When I used to travel abroad on business, I usually had a more interesting time than my non-religious Israeli colleagues. They were free to wander unaccosted around whatever major city we found ourselves in, whereas every walk I took was liable to involve an encounter of one kind or another, because my kippa advertised to almost all the world and his wife that I was Jewish.

Only one of these encounters proved less than pleasant. That was when an Israeli confronted me and lectured me for 15 minutes about how he could not bring himself to return to Israel because of the evils of Bibi Netanyahu. I got the distinct impression that, far more than he wanted to convince me that he had made the right decision, he wanted to convince himself.

My most amusing experience was in Thailand. Close to the Bangkok open market, there is a Chabad Centre, which, like all Chabad Centres around the world, offers religious services, free meals on shabbat, and uncritical acceptance of all Jews, and is a magnet for hordes of Israeli backpackers (whether they are religious or not), as well as for Jews from around the world who are in Bangkok on business or holiday. Five minutes’ walk from the Centre there is (or, at least, there was, 17 years ago) a hotel whose bedrooms used locks and keys rather than electronic keycards, which made life easy for orthodox Jews, who would otherwise not be able to access their rooms over shabbat. The hotel offered special weekend rates to any guests who mentioned that they were referred there by Chabad, and the reception staff knew that these observant guests would, on Friday night and Saturday, hand in their room key every time they left the hotel, to avoid infringing the prohibition on carrying any goods from the private domain (the hotel) into the public domain (the street) on Shabbat. The walk from the hotel to the Chabad Centre took you through a street packed with tiny massage parlours, with masseuses sitting on their beds, waiting for customers. As you passed each parlour, the diminutive Thai masseuse would wish you ‘Shabbat Shalom’, which was simultaneously slightl;y surreal and strangely comforting.

Finally, my most bizarre experience was when an elderly Puerto Rican crossed the road in San Juan to ask me whether I was something senior in the Catholic church.

In recent years, I have wondered about the wisdom of wearing a kippa in public outside Israel, and, if I was still travelling frequently, I suspect I would resort to a cap more often than I did 15 years ago.

However, I didn’t think, and still don’t, that I have any reason not to wear a kippa in Penamacor. I got some curious and puzzled looks around the village, but nothing more sinister than that.

However, I did also collect a strange encounter to add to my collection. I mentioned a few weeks ago that we ordered some white goods online. When they were delivered (impressively punctually), the lorry driver and his assistant greeted us with a warm ‘Bom Dias’ and then made short work of wheeling the cooker and washing machine in. As they went out to fetch the tumble dryer, the assistant, who was quite swarthy, with broad features, spotted my kippa and gave me a warm ‘Shalom’. I was mildly, but not very, surprised that ‘Shalom’ had penetrated to rural Portugal; after all, Bill Clinton had made the word famous at Yitchak Rabin’s funeral, and hosting the Eurovision Song Contest three times has possibly done more to bring Israel into people’s living rooms than anything else, so I thought very little of it.

However, when the same young man, after all the goods had been brought in, turned to me again and wished me ‘Shalom Aleichem’, my curiosity was aroused. The phrase may simply denote ‘Peace be to you’, but, as I have attempted to show in my translation, it has rather old-fashioned and faintly religious (sometimes almost ironic) connotations. It is, in short, not a phrase I expected to hear from a European whose only experience of Israelis was from the popular media.

And so, Micha’el asked the young man where he had picked up the phrase, and he explained that he was born in Brazil, and his best friend growing up in Rio de Janeiro had been an orthodox Jewish boy. You can’t hide away, even in Penamacor!

Which brings us to the China shop. My more perceptive readers, noting the upper-case ‘C’, will realise that the china in question is not ceramics, but rather the world’s most populous country.

In recent decades, relations between Portugal and China have warmed considerably. As a result, not only are large national Chinese corporations moving heavily into utilities and transportation in Portugal, but, in addition, large numbers of Chinese, principally from Macau and Shanghai, have moved to Portugal to launch smaller businesses. (Of course, ‘large numbers’ is a relative term, reflecting here the size of the population of Portugal, and not that of China.) To counter its negative population growth and boost employment opportunities, Portugal offers initial tax incentives to non-European foreign nationals moving to Portugal and starting businesses there. 20,000 Chinese have so far moved to Portugal (16,000 of them in the last two decades), though, since the population of Portugal is only about half the population of Shanghai alone, this migration has been felt more in Portugal than in China.

