown in for good measure. A major tournament comprises four rounds, each of which involves over four miles of golfage. So two players – the two best players – completing a major in the exact same number of shots seems extraordinarily unlikely, a bit like two work colleagues with pedometers who discover they’ve both taken precisely 1472 steps to walk to work.
Just occasionally I see something or read something that has the potential to be amazing, and in the last couple of days I’ve been watching YouTube videos on pronunciation by Adrian Underhill who is truly fantastic. The videos are mostly aimed at teachers. His focus is on the physical processes that go on in your mouth to produce the various sounds. By developing awareness of those processes, you can make your students aware of those processes, and as he puts it, free them from the grip of their mother tongue. From a very early age you’re locked in to a framework of possible sounds; Underhill’s method helps students (and teachers) escape that. It’s really powerful stuff.
I’m flying to London later today. It’s a 2¾-hour flight, about half the distance between LA and Boston. Again that amazes me, because of all the countries you fly over between Romania and the UK, even though the map doesn’t lie. Before the flight I’ve got a two-hour Skype lesson. On pronunciation. So I guess I should pack.
If all goes to plan, my brother and his girlfriend will come to St Ives tomorrow so I’ll spend some time with them. As promised, here are a few photos of Timișoara that I took the weekend before last. I hope you’ll agree that Timișoara is pretty damn amazing. And for me, it’s home.
