Life :) - Travel: Europe

Getting away

August 3, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

One hundred years ago today, Timișoara (and the region of Banat, or most of it) became part of Romania. Before that, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I have a map of modern-day Romania on my wall; yesterday my student of about 25 explained to me what bits used to go where, and when. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well young Romanians know their history.

Yesterday a concert started up in the square to mark the centenary. Last night Phoenix (a well-known band from Timișoara who formed the same year as the Beatles (!) and whose music I like) played in the teeming rain. I didn’t even think about going to bed until they wrapped things up at midnight; it was pretty loud. It’s currently 10:30 in the morning and it’s been tipping it down the whole time.

In the last 36 hours I haven’t been feeling great (sore throat, stomachache and general lack of energy), and yesterday was a dead loss apart from the three lessons I had, two face-to-face at home and one on Skype. I didn’t have to go out, thankfully.

If my student couple hadn’t run into financial difficulties, I’d have been jetting off to Greece with them (and hordes of other Romanians) today. That wasn’t to be. Instead I’ll be pushing off on my own, a week on Monday. I’ll get the bus to Belgrade, stay two nights there, and then take the train to Bar, on the coast of Montenegro, where I’ll stay three nights. That train trip is a 12-hour journey through the mountains and literally hundreds of tunnels. It should be spectacular. To reserve a seat on the train, I had to contact a Mr Popović, who booked me a first-class ticket, for the same price (only €24) as a second-class one. He told me that it was a kind of promotion, to encourage people to use the service. After Bar I don’t know what I’ll do. Perhaps I’ll take the train to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, and from there go up through Bosnia and somehow back through Serbia to Timișoara. That will certainly involve buses, which are never as comfortable or as much fun as trains.

In my lessons I often ask people about their holidays and travel experiences. I always ask them to state their favourite means of travel. With the exception of a boy who said he found flying scary, they almost all show a preference for travelling by plane. It’s almost a case of, “Well, when I go on holiday, I like to travel more than a couple of hundred miles, and the only sensible way to do that is to fly. I mean, duh!” I find flying, short-haul flying in particular, to be quite stressful, and distinctly un-fun. Saying that, you couldn’t beat Wellington to Timaru on a sunny day.

On Tuesday I joined a Skype meeting of owners in our apartment block. People are full steam ahead when it comes to selling. All the talk, amongst the annoying meetingese (piss off with your “quantum” and “I’ll talk to that”) was about solicitors and conveyancing and whether we’d be happy to sell for x or y million, figures that I can only get a handle on when I calculate what I’d get for my apartment alone. (One owner, who wasn’t in the meeting, said he would sell for one dollar.) In the absolute best case scenario, I’d get back half what I bought it for, ignoring all the interest I’ve also paid. But this is almost beside the point. People have just accepted their fate, and I think they’re all mad. I can see it now. We sell. Great. We lose a ton of money but we can all get on with our lives. The developer has, in theory, six or seven years to do something with the mess they’ve inherited before it has to be razed to the ground, but as D-day approaches, they and various other developers across the city are granted an extension, then a second, then a third, and in the end they won’t have to do anything.

Oh, I’ve been trying to learn Serbian again, after dabbling with it a year ago. I might write my next post about that.

Family - Life :)

Time flies

July 29, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I called my brother last night. It was his 38th birthday. (How did we get so old, so fast?) He was in St Ives with his wife. They’d been to Cambridge which would be heaving on a Saturday in late July. My brother described the experience as hellish. (Cambridge reached a demonic, record-smashing 39 degrees on Thursday.) He mentioned Boris Johnson, and was just about salivating at the prospect of a hard Brexit. In the army, he’ll be fine in such a scenario. Millions, particularly in what remains of Britain’s manufacturing industry, probably won’t be though. My brother and I are very different people. While reading the brilliant Chasing the Scream, I figured that my brother is so vehemently against any relaxation of drug laws (sorry mate, it’s happening) that he wouldn’t get past page ten.

