by After spending a week at my brother’s, my parents have now made their way to St Ives.
It’s officially the first day of summer, meaning infernal temperatures are just around the corner. This coming Saturday we’re forecast to nudge the mid-30s. That’s still some time away so it could be several degrees out. In either direction. The air con on my car stopped working properly during the trip with Mum and Dad. No big deal at that point, but if I don’t get it sorted (maybe it just needs a top-up of freon) my car will rapidly become unusable.
Today we hit 28 degrees, the warmest day of the year so far. It was supposed to be my first relaxing day since my parents left, but I had sinus pain – not that absolutely crippling pain but bad enough all the same – that didn’t go away until five, after which I felt washed out and weary. I did manage to get through a lot of Brave New World, though.
Yesterday was the deadline for the book “project” submission. There were so many hoops to jump through, understandable in a way, but it made the whole thing (as Dad put it) a slog. I wish I could have gone through a conventional publisher. While I was having lunch in the park in Dumbrăvița between lessons, a 77-year-old man sat on the bench next to me. Unusually, it took him a while to determine that I wasn’t Romanian. He wanted to know what the British reaction to the Romanian election was. I said I bet it passed most Brits by entirely. (Not totally accurate, come to think of it. The re-run definitely garnered more attention than usual over there.) He said he was a retired Romanian and French teacher who had published 15 books. His “publishers” sounded rather like mine: glorified printers and not much more.
I had an earlier finish than usual yesterday so I met up with Dorothy at Berăria 700 for a light dinner. The weather was perfect for sitting outside. Among other things, we talked about Dot Cotton from EastEnders and forms of address for tennis players. She talked a bit about woke stuff, a subject that energises her much more than it does me. It’s funny – a couple of weeks ago I had a lesson with the 35-year-old guy who lives in London. He wanted to know why on earth all this trans rights (and related) stuff mattered so much. How is it even news, when so few people are affected? Yeah mate, you’re preaching to the choir here. I don’t get it either. It’s like deciding on what colour to paint the spare bedroom when your house is on fire. And that goes for both sides of the argument. Mark, who’s 54, said something similar last weekend, though he drew the line at calling individual known people “they”. So do I, honestly. The kind of singular they in “Always give the customer what they want” or “What did they say when you spoke to Barclays?” is perfectly normal to me because the person is unknown. “They wrote their first novel at 24” is something I can’t bring myself to say, however, and it takes me aback when I read it. That’s not for anti-woke reasons, but because the grammar of using “they” for an individual known person is just too jarring for me.
Another thing I forgot about our trip was the Romanian film Război în Bucătărie (War in the Kitchen) which we saw on TV in Sibiu. A really weird film, and one I wouldn’t mind seeing again.
Here are some pictures from the trip, as I promised last time. I’ve also included some of the unrenovated buildings near me. Mum said that give it ten years and they’ll all look pristine. That may well be true. But if that also means getting a KFC and bubble tea cafés and overpriced trendy ambient bars with everything in bloody English, I’d rather things stay as they are. Gentrification and saminess make everything deeply dull. I’m glad I arrived in Timișoara when I did, before all of that began to set in.
