April 30th;
My
American
Spectator article is up.
April 29th;
Nigel says
SARS
is a C disease. Here's
his handy Gulf security lexicon.
With Jim & Gordon, I meet a different Robin. Alex introduces me to delightful Vesna and Olivera,
both from
Novi Sad.
April 28th;
For whoever came asking how to
translate
pineapple into other languages,
it is 'ananas' in
s
e
v
e
r
a
l
languages.
April 27th;
I went to
the gym.
Goodness.
April 26th;
Abundant food, drink, and company at Steve's birthday party he &
pregnant
Noemi hold,
but I feel morose and leave early.
April 25th;
After dark, genial Gordon introduces me to
Wayne,
a writer & photographer who studied Hungarian in London.
Earlier, a kind woman directs me to some brisk cosmetics chicks
in the metro underpass.
I buy a darling set of nail scissors and clippers in a little clear pouch for
450 forints, priced at less than a fifth of
Eine Deutsche NailScissor in brushed matt
steel from
Douglas
upstairs in the shopping centre. Out on Ferdinand Bridge across
the railway tracks, I took the pack out and in long yellow early-evening
sunlight I very carefully clipped and filed the precious 1/8" of nail on my left
fingers, the ones not bitten down to the quick like my right.
April 24th;
Checking e-mail in the
late-night Internet cellar bar,
I spend the small
hours of Thursday staring into a PC trying to ignore jolly pool-players & a bar
television tuned to a football match.
At around 2am, the last drinking
customer left gets bored and switches the TV to a local porn channel.
A cross-looking man is
shafting a reasonably svelte brunette in white thong. She moans at
polite intervals. It opens in close-up and the 3 of us, proprietor, patron
and I, watch for about a minute in thoughtful silence. Then the camera shows
the brunette's face, and customer remarks in mild surprise that
he knows the girl. He tells us which bar she drinks at, but the
weary Internet-kocsma proprietor is not sure where that bar is. The customer
gives directions.
April 23rd;
Last twinge of shoulder pain as I wake up. Busy day. While teaching Kristina,
her mother Marina pops in, looking particularly swish in a striking gold top with
stylish gold and red slacks. Marina and I chat briefly about
Lenin's deal with the Okhrana,
and
Andropov's
role in helping his protege
Gorbachev
to power. Once she is out of
the room, exasperated young Kristina cries out in her almost-American accent
"That was SO boring!!" Her mother immediately shouts back in English from
the stairs outside
"It's not boring, Kristina, it's the history of your country!"
Later, in the Pot Kulcs bar, Colleen tells me that she has 500 teapots.
April 22nd;
Driving with
Robin
into Kecskemet, we meet Zsolt, a ceramic artist, at his studio,
and eat and drink until I must catch the last train. Where I meet Colleen,
an old colleague of
Marion.
Two students in our dimly-lit carriage quietly watch American
television on a laptop balanced on their knees as the postal night train takes us north through
Hungary.
April 21st;
Seems
this man, Sina Motallebi
has just been arrested in Iran for keeping a weblog.
Via
samizdata and
Hossein Derakhshan.
Jeremy cooks a wonderful lamb lunch and we all sit around in the shade.
April 20th;
Kristos Anesti! Happy Easter Sunday,
renewal is here once again. Thanks to
Greek friends Giannoulis, Szuni at
Vista, and John's dad. Yesterday,
Letty, 91/2,
volunteered a suggestion on how I can get a
girlfriend.
"You should dye your hair perhaps blue or red,
and then you could go to a disco and meet girls there." Such
clarity of thought. More motorbiking down rutted
tracks of soft, powdery dust between sunlit fields.
Shoulder still dodgy.
April 19th;
Last night Jeremy and Robin picked me up from Lakitelek in the
Russian bike with sidecar.
We motor about in the dark.
After a lot of sleep, the
shoulder hurts less but still feels very weak. In car to Szentes
with Gyorgyi and 3 children, including a vigorously naughty Bela.
Jeremy achieves some kind of breakthrough fixing the 1968
motorbike
he describes as "a bit of a noiser". The puszta is flat, windy
and has reeds and bullrushes stretching for
miles in every direction.
April 18th;
Woke up in pain -
my
left shoulder hurts all day as if I damaged it in my sleep. Gorgeous sunshine.
April 17th;
Wonderful dinner at
Jim
and Julia's with Gordon,
Diane and friends. I drink far
too much wine.
April 16th;
Another day doing
local-currency stuff.
April 15th;
Intense, melatonin-fuelled dreams continue.