Yesterday I also had a Skype chat with a woman who lives in my apartment block in Wellington. There’s a consensus among owners to sell; many of them just want the sorry saga behind them and are happy to flog it off at almost any price. She doesn’t see things the same way and neither do I. The tacit acceptance of our fate has been mindblowing to me. We’re looking to lose a shit-ton of money through no fault of our own, due a nonsensical policy, and what, we just shrug our shoulders? We need to be getting together with the many hundreds of owners in Wellington and making a fuss. Making shock waves. Hell, it’s Wellington. People should arrange to meet outside the Beehive at a predetermined date and time, carrying placards and chanting something that rhymes, like they do in Romania. I don’t think the lack of young, energetic activist types is helping (at 39, I’m one of the younger owners).

Alphabet card game
Two winning hands in the alphabet card game (see previous post)
This low-flying biplane is dropping the Romanian equivalent of 1080
Family - Language teaching - Politics

All fun and games

July 27, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Since I last wrote I’ve spent three hours with my youngest student, over two sessions. It’s felt closer to three days. What on earth do I do with him for 90 minutes?! He’s a nice kid, and he turns six next month. Last night I had a long chat to my university friend, and we agreed that things are fundamentally different below the age of about seven. The language stuff becomes secondary. The whole concept of reading gets tricky. Simple games with dice are no longer so simple. What exactly is six plus five? Is that even a number? At that age, it’s hard even to get kids to sit still. In the last two sessions I’ve done Simon Says and “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”, and one or two other bits and pieces involving animals or food; otherwise I’ve just let him play. I’m not complaining in any way here. Dealing with children so young is an interesting challenge for me, and one I certainly haven’t solved yet. (I wish I’d stood my ground when I first met his mother, though. An hour is plenty long enough.)

On Sunday and Monday I created and introduced a new card game. First I sourced 52 images from the internet; for each letter of the alphabet, two pictures began with that letter (for instance, umbrella and unicorn for U). Then I painstakingly printed and cut out all the images, and glued them to pieces of card. I added a 53rd card that acted as a joker; I was going to allow it to stand for any letter, but figured that would make life too easy for anyone who happened to draw the joker, so instead I allowed it to represent any vowel. At the start of the game each player receives seven cards, and you pick up and offload cards rummy-style. The winner is the first player to have cards showing images beginning with seven consecutive letters, such as QRSTUVW. The game was a success, I’d say. It helped with my students’ vocabulary and got them to think about the alphabet and vowels and words that begin with Q and W and the like, that basically don’t exist in Romanian.

If I find the time I’ll try and create some more games. I’ve got the idea of a pizza-related board game running around in my head, as well as ones that involve building skyscrapers and climbing mountains, although actually making those last two might prove beyond me.

Last weekend I had a Skype chat to my cousin in a fairly wet Wellington. We spoke later than we normally do, and the boys were either elsewhere or tucked up in bed. Normally when I ask about the boys, everything is always damn near perfect, with their achievements running the gamut from A-pluses to gold medals to virtuoso performances in underwater debating. But this time, with the boys away from the camera, it was different. The oldest and youngest boys were still going great guns, but the middle one seemed to be suffering from significant mental health issues. He’s only 14, but that’s plenty old enough, unfortunately. It was sad to hear that, and it made me wish I was still ten minutes’ drive away, and could pop round and chat to him. I suggested to my cousin that with all his schoolwork and extra-curricular activities, his life is quite high-octane for a 14-year-old, and maybe it would help if he slowed down a bit. That might not be the reason at all, though. Quite possibly he’s being bullied at school.

Boris. He got voted in as prime minister by a two-to-one margin. No surprises there. My friend from Birmingham suggested we could be heading for a general election, which he tips the Tories to win, and a no-deal exit. Looking at the people he has brought into his cabinet (and those he’s replaced) I can’t think much beyond “holy shit” at this stage.

Environment - Tennis

Not into this

July 20, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last night I had an argument with my Skype student. I really hate having arguments with anybody, especially people who are my customers, but sometimes these things just happen. I’d suggested an article to read; it was about climate change and the lifestyle changes that five climate change scientists had personally made. “Could we do something else? I’m not into climate change.” What does that mean? I was more bothered about the philosophical problem with his statement than the fact that he (an intelligent man roughly ten years younger than me) appeared not to give a shit. Being into climate change (or not), in the same way that you might say you’re into football or not into Game of Thrones, simply makes no sense. Globally, the last five calendar years were the five hottest years on record. Climate change is a basic fact, like rain or death or needing to poo.

