Sunday

It’s good to know that there are some things you can always depend on. In a constantly changing world, there are still some immutables. Nobody could have predicted what corona has done over the last 15 months to the entire world. It’s a brave man who would have bet on the exact combination of parties that currently form Israel’s coalition government. Even Roger and Rafa may be passing their sell-by date.

And yet, reliable as ever, whenever man proposes, God can still be relied upon to dispose. This time last week, I blithely wrote, regarding my health: I don’t see the need to issue further bulletins.

And then……. And then…….

I’ve been sounding hoarse and repeatedly clearing my throat for a couple of months now, and last Sunday I felt sufficiently recovered from my hip operation to introduce my family doctor to yet another part of my anatomy. (He and I have long agreed that, considering that I have so many things wrong with me, I am remarkably healthy.) He saw me at 5 the same afternoon, took a quick look at my throat and then told me to wait outside while he contacted the ENT clinic to get me an urgent appointment. That rather spooked me.

9 o’clock the next morning found Bernice and myself very nervously waiting to be seen by a specialist, who seemed, by contrast, remarkably calm (But then, it wasn’t his throat!). He gave me a swift examination with a mirror, remained very calm, and then informed me that I had throat polyps. He didn’t examine me further or take a biopsy, but simply prescribed a throat spray for a month, and advised me to talk no more than necessary, and even then not to speak loudly or sing. I have an appointment to see him again after a month.

So, I have been inundating Bernice with WhatsApps several hundred times a day, and, when friends visited on Shabbat, I spent a lot of time nodding, and a little time trying, and mostly failing, to make a contribution to the conversation by assertive whispering. (This is, of course, an oxymoron and physical impossibility – and, incidentally, may cause more damage than normal speaking, according to Dr Google.) Tslil sees this month as a wonderful opportunity for me to meditate and get in touch with my inner self. (I’ll give that a moment to sink in.) Even after several years, she really doesn’t know me very well.

Over the last weeks I have had a few mood swings, particularly when I convinced myself that I was not making further progress in strengthening my legs. However, in the last couple of days I have started feeling improvement again, and have made some occasionally successful attempts to stay sunny. Bernice has, of course, as always, been incredibly understanding, and cut me far more slack than I deserve. After a very encouraging and reassuring visit from the physiotherapist earlier today, I feel a lot happier.

The greatest frustration has been that I am now no longer able to talk or read to Tao in any normal way. He has been as understanding as his nana, and we’ve developed a couple of games where I move my joints in response to commands from Tao, and we have also started reading very familiar books where I turn the pages and Tao tells the story. However, it is not easy for me to keep him engaged for more than a few minutes, without sliding into talking, which I really want to avoid.

Fortunately, I am now able to accompany Tao and Bernice on walks and to the park, and tomorrow we are planning to have a grandparents’ day out at the zoo with Tao.

Monday

And yet, reliable as ever, whenever man proposes, God can still be relied upon to dispose. This time yesterday, I blithely wrote: and tomorrow we are planning to have a grandparents’ day out at the zoo with Tao.

And then……. And then…….

I woke up this morning feeling dizzy and light-headed. Bernice is confident that it is nothing more than the effects of dehydration during the (very hot) night, after fasting yesterday. I probably just didn’t drink enough yesterday evening.

I’m a lot better now (apart from feeling awful that this blog is turning into a rejected screenplay for an episode of Dr Kildare), and I really only bore you with it to explain why, as Bernice and Tao watch the penguins being fed, and ride the zoo train, I sit here feeling sorry for myself and burdening you with my troubles in a way that I would never dream of doing if I were talking to you face to face…even assuming that I was able to talk to you face to face without aggravating either my polyps or you, or indeed, judging by how my luck is currently running, both.

And then, no sooner do I type that last thought, than I realise just how wonderfully my luck is actually running. We are currently in the middle of Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s five-and-a-half week visit, during which we’ve been able to celebrate Micha’el’s birthday. With Esther and Ma’ayan, all seven of us have been able to spend time together. I’m recovering reassuringly well from my hip replacement op; in fact, my physiotherapist tells me I should no longer consider myself ‘after an op’. I have the most supportive family imaginable, led by the woman with whom I make a perfect match: I honestly don’t deserve her, and she definitely doesn’t deserve me. I have no idea what I did right in a previous existence, or she did wrong, but both acts must have been humungous.

Right! Enough of this cloying nonsense. If I’m going to gush, let me gush about two-and-a-quarter years of sheer delight – Tao. Rather than submit you to another 500 words of elaborating on his placid character, his powers of concentration, his sense of humour, his manual dexterity, his already evident self-possession, let me leave you with a video.

