by I slept well on Tuesday night, but on Wednesday I was shattered. I met my friends again, and we went back to Wetherspoons where this time I had fish and chips and cider. Extremely good value. But really I wanted to crawl into a hole and not see anybody. My batteries were almost flat. I had a short nap, then packed up and got on the bus to Cambridge. During that time I got a message from National Express saying that my bus to Luton would be replaced by a taxi. I called their number – is this true? – and after a long wait I was assured that yes, a taxi would show up at the same time and same place, which it did. There were just two passengers. Our twilight taxi ride through South Cambridgeshire – I liked the name Bassingbourn cum Kneesworth – was very pleasant. I got to the airport at 8:45 and hunkered down on a bench, trying to position myself vaguely comfortably amidst the armrests. (I didn’t book into a hotel. I didn’t feel I could justify the eighty quid.) Later I moved to the floor near the check-in desks which are now dominated by the pinkness of Wizz Air.
I didn’t sleep much. At 4:45 I got myself a coffee from Pret A Manger and accidentally tried to pay with a Romanian coin which the Romanian cashier immediately spotted. We struck up a conversation; she was from Iași and had lived in the UK for 22 years. She asked me if I could speak Romanian but a combination of tiredness and surprise meant the words wouldn’t come out. Feeling embarrassed, I lied that I’d only been living in Romania for three years. I then called my parents from the café. Finally it was time to board. No problems with the flight, though half-way through there was an announcement that the lucky seven millionth Wizz Air passenger to Timișoara was on board and would win a bunch of free flights and have a photo shoot on the tarmac. The winner sat four rows behind me. I was mostly relieved; I must have looked terrible and really I just wanted to get home. Frustratingly I had a 70-minute wait for my bus, but I was home at last, back to the sunshine and the warmth. That felt good, I must say.
The trip was worth it for the time I spent with my brother and his family. Seeing my nephew grow up is a wonderful thing, make no mistake. Also, there was something special about seeing my aunt – I thought I’d never get the chance again. But I needed an extra two days of not going anywhere or seeing anybody or even having to communicate. Without that, it’s not really a holiday for me. I might well go back in the summer, and hopefully I’ll factor that in.
Since I got back I’ve given my car a spin (another trip to Recaș) and am planning a longer, cobweb-busting trip tomorrow. Today was a busy day of lessons. In between them I managed to fit in a one-hour tennis session. I was relieved not to experience a panic attack this time; only rallying rather than playing a set helped there I’m sure. A weird thing happened in a two-hour English lesson. My 16-year-old student told me to stop shaking my leg. God, I am shaking my leg and I wasn’t even aware of it. “You’ve been doing it for the past month!” Yeesh, really? I know it is a nervous tic of mine, but it’s alarming that I do it without even realising. In this evening’s two-hour maths lesson I was watching my legs like a hawk.
Blues lost 2-1 at Leicester today after conceding yet another late goal. No disgrace in losing narrowly away to one of the best teams in the league, but other results went against them, and with five games remaining they’re now inside the bottom three.