I suppose I have been more interested in environmental issues since I moved to Romania, which is a fairly immature consumer society. Watching Romanians consume reminds me of the eighties boom, with added smartphones. People here are caught up in an ever-escalating arms race: no matter what they do and have, they’re trying to catch up to someone else who does and has more. Just yesterday I spoke to a woman who had just spent £600 on her son’s fifth birthday party, and admitted that they spent all that money just so that her son wouldn’t feel deprived compared to others in his kindergarten group. None of my birthday parties (I don’t think we even called them parties) would have cost more than a tenner. Seriously. If routine £600 birthday parties for five-year-olds is where we’re at, in Romania of all places, no wonder we’re fucked.

My interest has also been piqued because, partly by accident, I no longer live a consumerist lifestyle. On the rare occasions I visit the mall (which, since its latest revamp, looks like an airport terminal on the inside), I happily walk past all the clothes shops, and pick up the few ink cartridges and pieces of stationery and basic food items I need. I’m out of there as fast as possible. I don’t drive. This is also by accident (where I live, there’s nowhere I can easily keep a car). This year I won’t be taking any planes, unless I decide to spend Christmas in the UK. Once again, this is by accident – if Dad hadn’t had his cancer operation, I’d have flown there in June. But it’s not all by accident. Even though I’m not shopping and consuming like most other people, I never for one moment think I’m missing out.

One thing I still do is eat meat. I now realise (for the first time) I could do without that too, at least over the summer months, because the locally-grown fruit and vegetables here are so tasty.

I’m trying to sort out a trip to Montenegro by train (no plane!) in mid-to-late August. I’ll write more about that in my next post.

So many people have described the Djokovic–Federer Wimbledon final in such glowing terms that I wonder if they saw the same match I did. Or Mum did – she sat up all night to watch it, and said it was bloody awful. I wouldn’t go anything like that far, but I’d say that to qualify as a proper classic, both players need to play at a sustained high level. That didn’t happen on Sunday. Where the match did massively succeed, however, was in the drama stakes. I read a piece that talked about the “excitement index” (EI), an objective measure of how exciting a match is, based on the average importance of each point in the match (not all points are created equal). The EI for the final was 7.5%, the highest ever for a men’s grand slam final, which meant that the difference between winning and losing each point had an average impact of 7.5% on each player’s chances of winning the match. Intuitively, given that over 400 points were played in the match, that’s a huge number. It was boosted by the tie-breaks (which are always high-volatility) and also the craziness that went on as the final set stretched beyond 6-6, particularly the two successive breaks from 7-7 to 8-8, and that knife-edge game at 11-11 when Federer held break points.

Language teaching - Tennis

Babysitter

July 18, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Wimbledon is over. Yippee!

Yesterday was a difficult day because I had five lessons and was battling sinus pain that robbed me of a few hours’ sleep the night before. Today was much more comfortable. In the morning though I had my first lesson (which isn’t the right word at all) with yet another little ‘un: a boy who turns seven next month. If I’m not careful I’ll ending up being half teacher, half babysitter. When I arrived at his palatial abode, I realised his mum and I hadn’t discussed the duration of our session. I suggested an hour. He’s only little, after all. I’d prefer longer. Yes, you just want him out of your hair, don’t you? His mum was pleasant, though. She introduced me to Simona, their cleaner. Good name to have right now, I said. We talked briefly about the tennis, and what a great ambassador her namesake is both for the sport and for the country. Then I met the kid, who showed me all his toys in the living room which had a six-metre-high ceiling, followed by just as many toys in his upstairs bedroom. Endless cars, Transformers, cuddly animals, games, jigsaws, and so much Lego. The Lego was stored in Lego-brick-shaped boxes of various colours, and there were enough of those boxes to warrant one super-duper box. We spoke 90% Romanian. He knew a few words for animals, colours and numbers up to ten. His mum wants me to come back more than once a week. Today I also got my hair cut for the first time since January. It was pretty much shoulder-length when I went in.