For his birthday, Micha’el and the family went to a climbing gym, or, as we afficionados call it (so I’m told), a bouldering gym. Dressed in his climbing shoes, Tao belied his tender years in a display of concentrated awareness both of space and of his body. His every move was considered, and his bodily control was almost perfect. (Alright then, just a little gush.) Perhaps most impressively, he had confidence in his abilities to go so far, and then he calmly decided when the time had come for him to descend. (Fortunately, his nana and grandpa weren’t there; if we had been, he would never have climbed so high, trust me!

Medical Bulletin: Making great progress. Walked 2 km today without using the stick. I don’t see the need to issue further bulletins. Thanks for all your good wishes.

I’ve been reading quite a lot of books this last couple of weeks, and doing a certain amount of thinking about books, and I decided this week I’d share some of those thoughts with you. I know that some of you are rather turned off by my musings on literature, but please don’t stop reading just yet. I hope this might be a bit more accessible than usual.

Let me first tell you some of the titles I’ve been reading, re-reading and thinking about: Inside, Outside, Upside Down; Five Minutes’ Peace; Meg and Mog; Grandma Goes Shopping; Where the Wild Things Are. Yes, this has been a fortnight of children’s picture books, and I must say it has been a real pleasure revisiting old favourites and discovering new treasures, and a double pleasure reading them to a totally absorbed and very appreciative listener and viewer, albeit one who knows very well what he likes and what he doesn’t. As the days have passed, I have found myself musing, not for the first time, about writing story books for young children. After all, how difficult can it be? All it takes is 200 words and a talented illustrator.

Well, the last month has given us all a painful reminder of the fact that not everybody can succeed in this endeavour. Even if you are a Hollywood actress, even if you are married to a prince, and even if you are a close friend of Oprah, you can still produce a children’s book that is a total embarrassment. If this has somehow flown under your radar, then I invite you to read The New Statesman’s searing review of The Bench, by Merghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.

Almost all of the books Tao has here (many of them saved from Esther and Micha’el’s childhoods) range from good to brilliant, but one or two have me puzzled. I am always surprised how much Tao enjoys one particular book about a builder constructing a bedroom over the garage for a family with a new baby. The book could virtually serve as a do-it-yourself manual: it goes into details of laying floor timbers, mixing sand, cement and lime to make mortar, nailing rafters, laying roofing felt, and so on and so forth. We even see the builder giving the customer a quote for the job.

There is little humour to lift the story, and both the storyline and the prose are…prosaic. Yet Tao finds it fascinating. Of course, this may be because he already realises that it is very much in his own interest to acquire all of these construction skills as early as possible.

Thinking about the books that he and I both agree are well worth reading, I have been drawing a few conclusions, which I present here.

The most successful books are those that engage both the adult (usually parent) reader and viewer and the child listener and viewer. There are two ways to achieve this. The easier way is to interweave humour and interest for the child with humour and interest for the adult. We are used to seeing this in the realm of film with the work of Pixar Animation Studios, whose full-length films almost always combine two sets of content so that they appeal to parents and children. In a children’s picture book, with its inherent limitation on number of words, it is much more difficult to sustain both plot strands.

The more challenging, but more economical, way is to present a single set of content that simultaneously appeals, at two different levels, to parents and children. Jill Murphy’s Five Minutes’ Peace achieves this, by focusing on the relationship between a mother elephant who desperately wants to have a quiet, soaky bath by herself, and her three children who constantly demand her attention.

The dialogue in this book is pitch-perfect: Murphy captures with complete accuracy the speech of mother and children. This must help the child listener identify with the elephant ‘children’, and certainly any mother of three children, or even one child, yearns, like Mrs Large, for five minutes’ peace. The book is accompanied by illustrations that highlight the humour of the situation, and despite the surface conflict of interests, both text and illustration make it clear how warm and close the bond between this mother and her children is.

Of course, picture books do not need to deal with everyday situations. The only thing unusual about Five Minutes’ Peace is that the family are not people but elephants. The Meg and Mog series of books, on the other hand, are about a witch who is always casting magic spells, and her adventures with her cat and owl. I wish I could ask Tao what he enjoys about these books, since he has no conception of what a witch is. I should perhaps ask Esther, whose absolute favourite Meg was, but I doubt whether she can remember exactly what appealed to her at age two.

The illustrations here are very stark, lacking the softness and the domestic detail of Five Minutes’ Peace. They do not expand the horizons of the story, but rather illustrate with great clarity the core plot. The regularity with which Meg’s spells go amusingly wrong and the strong personalities of all three characters make the books enjoyable to read. There is a briskness and energy in text and illustrations, and the text dances all over the illustrations, making an excitingly integrated whole. The word count is about as low as it can be while still narrating a rich story without becoming incoherent. Where Five Minutes’ Peace includes 460 words in 26 pages, Meg and Mog, in 28 pages, contains only 230 words.