Many of these Chinese have opened shops, the length and breadth of Portugal, selling a wide range of household goods. (Apparently, China produces quite a lot of these goods very cheaply. Who knew?!) Even Penamacor boasts its own China shop, and our major social activity on our first stay in our new home was walking down there to buy a sweater, a pastry brush (a soft bristled one that I had been looking for in Israel for about a year), an electrical extension lead, Shabbat candles, plastic sleeves for filing, aluminium foil disposable baking dishes, a computer mouse, liquid soap, a kettle, and so on. We were in the shop every day (sometimes twice a day), and on only two occasions did they not stock what we were looking for. Once, I wanted a black marker pen, and the shopkeeper, after I had finally managed to explain to her what I wanted, immediately phoned her local triad contact, and the pen was in the store the following day.

On the other occasion, we wanted a bamboo rice steamer, and, paradoxically, that was the one item the China shop could not supply. Go figure!

By the end of our stay, we were firm friends with the shopkeeper, a very warm, cheerful and outgoing Chinese woman who spoke utterly impenetrable Cantonese and (to us) equally impenetrable Portuguese. When she asked Micha’el about the significance of my kippa, it transpired that she had never heard of Israel or Jews).

I would set off the electronic sensor at the shop entrance every time I came in, which is why one of my five sentences in Portuguese is: ‘Tenho um quadril artificial’ – ‘I have an artificial hip’.

When, at the end of our stay, Micha’el explained to her that we were leaving the following day, she was devastated. Whenever we were in the store, there would be at most another two people there, buying, typically, just a devotional candle, or a lightbulb. I suspect we were her best customers ever. She was very relieved when Micha’el explained that we would be back.

When I showed her the photo I had taken of her, she reminded me that what unites mankind is far greater than what divides us, by declaring (with graphic miming) that the photo made her look fat.

Chinese languages are, as you may know, tonal. Cantonese boasts 6 different tones, as shown in the chart, which represents the voice going up or down in pitch when pronouncing a syllable. I understood that correct pronunciation in Cantonese requires the correct use of tones, but I had always assumed that the Chinese ear was as well able to ‘decipher’ a foreigner’s tonally incorrect speech as an Englishman is to understand someone speaking with a thick French or German accent. However….

Within a short time of Micha’el and Tslil arriving in Portugal, they were on friendly terms with the China shopkeeper. She made a fuss of Tao, as is common in Penamacor; there are not a lot of babies there to make a fuss of, and he is eminently fuss-of-makeable. Micha’el informed her that his name was Tao, expecting her to be delighted that they had chosen such a significant Chinese name. “Tao?”, she said, furrowing her brow. “Yes, Tao,” Micha’el replied. “You know, the path, the way, the great philosophy.” She looked even more perplexed. There followed a few minutes while they both googled on their phones, the shopkeeper occasionally muttering “Tao? Tao!!?” to herself. After a few minutes, Micha’el found a site in Chinese that promised to clear up the confusion. He showed it to her, triumphantly. “A-a-a-h-h-h! Tao!” she declared, using a different tone from the one Micha’el had used. Then she looked at him as if to say ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

All of this makes our linguistic challenge even more daunting. As well as learning the distinct Penamacor dialect of Portuguese, we now apparently have to get our Cantonese tonals polished up before our next trip in February.

Don’t forget that you can get a clearer picture of Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s life in Portugal by following, subscribing, liking (and maybe even sharing) their youtube channel

First things first. I never expected to be (mis)quoting Xmas songs – particularly in mid-January, but there you are!

Second things second. I know that, as a True Brit, I should have written Aubergine Roasting on an Open Fire, but it doesn’t scan. I needed a spondee rather than a dactyl. Oh, the benefits of a classical education! (I can still, ludicrous as it may sound, recite from memory the first line of the Horace ode I declaimed in the London schools Latin poetry-speaking competition I was entered for 57 years ago.)

In addition, I used to call the vegetable aubergine when I lived in Britain, when only a deranged Frenchman would consider the abomination fit to eat. Take a beautiful silky-smooth, glossy, deep-purple bulbous object, looking for all the world like a Henry Moore sculpture, then burn it until the skin is only fit to throw away and you are left with amorphous greyish-mushroom gunk, and then eat it? Are you mad? Now, of course, I call it chatzilim (Them chatzilim? It chatzil?), and I know that it is ambrosial. So, the word aubergine carries inappropriately negative associations for me, whereas I am indifferent to the word eggplant.