Yes, the tennis. You can win a grand slam in glorious, dominating fashion as Simona Halep did, or you can win it like Novak Djokovic did. They all count the same. That men’s final was a crazy match, and not necessarily in a good way. Yes, it was dramatic as hell and will live long in the memory, but it contained very long, very flat periods. Djokovic was well below his best for almost the entire match. Federer played to a higher standard, but his form deserted him at crucial moments: the three tie-breaks, the two match points on his own serve at 8-7 in the fifth, and various break point opportunities such as the ones he fashioned at 11-11 in the decider. That fifth set was something special. It was extremely tense. But when the newfangled tie-break rolled around, it was as if someone had pricked a balloon. Djokovic won the shoot-out comfortably in an ending I found anticlimactic. The crowd were firmly in the Federer camp, and the stunned silence when he missed those match points was something else. Some people would probably rate Sunday’s final as one of the all-time great men’s matches, but I wouldn’t put in the same league as either the 2008 Wimbledon final or the 2012 Australian Open final. In fact, based on quality of play alone, Friday’s semi-final between Federer and Nadal was miles ahead of the final.

It’s quite funny, really, that 253 singles matches came and went without requiring an emergency tie-break, only for it to be needed in the very last match. Honestly I don’t see the need for it in the final. There’s no “next match” for the winner to play. Just let them play it out.

At least a tie-break at the end of a deciding set is a legitimate way of determining a winner of a tennis match. The New Zealand cricket team and their supporters, on the other hand, must still be licking their wounds after an extremely unfortunate loss to England in Sunday’s fantastic World Cup final. (It reached its extraordinary dénouement at the same time as the Wimbledon final did.) What a terrible rule, too, that was used to break the tie. Whoever drew up the rules probably (entirely reasonably) thought a tied 50-over match, followed by another tie in the so-called Super Over, was so unlikely that they could come up with whatever crazy rule they wanted, because it would never be needed. But most boundaries is ridiculously arbitrary. Either play a second Super Over (and a third, and so on, until there’s a clear winner) or dispense with Super Overs altogether and let them share the trophy.

Tennis

Superb Simona

July 14, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

That was marvellous. Simona Halep played out of her skin to obliterate Serena Williams in only 56 minutes. She was brilliant from start to finish. Her tactics were simple but effective. One, get everything back. (How she was able to retrieve some of those balls from seemingly hopeless positions, only she knows.) Two, don’t miss. And three, stay relentlessly positive. She was very impressive on serve, knowing that her second serve would likely be pummelled by Serena, as on occasions it was.

As Simona racked up the early games in the first set, I thought, she’s a quarter of the way there already, now she’s a third of the way, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up too much. Serena looked sluggish, as if she was, you know, almost 38 and a mother, but she was liable to click into gear at any moment. I felt reasonably confident in the first game of the second set, when Serena let out two huge screams after winning successive points. It looked like she was trying to bully, intimidate, barge her way over the finish line using her presence alone, and yesterday that clearly wasn’t going to work. At 2-2 in the second, Simona was on another plane, breaking Serena’s serve via a fantastic passing winner and incredible court coverage on two occasions. At 3-2, a lucky net-cord gave Serena a 15-30 lead, but Simona served, well, similarly to how her opponent so often does, to close out the game. The 4-2 game was the longest of the match, a game that Serena should have won but made so many errors; that game just about summed up her day. 5-2. I felt somehow privileged to watch such a great ambassador for the sport and for Romania win the sport’s greatest prize, here in Romania and with Romanian commentary. She served out to love.

Simona Halep seems a thoroughly nice person. She came across very well in her interview and would have made some new fans. She’s quite shy, and that makes me like her more. Also her ascent to the top echelons of the game was atypical in the modern era; she’s not a product of a farm or academy. It was a pleasant surprise to see her win Wimbledon, just like Ashleigh Barty’s French Open win was unexpected. Both players won on their least favourite surfaces.

As for the runner-up, who knows if she’s got another grand slam in her. Maybe she’ll be stuck on 23, one short of Margaret Court’s “record” (the inverted commas are because Court’s 11 Australian Opens are grand slams in name only). Serena hasn’t always endeared herself to the public in recent times, and some people were celebrating yesterday’s result because she lost, not because Simona won, and that was a bit sad. Serena was very gracious in defeat.

