by Tomorrow it’ll officially be winter – my tenth in Romania. Winter has a nice cosy feel about it here, all the more so now that I have a cat. Yesterday it tipped it down all day – in my pre-car days I’d have got soaking wet getting to my lessons. We’ve had several days lately with highs of 3 or 4 degrees.
I had an hour-long chat to Mum and Dad this morning. It was all very civil, as if last Sunday’s awful call with Mum had never happened. In the meantime a number of emails bounced around between Dad and me. He talked of Mum’s thin skin, among other things. He said that I can be quite strong in my opinions, particularly when Mum is involved. I don’t think of myself as being opinionated or combative, and I don’t like getting into arguments – if I did, I’d probably lose students quickly – but I appreciate that he said that. In future I will do my best not to react, and to count to ten, even if I think she’s said something totally out of line. (The exception is when she asks me to lie to my brother about her or Dad’s health. I draw the line there. But even then I’ll try to react as calmly as possible. Easier said than done.) That was our fifth verbal bust-up since my parents came here in May, which is far too many. Dad said that over the years he’s learnt not to raise the temperature, as he put it. I totally get that – so often with Mum it’s already baking before you start – but wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a deep, meaningful discussion where you agree and disagree like grown adults? That literally never happens.
Some very good news on the Mum front. She’s been to see the doctor. Properly. The doctor was amazed at Mum’s lack of medical records. They didn’t even know if she’d had children. She was practically a blank slate. On Wednesday she’ll get a full blood test done. This morning she showed me her new vitamin D tablets that she’ll only take once a month. I didn’t know that was possible, but each tablet is 25 times the strength of the ones I take daily. I think Dad’s latest episode was a warning shot across the bow for Mum. They’ve both reached a kind of breaking point. If the apartment sale goes through (and because it’s England, you can never be 100% sure), I really hope that will take the edge off things.
My work week was busy enough, but it wasn’t quite at the level I feared. There were a few cancellations including one really annoying last-minute one. Tomorrow is Romania’s national day – a public holiday – but I’ve got four English lessons anyway, plus the Romanian one.
In the summer I bought a Romanian Scrabble set, and after my lessons yesterday I finally managed to play a game with Dorothy. I won by quite a lot, 392-215, but that was mostly because I drew a lot of high-value tiles which enabled me to score well. I also think my recent games of English Scrabble helped me to see moves over the board. Dorothy got both blanks which are normally a big help, but they came out late and the board was pretty blocked by then. It’s quite a different game in Romanian. The letter values and distributions are different: B is worth five points, G six, C only one. K, Q, W and Y aren’t there at all. There’s no equivalent of a super-powerful S tile: most words can take either an A, E or I on the end, and in some cases all three. Before I even came to Romania, I tried making Romanian words using an English set, ignoring the points, but yesterday’s experience was very different to that. Perhaps the hardest thing was the colour scheme for the premium squares which really messed with my head.
I also managed ten games of Scrabble in English this weekend, winning seven. I’ve just joined a league with a correspondence format – you need to play 14 games simultaneously in 14 days, so you get plenty of freedom as to when you play. It’s split into divisions; the top divisions have some very strong players, so I expect (hope!) I’ll be put in the bottom division. The league starts this Thursday, I think.
Lately I’ve been playing the same song over and over. It’s called Marz, by John Grant. I really liked the ethereal nature of the song and was intrigued by the lyrics. It’s all about a sweet shop called Marz that the singer frequented as a kid, so it touches on childhood nostalgia and that sense of wonder that you have at a young age. Marz is a great name for a sweet shop. I mean, Mars itself is the name of one of the world’s most successful chocolate bars, but then if you really want to attract kids, stick a Z in there. Z means fun and excitement. K has the same effect. Skool looks a lot more kool than school.
The Hong Kong apartment block fire has been all over the news in the last few days. It’s like seven Grenfells in one, with deaths in the hundreds. Utterly horrific. I was shocked to see bamboo scaffolding still being used. I’ve just had a look at other terrible fires that linger in my memory, such as one in a Honduras prison in 2012 (361 deaths) and one in a Bangladesh clothing factory in the same year (117 deaths). The following year a staggering 1134 people died in Bangladesh when a building housing several clothing factories collapsed. I’ve tried to avoid “made in Bangladesh” ever since.
On Friday I had a chat with Elena, the lady who lives above me. Yesterday was her 82nd birthday. She’s still in Canada and will be back her on 10th January.