April 14th;
Robin
is still in town. He and Istvan reintroduce me to Goran, who gives
me some delicious cod he battered earlier. A possible impulse trip to
Belgrade
tomorrow
briefly captures our imaginations.
April 13th;
Morning coffee with
David and
visiting poet Antony.
Pineapple milkshake with
Diane in brilliant sunshine. Later a
Tarot reading
from Elysia while Tamas plays background guitar in his yellow cardigan and
rustles up a quick supper. I draw
the Hermit and
the Priestess three times in
succession. Later at
Kultiplex
with Jim and friends.
Hungarian avant-garde artists have the look down to perfection
{stubbly, tired - wearing loose, unzipped, retro sports wear in muddy browns &
greys, with the occasional stripe of washed-out blue or faded acid green} but aren't
very good at the actual art. We retire to Castro's, where Bill, a
graph theorist,
kindly works out the odds for me of drawing the same two cards in 3
separate draws {7, 5, 5} from a
22-card pack, the
Major Arcana.
It's not that unlikely, around 1 in 18 - since
any two of the first 7 could have been the pair occurring again in the 2nd draw.
April 12th;
I give Esther back her phone. I go to
Jeff's play finally,
to hear my own recorded
voice acting a reclusive art collector down a phone line.
Jeff seems cheery.
Gordon, Diane and Jim introduce me to sparky Victoria
and cheery Bill at Szimpla. Victoria & her husband are both
architects.
Then the Spare Key, less smoky
than usual. I bump into A. My back is fine now.
April 11th;
By day, Kristina's father, a wary, muscular man who makes
holographic security tags in Ukraine, gives me a lift. Eszter mentions
her parents' website.
By night, a slightly odd meeting of writers' group, belatedly guided to hospitable Gabor's flat by
instructions from Elysia. {For
professional reasons
Tamas needed to be at an alternative
venue helping
bike chicks in zip-up leather outfits.} Gabor shows me a couple of the
waterbeds he sells.
Waterbeds wobble when you punch them.
Scott
shows us humorous Vietnamese spaceman animation videos he wrote scripts for,
and later Scott & I go on to Adrian's party with Anna from Russia and Jelena from Serbia.
This is after Esther leaves her mobile
phone behind, phones it up and finds me. The cocaine-sniffers sniffily note
how much filth young Hungarians on alcohol and nicotine
spread round a flat that isn't theirs.
April 10th;
Affable Gordon
cooks dinner for myself and alert Diane from
Glasgow, plying us
with gin, coffee and wine. I drone on for probably three hours straight.
April 9th;
Robin and I explore Jeremy's excellent garage on Filler utca, and Jeremy shows us his
50s photo magazines,
German technicians' calendar & Christopher
Robin hats. The real
Robin
gives me a white-line painting, which immediately makes my place
look alarmingly wide awake. Feel worrying urge to tidy.
April 8th;
When exactly did Elysia and Esther come round and cook and drink
gin in my
kitchen last week? My back feels much much better, anyway. Work more on article.
Event at the
Ludwig {Old news footage + Serbian folk record relates death of
a Kennedy} with Istvan and Robin.
April 7th;
Worried by my backpain postings, kindly
Rob
recommends me his physio, and
points to a
twin-primes
{...(17 19), (29 31)...}
'breakthrough' story.
I don't want to be ignorantly unappreciative of these men's
painstaking work, but where's the punchline? Are
there infinitely many prime pairs or not? Are clearcut proofs hopeless now?
Oh, and still hurts, but much better thanks.
Morfablog
links to a fine
clickable map
test.
April 6th;
The
back muscles
at least hurt less than last night, when I flopped around like a
fish for a 1/2 hour, unable to get off the floor because every position
hurt too much. All day walked and sat very upright,
like a Victorian being photographed.
April 5th;
Excellent. Now I have a vivid backache. Finally have found a
true
kindred spirit. "I was thirsty and went
to the kitchen to get a glass of water."
April 4th;
Still have headcold. Whole day pitching to
v
a
r
i
o
u
s US journals.
April 3rd;
Exhausted after teaching & rushing all day yesterday. Met Bob, who had found a
Hungarian anti-European
Union poster.
April 2nd;
They weren't joking. I come up with something very scruffy while
nipping around at
school
and elsewhere. Long day.
April 1st;
The headcold digs in and shows stubborn resistance. I'm alarmed to learn
the deadline for that
Swedish
business-plan competition is within
hours.
March 31st;
Dinner with Bob. I contact
Weekly Standard.
-
Mark Griffith, site administrator /
contact@otherlanguages.org
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