Third things third. Chestnuts were, when we left Portugal at the end of November, in high season, and to be seen everywhere. I will try to find an opportunity to write more about them sometime soon, but, in the interests of accuracy, you need to know that Tslil roasted chestnuts in our new Electrolux oven, and very tasty they were, too (but, somehow, ‘Chestnuts roasting in an Electrolux oven’ hasn’t quite got the same ring to it), and it was chatzilim that Shir (the kids’ ‘business’ partner) wrapped in aluminium foil and roasted on the open fire, then transformed and blended magically into a baba ganoush to die for.

By the way, we have a coat cupboard in the downstairs hall of our home in Israel, and, although Bernice and I never put anything in there but coats and the occasional hat, nevertheless sometimes, when we are fast asleep upstairs, all sorts of objects make their way to the cupboard and set up home there (in much the same way as street cats do in our garden). So, you will suddenly discover, one morning, that a colony of handbags has moved in, or a small family of empty jam jars, or a close-knit community of useful pieces of string. Why am I telling you this? Because I sometimes open the cupboard door, and am reminded somehow of what the inside of my mind must look like.

(I was going to write here: ‘But I digress’. However, on reflection, it seems a little superfluous to point that out.)

And so to this post’s real subject – open fires. The traditional, and still the main, method of heating homes in Penamacor is the wood fire, and every house boasts a generously-proportioned open fireplace, with a fine chimney breast sweeping up to the ceiling.

Trees in the forestry around the village are regularly felled, sawn into logs and transported away, all by huge combined felling and logging equipment on caterpillar tracks, shattering the peace of the forest and causing the only traffic jam we encountered in Portugal, when they blocked the track to the kids’ land one day.

Now, Bernice and I both grew up with open coal fires. In London, my family made its contribution to the London smog of the 1950s (see Series 1, Episode 4 of The Crown, which is not guilty of exaggeration). In South Wales, Bernice’s family lived in a market town at the foot of a coal-mining valley. So, we both know about going out to the coalshed in the garden on a freezing-cold winter’s day and shovelling coal into the scuttle. We in London had all mod cons, including a mains gas point by the fire and a gas poker we used to light the fire. Bernice’s family, on the other hand, used the traditional twists of paper, on top of which a mound of coal was stacked (leaving plenty of gaps in the structure for air to feed the flames).

Well, it transpires that there are differences between burning coal and burning wood. First of all, consider the volumes required. When Micha’el and Tslil took delivery of mimosa logs at the beginning of the winter, they expected this batch to see them through the winter. Their latest calculation is that they will need three times that quantity. Fortunately, we have a large woodshed, with, so far, nothing nasty in it.

(If you haven’t read the quintessentially English Cold Comfort Farm, from which that last reference is taken, you can read about it here. As a parody of the ‘loam and lovechild’ genre, it is, without a doubt, not to everyone’s taste, and so very un-21^st Century as to be surely due for a revival, but, if you have read any of the doom-laden, dark-family-secret, rural novels that came out of Britain in the 1920s and 30s and that it gently mocks, then you should enjoy it.)

The second difference, which arises directly from the first, is that any given quantity of wood burns much more quickly than the same quantity of coal. In real terms, this means that maintaining a roaring fire requires taking on two extra staff – a porter and a stoker. The alternative is to devote your entire day to tending the fire. This is particularly true because wood burns more idiosyncratically than coal.

In addition, because the units of wood (the technical term is logs) are considerably larger and more unwieldy than the units of coal (the technical term is lumps), building a wood fire requires a much more comprehensive education in civil engineering than building a coal fire does.

Finally, initially lighting a wood fire is a lengthier and more nerve-wracking experience. When, after several failed attempts, with long-handled matches, spills of paper, candles, cardboard and bark, you finally manage to get the bloody thing to light, you need to watch it like a hawk. If it is true that a watched pot never boils, then it is equally true, in my experience, that an unwatched fire never stays alight. I managed to light one fire successfully during our month-long stay, but, on the whole, I preferred to delegate, to Micha’el and Bernice, the wood-fetching duties, the edifice building, and the ignition.

On the positive side, a wood fire leaves much less ash than a coal fire. Riddling, shovelling and disposing of ash are not the time-consuming tasks that they are with a coal fire.

A word about fire-lighting materials. We could have bought, in the supermarket, firelighters – those cubes that feel like polystyrene foam, look like giant sugar lumps, and smell disgusting. However, since Micha’el and Tslil want to save the (very little) ash that the wood fire leaves, to do something mysterious with it on their land, we did not want to pollute it with chemical firelighters.

