Friday, March 9, 2007

Welcome to my new blog

I don't expect I'll have time to post anything much on here for a while, but it may allow me to communicate with YOU!!

:-)

19 comments:

  1. Welcome to the world of web blogs, Gadjo! It'll take over your life, and your wife will talk about you to other women in a weary tone.

    Nice photo too.

    I'm partial to a Sweet Afton myself, but Majors always did my head in. Made me sound like Mariella Frostrup too.

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  2. Seja bem-vindo GD! I'm already a fan of your OU profile page, particularly the background image and the diet.

    The bobble-hatted bard is right, blogging can create some marital tension, but if you pretend you're doing it to make money they tend to let you off with a little gouging.

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  3. Oh, wow, I actually got comments on my non-blog! I knew it would take over my life, which is why I chose the gypsyesque fly-tipping approach of only ever visiting other peoples webspaces, and annoying them there. Also, I suspected that if I had my own blog I'd have to develop a consistent "personality", which sounds like hard work.

    It's been a long time since I had Sweet Afton, and I confess that my initial dalliance with the Irish smoking community has not developed into a serious habit.

    Obrigado Sr. Ward, e Bem-vindo! People seem to like that diet, though I think it was the thing I was least proud of as I seem to think I ripped the idea off from somewhere.

    My wife appreciates that I am a loooonng way from "home", and that the Internet, as a surrogate, is preferable to endless tea drinking, discussions about cricket, dressing up as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, etc.

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  4. Whereas dressing up as Mr & Mrs Mad Iancu The Blind Violinist is OK. I can see why you like Cluj.

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  5. True, NGB - I suppose it's simply the otherness which is attractive; and if I was a psychotic Romanian violinist I might find dressing up as Virginia Woolf invigorating, possibly even necessary.

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  6. I see you've started meddling with your template. The voice of experience squeaks - this is a slippery slope towards unporductive procrastination, I dread to tot up how many hours I've wasted...

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  7. Thanks for that timely warning, Mr. W. I really mustn't do any more than I've already done, I mustn't even post things, or I'll forget I ever struggled so hard to have a real life and will settle for a virtual one instead :-(

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  8. As a homage to the gypsy culture, I can only assume there will be references to gypsy vardos and the great Django Reinhardt?

    Good luck in creating your blog!

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  9. Well then, good luck! Thanks for stopping by and leaving a trail of haiku.

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  10. found you on the Japing Ape - you want to join my regime of rage and abuse to overly cheery shopkeepers, good. I find pretending that I'm deaf and getting them to repeat everything works for me...

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  11. Get started and write something, you pathetic tub of margarine! And get out of that ridiculous Virginia Woolf costume.

    I have an old torero's 'Suit of Lights' that might fit you - interested?

    And no, I'm not talking bullocks...

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  12. Dear Mr Statics,
    I had only just seens your message, but for gratuitous Gyppology I has a blog for that already, bor.
    Lucky heather?
    Kushti bak,
    Gyppo

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  13. Rod Liddle, erstwhile BBc lefty now reborn as a cor-blimey merchant, has a droll account of his holiday with the Kalnokys of Transylvania here:

    http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/europe/article3945016.ece

    He expands it into a largely pointless musing on Englishness here, but with an entertaining first page on the Transylvanian national types.

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/615276/here-in-transylvania-it-feels-okay-to-be-proudly-english.thtml

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  14. Thanks a lot for that, Boyo. I can't find the piece about Transylavania on the first referenced page; but the second one's very interesting, containing so many things that could get Liddle strung up from lampposts from here to Inverness!

    I could go on for hours about the ethnic situation here, but thankfully it's never looked like boiling over. I reckon the Hungarians will get their views aired in the European Parliament: László Tőkés - the man who's credited with starting the 1989 revolution in Romania - is an elected member there now. But there's a lot history here when the Hungarians were the "oppressing" rather than the "oppressed" minority. It's complicated. It's also good to be English here! Sănătate/Egészséget!

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  15. sorry, the link didn't copy in full. Here is it again:

    http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/europe/article3945016.ece

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  16. AAARGH!

    I've added a (black, ghostly) carriage return after each forward slash in the hope that blogger will accept it:

    http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/
    tol/
    life_and_style/
    travel/
    destinations/
    europe/
    article3945016.ece

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  17. Thanks, I got the link now. Amazing....75 years after Patrick Leigh Fermor came here, pioneering English holidaymakers are still being given their introduction to Transylvania by the former aristocracy! I'm really pleased he had a good time, though, and I hope that more do the same. But, £1,500 for a holiday for five?? He was robbed. He could have stayed at mine for free, with the food "thrown in".

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  18. A bargain. We paid much more at the Best Western Hotel Topaz, but did get a free serenade by dogs in the wee small hours. "Creatures of the night" is how an imaginative hotel manager would have sold it.

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