22-V-1979.
Timişoara was today. No clue what we got.
Around this time we went to Novi to register for next round of exams and to spend the gift greeting card that we got from Ilona for our wedding. It was a good trick at the time, pretty much like gift cards later, in the way how you make a gift which everyone knows the cost of, without imposing your taste on the recipients nor trying to guess theirs - let them choose.
This wasn't feasible for just any shop out there to do - first it required a good legal guy who'd explain away the discrepancy (got the money, didn't give the goods, huh?), then it had to have enough of an assortment, so the recipients would find something to spend it on, not be disappointed, and possibly become customers themselves.
The only downside in this case was that it was in Novi, so it had to wait until we have a reason to go there.
We bought a length of skaj, which is the plastic, leather-like cloth, this time of the slightly wrinkled variety, and the cloth for camping chairs, they were due a change. This is where we ran into some back and forth with the clerks - they didn't want to cut it to the length we wanted, „it's not enough for a shade“. „What shade, who said shade?“ „This is the cloth for sunshades.“ „No, it's a cloth that you sell, and once we pay we can make of it whatever we want, which is then not your problem at all“. They probably wanted to avoid a situation whereby we'd come back the next day and complain that it's too short.
In front of Stoteks we met Coja and his chick. He's a guy from chemistry, and we were neighbors briefly, that one month at Vuk's, lived on same entrance just two floors below. The girl was smallish, thin, with huge curly hair framing her, something incredible. And she made such a happily astonished face when she saw us,with the belly being that big. This is actually how I recalled this story, by having her astonished face appear to me in a dream, in april 2023. The details then just resurfaced.
Around this time the fat guy Ristić published a show with Zdravko Čolić, who was already going on my balls, just as much as Sedmorica mladih, also his. Additional reason, the title was „Pjevam...“, not „Pevam“, because this was a verse from Branko Radičević. So now even the classics' verses need not be respected, retread them into ijekavian into three mothers' cunts, it's okay. Extra points for cyrillic doubya, it's not really 'pjevam', it's 'pjevvam' as he sang it.
At the [swimming] pool the local sportists* were training, the team for „Games without frontiers“. SFRY just joined for the first time. It was supposed to be sheer fun, but we took it too seriously, and composed the team of pretty much best boys and girls, and Zrenjanin had them, being strong in several sports (volleyball, kayak, wrestling come to mind right on), so this partaking (somewhere in France) ended with a victory. They trained in evenings, guess to get used to it, as the event will be at that time. The pool was vacant anyway, the season officially begins on 1st of june. The pool being three hundred meters from home, I went to take shots of how that looked. Well, the flash doesn't quite reach, water drinks the light, it all turned out weakly.
Of tensome shots, half were unfocused, as it seems I also didn't quite see where I aimed, or I simply ain't [made] for a sports photographer. For that a sense of where the scene will be in two seconds is needed, which is acquired by observation, for which I never had the will. Sports as spectacle, leave me out, sport is opium for the people. Solo sports may be okay - bicycle is for me, can do anytime, but to pay to watch some others doing something, don't see any point. So only two-three usable shots remain.
----
* can't say athletes, there were many who weren't in athletics at all.
Mentions: Ilona Gnajs, Novi Sad, in serbian
25-X-2016 - 27-IX-2026