I also saw most of the men’s doubles final involving pairs from France and Colombia, a marathon in complete contrast to what went before. It lasted three minutes short of five hours; the first four sets all went to tie-breaks, with the Colombians Cabal and Farah winning the final set (played under the roof) 6-3. It had its dramas: Nicolas Mahut was struck full in the face at the end of the first set, and he was hit on two consecutive points in the penultimate game, in which the French pairing was broken. There was also controversy when the umpire gave a point to the Colombians following a challenge. The umpire (who was brilliant throughout) was dead right, though. At the end of the match, Mahut’s partner Edouard Roger-Vasselin was in tears. He didn’t have his partner’s consolation of having won it before. The Colombians, who had saved a handful of match points just to reach the final, were overjoyed.

This afternoon we’ve got the men’s final (and the women’s doubles final involving Barbora Strycova, let’s not forget that). I’m in a clear minority of people wanting Djokovic to beat Federer. If Federer’s second serve is as effective as it was against Nadal, and he can work the crowd (who will be firmly on his side), he could lift another Wimbledon trophy.

Language teaching - Tennis

Watching sport: Does it really matter?

July 13, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

In last night’s Skype lesson, my student read an article about cricket. Specifically, what is it about cricket that makes people want to watch it? The author then said that you could ask the same question of any sport. It’s inconsequential really; unless you bet on the game, watching your favourite player win or lose is unlikely to have any tangible affect on you or anyone else. (Last night my student asked me what “inconsequential” meant. I said, “It doesn’t matter,” and that momentarily confused him.) In my lessons I get a lot of people, at all ages and levels, to read texts or articles or pages from books. Sometimes I’ll read bits too, so they can listen to my pronunciation and intonation. Reading aloud isn’t an easy task for a non-native speaker; it’s hard to concentrate on saying the words properly while also trying to understand the meaning.

I did well last night not to be distracted by Federer and Nadal in the background. I like to think I have a professional attitude to my work. I take pride in it. It matters to me like, if I’m honest, no other job has before. It’s a pretty significant part of who I am.

By the time our lesson had finished, Nadal was teetering on the edge, having already faced a match point. Those final two games were thrilling, and Nadal ever so nearly barged his way back into contention. There were large parts of the match I didn’t see, but Federer dominated the longer baseline rallies in a way I hadn’t thought possible. And there were several long points on big points, such as when Federer was break point down at 3-1 in the third set, that he often won. He seemed that little bit sharper than his opponent, somehow. If Nadal had broken back for 5-5 in the fourth set, the match might have developed into a real classic. As it was, the better man won, and the statistic that jumped out at me was Federer’s 62% of points won on his second serve. Against Nadal, who is normally so hard to put away in a rally, that’s a huge number.

I recently listened to Tim Henman talk about Wimbledon – he’s on the committee of the All England Club. He talked about the dominance of the big three, which he astutely attributed to their ability to defend, to stay in points, which is an underrated skill. When he was in top form, Andy Murray’s defense was ridiculously good, too. I thought about Henman’s observations yesterday while watching the first semi between Djokovic and Bautista Agut. That Bautista boy could certainly defend. For the second set and half the third he matched Djokovic shot for shot. Then Djokovic broke to lead 4-2 but, in the next game with break point against him, came that point, all 45 strokes of it. They weren’t exactly hanging back on their shots, either. Djokovic won that ridiculous point, and from then on, Bautista Agut seemed to run out of gas. Had the point gone the other way, Djokovic would very likely still have won, but things might have got interesting.

I appreciated Henman’s comments on coaching during matches. He is unequivocally against any form of it, on court or from the stands, saying tennis is pure. One-on-one. It’s your job to figure out what to do. On your own. And the vast majority of people don’t want it either. Well said Tim.

In under two hours we’ve got Serena and Simona. Both players (neither of whom I expected to make the final) are in a rich vein of form. I’ve a horrible feeling Serena will batter her way to another Wimbledon title in roughly an hour, but I hope I’m wrong. Many tennis fans, I’m sure, are excited at the possibility of both Serena and Federer winning again, but for me the prospect looms rather darkly. And of course I live in Romania, so Hai Simona!

