by The weather has been cooler and wetter than normal for this time of year. The pungent whiff of lime trees all over the city has therefore been delayed. If it could stay like this all through the summer I’d be most happy, but it most certainly won’t.
Nicușor Dan will be sworn in as president later today. When I spoke to Matei’s parents on Saturday, they talked of their plans to leave the country in the event of a Simion victory. Like many others with good jobs in the main cities, they weren’t joking. A win for Simion would have meant another brain drain out of Romania. On Thursday, however, I had a lesson with a 14-year-old boy who said the election results were fake because just look at how many followers Simion has on TikTok! He said he expected “chaos” in Romania now and lamented the fact that Romania couldn’t have a “real man” as president. Ugh. If he is at all typical of his generation, Romania’s long-term future is bleak.
I’ve been exhausted ever since Mum and Dad left early on Thursday morning. I’ve had some very busy days of lessons, plus on Friday I had a meeting about the books. Plural now, because the publishers have decided to wrap both books into one “project” that still needs to be approved by an organisation called the AFCN (Administrația Fondului Cultural Național) which provides funding for cultural projects like books. The older lady went through all of this in great detail while I struggled to stay awake, even though I knew it was important. I was just that tired. (Also, in the morning, Dorothy got me to deliver a table from her friend’s house to hers. The table was an inch too wide to fit in my car, so it needed to be taken apart. Her friend didn’t have enough screwdrivers and spanners – I’d have brought some if I’d known – so she had to borrow some off her neighbour who luckily was in. I could have done without all that.) After nine hours of lessons on Saturday, I spent most of yesterday getting bits and pieces together for the AFCN, including CVs for both me and my father, a “justification” for the project, excerpts and so on. I still haven’t got the title finalised for the large book.
So I set the alarm for 3:50 on Thursday morning which, as it turned out, was far earlier than I needed to. I let Mum cuddle Kitty one last time (how much she liked the cat was a revelation after all the negativity when I got her), then took Mum and Dad to the airport where they checked in, and that was that. Their flight and trip from Luton to St Ives were painless. When they got to the flat, Mum sent me a lovely email to say how much she appreciated my help in Romania and also how helpful the staff at the airport bus station were. On Friday my brother came to the flat, then on Saturday he drove Mum and Dad down to Poole. They’ve now seen their granddaughter for the first time. Mum was busy playing with her grandson in the background and everything looked very jolly.
She wasn’t quite like that with me. Just like when I visited New Zealand in 2023, she would switch from being lovely to being someone I didn’t want to be within a mile of, at the drop of a hat. With all the talk of her digestive problems, which still need to be properly looked at, her stress levels are a much bigger issue. That’s why that trip we did was badly planned on my part – all that booking accommodation and driving was just begging for her to turn shitty. I mean, I even don’t like to move that often. And she now lacks that sense of adventure that she once had.
Last Tuesday I had lessons until 7:30. We went to the beer factory afterwards – a pretty late dinner by our standards. That didn’t help. Mum wasn’t in a great mood – maybe she was nervous for the trip to the UK – and she loses interest in food if it’s not at her normal time. Unlike the other time we ate there, the tables were free of paper menus and instead had QR codes to scan. I’m not at all a fan of QR code menus, but Mum really couldn’t face the idea of ordering dinner in that way. I suggested we eat outside; maybe there’d be paper menus there. Indeed I could see some, but when I asked the waiter for one, he told us – in aggressive fashion – to scan the damn QR code. The paper menus aren’t in English, he said. Look, I can read Romanian. I then got a bit animated, I suppose. Then Mum decided she couldn’t handle me waving my arms like that and stormed out. Great. Dad and I ordered a beer each. Dad told me how hard it is to live with Mum and how he’ll often go to his studio even if he has nothing to paint, just for the peace and quiet. He said he’s resigned to living the rest of his life under constant stress; his remaining years will not be happy ones. It’s all so very sad. A man who would normally float calmly through life, almost like my favourite snooker player Mark Williams, having to live like that. And it’s sad for Mum too – as well as being my mother, she’s fundamentally a very good person who wants the best for people. To see her under so much stress when she’s one of life’s great winners, someone who has everything she could possibly want, is so upsetting. Fifteen minutes later Mum came back, still very angry. We ordered food. Mum’s mood lifted just a little – there were two people who must have been identical twins on the table opposite that looked just like someone she knew in Geraldine. We got home, I put some music on, and we went to bed.
I had no lessons on Wednesday morning, so I took Mum and Dad to Ciacova, a place south of here that I’d only previously been to on a Sunday. In midweek it was much more interesting. Ciacova was a bustling little town, complete with its huge cobbled square, old men on bikes that were almost as old, meeting up for a coffee or (even at that time of day) a beer. As my parents said, it would have made a good film set; it could have been 1950s France. And the surrounding architecture is quite something. They really enjoyed Ciacova and (earlier) Buziaș; going to those places was stress-free – they were good decisions on my part. I know now that the trick is to keep stress to an absolute minimum.
Dad isn’t immune to stress either. So much of it is caused by modern tech. Both my parents struggle with that. I do to, if I’m honest, or rather I make a concerted effort to pick and choose the tech that I can handle. The very idea of a smart watch that can receive messages makes me break out into a cold sweat, so I’ll never get one. Neither will I get one of those “hey Google” thingies that sit on your desk. Dad would also benefit from deleting the damn Daily Mail app from his tablet. So often I’d see him engrossed in it. Come on Dad, you’re better than that. It gets him worked up about LGBTQ stuff which I see as mostly an irrelevance. It’s not even the political position of the paper that bothers me (though it is firmly on the right, while I’ve always thought of Dad as being squarely in the middle); it’s the bile and hatred that it – and the people who comment on it – spit out. Reading it will make you bitter and angry.
I plan to spend nine days in the UK from 24th June – I’ll meet up with the whole family over there – though I haven’t yet decided what to do with Kitty. Later in the summer I’m planning to visit Poland. Stay in the same place for five nights. Don’t move. Life is easier that way.
I’ve got more to say, but this has already been a long one. I’ll put up some photos next time.