So, instead, we used the materials we had at hand. You may remember from an earlier post that we ordered a lot of goods from Amazon, and this meant that, by the time it grew cold enough for a fire, we had an impressive store of cardboard from the various boxes that the goods were transported in. Even better as a firelighting material is wood bark, and so Bernice and I were always on the lookout for bark debris, every time we took Tao for a walk in his buggy. I must say that the wood bark burned strong and long, and was really good for starting the fire. Bark-gathering soon became second nature, so much so that, after our return to Israel, when a particularly windy night had left the pavement strewn with debris from the palm tree at the corner of our street, I had to resist the temptation to pick it all up to take home.

Sadly, our wood hearth is not the most efficient method for heating the house. A lot of the heat escapes up the chimney, and, since the open staircase leads directly from the salon/living room/lounge, more heat escapes upstairs. We will need to think about long-term solutions to this, probably starting by installing a significantly more efficient wood-burning stove in the existing fireplace.

Meanwhile, we have all been reminded of just how spellbinding are the dancing flames of an open fire…. even if there are no chestnuts roasting on it.

If you would like to see more of our home in Portugal, and our adorable grandson (though not necessarily in that order), Micha’el and Tslil have posted a new video devoted to Tao on their youtube channel this week. Who knows? You might even want to subscribe, like and spread the word.

One of the beneficial, but disturbing, effects of moving to another country is the discovery that a huge number of things that you always assumed were true all over the world…aren’t. Growing up in England (Have I mentioned before that I grew up in England?), I always thought I had a fairly good general knowledge. Good grief, I was even selected as one of the four members of my school team to compete on TV’s Top of the Form. And then we came on aliya, and I discovered that what I had always assumed was general knowledge was not only Bourgeoisie-centric, and mid-20^th-Century-centric, but also Occidento-centric, and even Anglo-centric. Very humbling, let me tell you.

But, of course, this phenomenon is not confined to general knowledge. The shock of my discovering that there are countries in the world where they drive on the right was immense. OK, I exaggerate, but you get the idea. In rather the same way as young children tend to regard their family, however dysfunctional, as normal, so we – or at least I – tended to think of the way things were done in England as not only the way they should be done (obviously), but also as the way they are done around the world.

Well, let me tell you: it ain’t necessarily so. We have now lived in Israel for over 33 years, and I long ago reached the point where not only do I fail to understand any of the British cultural references I read and see in the media, but I am also no longer certain which of my ways of doing things come from England and which from Israel.

So, I was prepared for the culture shock of Portugal, and I thought that, in this post, I would share with you just three of the surprising, and sometimes impressive, ways they do things in Portugal.

Let me start with the first one I discovered, on my initial drive from Lisbon to Penamacor. The last leg of the journey is along a country road with a 90 kph speed limit. The road passes through several villages, and the speed limit comes down to 70 kph on approaching a village, and then 50 kph within the village. As I drove through the first village I came to, the traffic light ahead of me turned red. When I stopped at the light, I wondered why the authorities had bothered to put a light there at all, because there was no cross street or pedestrian crossing. After half a minute, the light turned green and I carried on.

When the same thing happened at the next village, I was even more puzzled. Once again, the light turned red as I approached, and I cursed my bad luck.

At the third village, the penny dropped. A speed camera had detected that I was driving at slightly over the 50kph limit, and automatically triggered the traffic light to turn red. The traffic light had been erected solely to penalise speeding drivers, and to deter them from speeding.

What a wonderful system! I suspect I am not alone in feeling that if I travel at 52 kph in a 50 kph zone, I am only 4% guilty, whereas if I drive through a red light, I am 100% guilty. The effect on me was exactly what the authorities intended. Knowing that if I tried to gain a few extra seconds, I would pay for them in waiting time further down the road, I kept dutifully to the speed limit throughout my time in Portugal.

We discovered another creative solution to a widespread problem when we went to Castelo Branco, the provincial capital, to transfer the electricity contract from the old owners of the house we had bought. The offices of EDP (Energias de Portugal, formerly Electricidade de Portugal – Who said Portuguese is a difficult language?). are very plush, and the staff are dressed in smart uniforms that make them look like flight attendants. In Penamacor, and even in Castelo Branco, while all the office staff and bank officials dress very smartly, the customers are in jeans and casual shirts. Perhaps the man in the street dresses more smartly in Lisbon, and the contrast is less striking.