Tennis

The sharp end

July 12, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

When Simona Halep and Elina Svitolina were duking – or deucing – it out in the first two games of their semi-final, I thought the match might not finish before my next lesson at 6pm. In the event, by the time my bell went, both semi-finals were over. Only 31 games were played altogether; those who forked out for tickets might have felt short-changed, even if they did see Serena and Simona.

Simona won the first set 6-1, which was no real reflection of what happened. The first, second, and last games of the opening set comprised 50 points in total. But in the end, Simona was just a bit better in almost every facet of the game. She’s put together four excellent performances in a row – a rarity in the women’s game right now – and has made it to her first Wimbledon final where she faces Serena, someone whom I’ve heard Romanians describe variously as a man, an animal, and a tank. She was in ominous form yesterday; she moved much better than she has of late. Tomorrow, on what will be a huge day for Romanian sport, so much will depend on how Serena serves. If her radar is ever so slightly off, Simona will have a chance. It would be great if she could pull it off.

I’ve just been watching a repeat of the 2008 Wimbledon final. It was even better than I remember, partly because I didn’t see all of it at the time. I was living and working New Zealand, and the part between the two rain delays, where Federer won two tie-breaks saving those match points, was where I got some shut-eye. It wasn’t just the shotmaking under extreme pressure which was out of this world, but the tension, the almost unbearable suspense. Those rain delays only added to the drama. And they play again later this afternoon; it’s their 40th meeting. I’m hoping for a similar outcome to 2008. The speed of the court (it’s been slower this year), and therefore the weather conditions, will have an influence. It might even depend on how long it takes Djokovic and Bautista-Agut to play their match beforehand. I’ve got a Skype lesson this evening. The second semi-final might still be in progress then; I’ll have the TV on with the sound down in the background and will try to keep no more than one eye on it.

From a pure “tennis event” perspective, Wimbledon really is the pinnacle. (If you’re instead talking about the best grand slam for the fans, you might have to give the Australian Open the nod.) But everything matters at Wimbledon. The doubles, the mixed, some first-rounder on Court 15 between two players whose names (or no-names) you can’t even pronounce, it all matters, and the crowd get into it. This has always been the case, and I remember as a kid what a disappointment it was when the fortnight was over. This time I’ll feel different; it’ll be nice to read a few books instead of stare at a screen.

Language teaching - Tennis

Final four

July 11, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I went to that music festival on Sunday. Before I sat down I ordered a frigărui, which is basically a kebab. I thought it was damn good value at only 7 lei, but I didn’t read the sign properly. Entirely my fault. It was 7 lei per 100 grams, and my kebab weighed in at 300. For 21 lei it was nothing amazing. The Indonesians had just started getting into their stride when the rain came down. Nothing too bad at first, but after an hour or so a huge thunderstorm struck, and a steady but manageable drip became a deluge. One of the best things about where I live is the close proximity to just about everything, and I was able to run home before getting absolutely drenched.

I’ve been having two lessons a week with Octavian. Except last week, when he went with his family to a town in Croatia by the name of Pula. In Romanian, pula means “dick”. He thought this was pretty hilarious. At the end of each session, we (or rather Octavian – I take a back seat) have been playing a nineties adventure computer game called Monkey Island. It’s a very cleverly designed game: so much time and creativity must have gone into it. You could easily while away hours playing it.

We’re down to four in both the men’s and women’s. Simona Halep’s consistency told in the end against Zhang Shuai as she clawed her way out of a deep hole in the first set. Simona plays Elina Svitolina in the semi-finals very shortly. Barbora Strycova fully deserved her place in the semis against Serena Williams, who had a tough time against Alison Riske. (At 3-all in the final set, I thought Riske might pull off the upset, mainly because of Serena’s movement or lack of it.)

In yesterday’s men’s quarter-finals, I was most interested in the match that didn’t feature any of the big three. I didn’t really mind whether Roberto Bautista Agut or Guido Pella made it through, but I read that Bautista Agut’s mother died recently, and he’d reached the last 16 of grand slams many, many times previously without taking the next step or two, so I was happy he won. It was a good match. The other three matches all followed the same, rather predictable, pattern. Djokovic went down 4-3 with a break against Goffin but hardly dropped another game all match after that; Nadal only just scraped the first set 7-5 against Querrey (who is very strong on grass) but then only lost four more games; and Federer looked out of sorts to begin with and lost the opening set to Nishikori, but powered to a fairly comfortable four-set win. We’ve now got Federer against Nadal in a semi-final, eleven years on from perhaps the greatest match of all time. Who would have imagined they’d both still be such superpowers of the game?

