I write to you as we complete our first, action-packed, week in Portugal. I thought today I would bring you up to date on our news, such as it is. This being Penamacor, rather than, say, New York, life is lived at a fairly gentle pace, so I hope you’re not expecting any particularly exciting news. Having said that, the week has not been without its dramatic moments, as you will soon discover.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon, to discover that Micha’el and Tslil were still, after several months, without a vehicle. On their return trip from Israel in early December, their tender basically died on them. Fortunately, their next-door-but-one neighbour is a motor mechanic with a heart of gold. He diagnosed a faulty part in the gearbox – a common fault with this particular model – and started looking for a second-hand replacement part. ‘Why not simply buy a new part?’ you ask. Excellent question! This particular model of gearbox is obsolete and the part is no longer manufactured.

Having failed to find a replacement part, and knowing that the kids are of limited means, he reluctantly started looking for a second-hand replacement gearbox. Unfortunately, one of the reasons why the gearbox is obsolete is that it was a design prone to failure, which meant that he was unable to find a second-hand one that worked. Not to be beaten, he searched for, and eventually found, a second-hand gearbox to fit the newer model of the kids’ truck. This design is, apparently, much more reliable.

At this point, he came back to the kids, who agreed to pay the (not insignificant) cost of the gearbox. He then proceeded to start fitting it, at which point he discovered that the new gearbox is a different size from the old one and he would therefore have to make some modification to the housing in the tender in order to fit it.

All of this took time and, of course, more money, although what he charges them for labour is more than reasonable, and he is ready to accept that payment in instalments. The bottom line is that they had been without a vehicle for two months before our arrival. There are two other facts you need to bear in mind. First, the road up from the local supermarket to the house is about two kilometres of a 1 in 2 incline. Even the local shops are almost a kilometre away and far below us. Second, supermarkets and shops in the village do not deliver! For these reasons, supplies in the house were understandably low when we arrived.

Fortunately, we had brought some tide-me-overs with us. I’m not sure I could survive any longer without my home-made granola in the morning. Since it is also very popular with Tslil and, especially, Tao, I have learnt to make a supply to bring with us, to buy myself some time before I need to make another batch. We also bring such staples as tea, and this time we brought a couple of loaves – again, to buy time.

However, we arrived to find that even fruit and veg, which are usually in plentiful supply in the house, were very short. We therefore drove to the local super that very afternoon, for a range of essentials. We then took things a little easier on Monday, and, on Tuesday, drove to a larger super some 25 kilometres away, where we broke our own supermarket bill record. To their credit, both Bernice and Tao lasted the course without either of them having a meltdown.

This was quite an achievement since the supermarket was not one whose layout we know well, we don’t have sufficient Portuguese to ask where most items we need are, or to understand the directions we are then given, and we can’t always identify the items correctly even when we are in the correct aisle. To give you an idea of the size of our order, when Bernice eventually arrived at the checkout with the first of our two trollies, the cashier took one look and then called on the manager to open another checkout point.

Fortunately, the season is winter, and so we haven’t needed to try and fit as much into the fridge as we would in June. The weather, incidentally, has been pretty kind to us. We landed in Madrid to be greeted by an almost balmy day. Even when we reached Penamacor, the day was still sunny and mild. With the exception of one day of intermittent rain, last week was bright and sunny, though fairly to very cold. Apparently, November is the rainiest month here, and this time of year is often bright, dry and cold.

I managed two days during the week when I didn’t get to the local super, and I only visited the China shop once. The Chinese manageress was, as far as I can tell, very happy to see me again, although I find her Portuguese even more unintelligible than that of the locals, and her face is stereotypically inscrutable.

Unfortunately, two of my purchases turned out to be the wrong size, and I will at some point have to attempt to exchange them. I am, to be honest, dreading attempting to explain what I want to a manageress who has a poor opinion of human nature and with whom I share no linguistic or cultural points of reference. I may simply decide to put the unwanted purchases back on the shelf, buy the replacement items, and lie to Bernice.

And so to our two dramatic moments, each of which, in its own way, reflects how Bernice and I, each in our own way, are pretty bad at learning from experience. A couple of weeks ago, Bernice returned from a lunch date with a friend to discover that she had lost her phone. Eventually, she returned to the restaurant and discovered the phone on the floor where she had been sitting, directly under her back trouser pocket, in which she had kept her phone, as she always does. Her takeaway from this sobering experience was that she really shouldn’t keep her phone in her back pocket.

On Monday last week, Bernice came back from the bathroom to announce that her phone had fallen in the toilet and stopped working. I confess to being heartless enough to say: ‘You had it in your back pocket, didn’t you?’ leaving Bernice no option but to admit that I had guessed correctly. We immediately buried the phone in a bowl of rice, as one does. We then dug it out of the bowl of rice, removed the SIM, and buried the phone again, in the fond hope that the rice grains would draw out all of the moisture. Twenty-four hours later Bernice found that she was left with a phone that still didn’t work, and a bowl of rice that nobody really felt like eating.

Author’s Note: When Bernice read this passage, she commented: ‘And you didn’t even mention that the only reason I got this phone was because my last one was ruined when it fell out of my back pocket into the toilet!’ So now I have!

Tao was kind enough to allow Nana to share his phone (Tslil’s old phone, on which he watches his daily timed dose of English and Portuguese videos). Her SIM was, thankfully, undamaged. Unfortunately, however, Bernice has never backed up her data, and so she has lost all of her contacts, photos, and sundry notes. In addition, Tao’s phone does not support Yahoo mail, and it is a Yahoo mail account that Bernice uses. This explains why many of you did not receive your usual Shabbat Shalom message from Bernice. She asked me to explain and apologise on her behalf.

Then on Wednesday, while I was washing up, I cut my left index finger on the edge of the cleaver that Micha’el likes to use for chopping. As luck would have it, we bought Tslil for her birthday a whetstone, and, just before we came, she had been using it to excellent effect, sharpening all of the kitchen knives. I stood in the kitchen, watching the blood well up, then grabbing a piece of kitchen towel, wrapping it very tightly round the finger and applying as much pressure as I could with my right index finger and thumb while holding both hands above my head.

As I stood there, I assessed the situation. Because of my irregular heartbeat, I take blood thinner medication daily, which means that my blood takes longer to coagulate. Tslil wasn’t available: she was out walking the dog. Bernice was bathing Tao, and so couldn’t easily and safely leave him unattended for long. Ollie had just woken up, not very happy, and Micha’el was busy soothing him. I was already beginning to feel that I couldn’t keep my arms raised for much longer.

Why, I asked myself, did I seem incapable of learning to take more care when handling knives? I confess that I cut myself these days, while chopping or washing up, with embarrassing frequency, a fact that aggravates Bernice as much as her insisting on keeping her phone in her back pocket aggravates me.

Eventually, I called Bernice, who was able to come in and dress my wound, which is healing nicely, thank you. Not a very dramatic accident, I know, but, as I said above, Penamacor is a very sleepy village. Now, if we were in Midsomer, I might have a more dramatic tale to tell.

And finally, from what we hear, Israel had a worse weather week than Portugal, last week, but Raphael still managed to get out and about between the storms.