Anyway, after a fairly short wait, we were seen by a very helpful lady, and the bureaucracy was handled swiftly and painlessly. At one point, she asked me whether we wanted to increase the electrical capacity in the house from 3.45 kW to 6.90 kW. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what these figures represent in terms of average domestic consumption. I’m sure there are people who can recite their peak consumption over each of the last three years, but I don’t believe I know any of them. Anyway, Micha’el told me that he had encountered no problems with fuses being tripped, and I suspected that any increase would require rewiring, possibly installing triple-phase, and, doubtless, considerable expense. In my head I could hear Flanders and Swann singing The Gasman Cometh (If you know them, you don’t need me to tell you that it doesn’t get more English than Flanders and Swann; if you don’t know them, follow the link above to complete your education.) In short, we both agreed that we really didn’t need to increase the capacity. There is, I find, tremendous, if short-lived, satisfaction in coming swiftly and confidently to a decision on a matter about which you know nothing. In retrospect, I wish we had flipped a coin, and had a 50% chance of being right.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering why Bernice wasn’t involved in this decision, it’s because she was three doors down, looking in a shoe shop. No surprises there, as some of you may already know. (I thought about adding here that I have always suspected her middle name might be Imelda, but I have grown too fond of living with her to risk writing that.)

Only a few days later, when we had bought a couple of heaters for the house, did we discover that there were combinations of appliances that did indeed trip the fuse, and we spent a couple of days discovering just what our possible simultaneous combinations of washing machine, oven, kettle, heater and so on were. It started to feel a little like the puzzle about the farmer/merchant with a small rowing boat/raft, a cabbage, a rabbit/goat and a fox/wolf. (How interesting that the cabbage seems to be the only constant in this ménage à cinq!)

We then discovered, by means too tortuous to go into here, that, if we chose to increase our capacity, this would simply involve a clerk in the electricity company changing one value in their central computer system. No rewiring, not even a technician call-out to the house; just a couple of keystrokes at a terminal. However, our monthly fixed charge would be increased as a result, though not by very much. Needless to say, we chose this option.

My understanding of this system is that it makes it possible for EDP to avoid the peak-consumption-period power cuts that Israel, for example, occasionally suffers. During a spell of particularly hot weather in Israel, the surge of demand (principally to run air conditioners) may be more than the electricity company can meet, resulting in a power cut, sometimes over a significant area. In Portugal, EDP knows what the maximum possible demand is (the sum of each customer’s capacity) and can ensure that the infrastructure can meet this demand. The higher charge paid by customers who want greater capacity can contribute toward the cost of providing the infrastructure that will satisfy that demand. This seems to me a very equitable system.

Which brings me to this week’s third contestant – the humble front-door key. I grew up with Yale locks, the standard in England, with a spring mechanism that locks the door automatically when you close it. This is intended to be remarkably convenient – you don’t need to remember to lock the door when you leave the house, and, if your hands are full, you don’t need to fumble with the key on your way out. It can seems less convenient at 6 AM, when you are shinning halfway up the drainpipe in your pyjamas and slippers, hoping you can still fit through that bathroom quarterlight, because you just stepped onto the porch to pick up the delivered milk bottles, and heard that suddenly less than reassuring clunk of the Yale slipping solidly back into place.

In Israel, the standard is more like a bank safe door, with sliding cylindrical bolts that do not lock until you turn the key.

In Penamacor, the mechanism is mounted on the inside of the door, the house side rather than the street side. This means that the key has to reach through the entire width of the door and then some, to engage with the locking mechanism. This means that front-door keys need to be very long: indeed, inconveniently long, if you carry the key in a trouser pocket. And so, in a fit of Iberian ingenuity, the Portuguese have devised the telescopic doorkey. You slide the key closed to fit it into a trouser pocket, then expand it to insert into the lock.

However, it is advisable to explain to foreigners how the key works, rather than just handing them a shortened key. The mechanism is discreet enough to be unnoticeable, and there is much fun to be had watching a newcomer struggling to open the door with a key that does not reach far enough to engage the lock.

Believe me, it only takes a couple of weeks to transition from ‘How on earth are we supposed to work that out?!’ to ‘Of course; everybody knows that!’ It’s just another small step in our adjustment to life in Portugal.

If you want to follow Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s journey of adjustment to life in Portugal, you can take a look at their youtube channel, where they seem to be posting a new video every week. (You might even get the urge to subscribe, like, and spread the word.)