I’ve just been on the phone to a lady who wants lessons for her six-year-old boy. I keep getting the little ‘uns at the moment. Yesterday I had my first session with a woman of about 25 who works with two of my other students in the Finance department at the meat processing company. Next week she’ll be bringing her friend.

The temperatures have got a two in front of them, not a three, and that makes life so much more comfortable.

Tennis

Manic Monday

July 9, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

If you don’t like tennis, please skip this post!

Manic Monday certainly lived up to its name on the women’s side. Ashleigh Barty’s loss was a major surprise, because she’d been in supreme form. For some reason – there doesn’t have to be one, these things just happen – she struggled with her ball toss in the last two sets, and Alison Riske was more than competent and confident enough on grass to capitalise on those weaker serves. All four of Riske’s matches have gone to three sets, some of them deep into the third, and today she faces Serena Williams. When I suggested to my parents this morning that Serena might now take the title, there was a collective groan. Oh god no.

I saw the final set of Barbora Strycova’s win over Elise Mertens. Strycova had been down a set and 5-2, but won the next eight games on the way to a 4-6 7-5 6-2 victory. Strycova is such a fun player to watch, and after completing the Bertens-Mertens double, she plays Johanna Konta in today’s quarter-final where she’ll be an underdog.

Five of yesterday’s eight women’s matches went to three sets. Another of them was a marathon between two Czechs, and two Karolinas, Pliskova and Muchova. Pliskova was one of the favourites for the tournament. When my student arrived, Muchova had just broken back to level the final set at 11-all. Pliskova was broken again at 11-12, thanks to a net-cord on match point, and the emergency tie-break (which I didn’t see coming in a women’s match) was once again narrowly avoided. This was a thriller and it was a shame I couldn’t have seen more of it.

The only match I saw in its entirety yesterday was Simona Halep’s win over Cori Gauff. I thought this would be a tricky match-up for Gauff, due to Halep’s counterpunching style and court craft, and so it proved. Simona now faces Zhang Shuai, who she’s had a tough time against before, notably in Melbourne. Zhang goes through these purple patches that can make her almost unstoppable. This is far from a foregone conclusion.

Another women’s match I saw snippets of was Elina Svitolina’s win against Petra Martic. Svitolina won 6-4 6-2, but it was a real battle, with so many interminable deuce games in both sets. Exactly 100 points were played in the opening set.

The men’s matches didn’t grab me so much. Kei Nishikori’s four-set win over Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Kukushkin was kind of fun, but Guido Pella’s triumph in five sets against Milos Raonic was the stand-out match. Raonic led by two sets and served for the match in the fourth. Pella returned brilliantly in the fourth and fifth sets, and Raonic seemed out of ideas beyond “keep acing, and maybe something will happen on the return game”. At 4-5 and 40-15 on Raonic’s serve, Pella came up with an extraordinary winner from so far out of position that he ran into the rolled-up cover on the side of the court. Oh man, how cool was that? Pella reached match point in that game, and had two more in the 5-6 game. Raonic kept serving – acing – his way out of trouble (OK, on one of the match points he also hit a rather nice volley). Eventually, at 6-7, Raonic cracked. Pella was a joy to watch and I was glad he won.

Finally I dropped in on a men’s doubles match, featuring the British player Joe Salisbury, which was suspended for bad light at 5-5 in the fifth. Emergency tie-break today?
Update: Yes! Kontinen and Peers beat Ram and Salisbury 13-12 in the fifth set, on a decisive 7-2 final tie-break. A lot has to happen to get that far, and it nearly didn’t (that’s why I call it an emergency tie-break). The eventual winners had two match points at 8-7 but couldn’t take them, then dropped their serve in the very next game, only to break Joe Salisbury in game 18. The commentators didn’t appear to be fans of the 12-12 shoot-out; one of them expressed a strong preference for 6-6, but I disagree just as strongly.