A different kind of surrealism can be found in Grandma Goes Shopping, a book that takes an everyday character in an everyday situation, and weaves a bizarre story from this. Finding that the cupboard is bare, and Grandpa is ready for dinner, Grandma goes shopping. Her purchases begin with an amiable alligator and include a bicycle made for two and a variegated vicuna. However, they also include a round cheese and a fish for frying, which means that, in the last picture, we can see Grandma and Grandpa sitting down to a healthy meal.

The text is cumulative – the entire list is recited after each new purchase – which gives the listener ample opportunity to become used to the strange items and obscure words. In parallel with this growing list, the illustrations are packed with the kind of detail that an engaged viewer will love. A mouse that is not mentioned once in the text nevertheless appears in every illustration in a completely different place. Tao also finds great interest in some backgrounds that surprised me. For example, he always spends time identifying the various vehicles on an overpass in one picture – a background that I don’t think I registered until he drew my attention to it.

Looking back, it seems to me that all of my selections so far have been British – some of them very British, so it only seems fair to finish with two books from across the pond.

The first is a Berenstain Bear book: Inside, Outside, Upside Down. In the unlikely event that you are looking for a picture book to teach positional and directional spatial adverbs and prepositions, then this is the book for you. If, on the other hand, you just want a fun book to look at with a toddler, then this is still the book for you. Its 27 pages contain only 66 words, which means that any reader is going to have to improvise. Fortunately, the lively illustrations give reader/viewer and listener/viewer plenty to talk about. Since Tao is fascinated by the concept of position, he loves this book. He is particularly fond of ‘under’, specifically in the context of: ‘How far do I have to push my cars under the sofa so that we will need to use grandpa’s walking stick to get them out?’

And finally, the book that I haven’t yet persuaded Tao to let me read him. He is, in fairness, probably not yet ready for it, but I can’t wait until he is, because Where the Wild Things Are demonstrates just how great an art children’s picture books can be. The prose sings; the pictures dance. The narrative speaks to children and their parents simultaneously. As Max goes deeper and deeper into the imagined world, the illustrations take over the page, leaving no room for text; as he is pulled back to the real world, the text drives out the illustrations again. Celebrating both the power of children’s imagination and the strength of family love, Where the Wild Things Are is a magical journey and a profound lesson for children and their parents.

Well, that’s 1490 words, so I’m stopping here (and keeping the other 56 books on my list for another time). I’d love you to leave your recommendations in the comments. We’re always on the lookout.

No videos this week, I’m afraid, but I managed to catch a couple of reading sessions.

Medical Update: Making good progress: walking unaided around the house, with a stick outside; going for 30-minute walks; very little pain; approaching the point where I will have to pretend my recovery is slower, or Bernice will stop waiting on me hand and foot.

What do you do with the estimated journey time that Waze gives you? There are some people who trust Waze implicitly, and leave at exactly the time Waze indicates. A few people reckon they can shave at least 5 or 10 minutes off the time Waze suggests. And then there are those who allow twice the time Waze suggests, because ‘You never know what might happen.’

We have all, this week, been blessing the fact that Tslil falls into the last group, and that she was able to persuade Micha’el to leave early. Let me explain.

Direct flights between Portugal and Israel have not yet resumed, and so when the kids started planning their trip, they looked at a two-leg flight from Lisbon, with a layover in Madrid. We then pointed out to them, and they agreed, that it would probably be easier, with Tao, to drive to Madrid airport. At 370 km., it is only 100 km further than the drive to Lisbon.

The only concerns involved their truck. First was the question of parking, but Micha’el found a very reasonably priced long-term car park within ten minutes’ shuttle drive of the airport. It sounded ideal for their five-and-a-half week-stay.

The other concern was that the truck’s annual roadworthiness test was due shortly before their trip. The truck failed, unfortunately, and Micha’el had to take it to their local garage, where the necessary repairs were carried out at not too horrendous a cost. Micha’el felt he was cursed with car tests, since he had a record of several failures, after one of which, on the drive home from the test centre in Castelo Branco, the car broke down irretrievably.

So Tslil took the truck for its retest, three days before they were due to fly. The plan was that, if the truck failed, they would find a taxi-driver to take them to the airport. Fortunately, the truck passed.

So, around the middle of the day, Tslil, Micha’el and Tao set off for Madrid airport, allowing about 10 hours for the four-hour drive. Since their Portuguese mobiles do not have international roaming, Micha’el had loaded into Google Maps the car park address that he had previously saved. (Hold that thought!)

It was probably not a good omen that, on the journey, when they were stopped at a petrol station, a smoking car swerved into the station and screeched to a halt, two people leapt out, just before the car burst into flames. However, the kids were so relieved to have achieved, in the previous week, all of the tying up of loose ends, bureaucratic and on the land, that they needed to achieve, that they refused to be phased by the omen.

They made fairly good time, and were able to break their journey to give them all, and especially Tao, a chance to stretch their legs. Then they hit Madrid, and found themselves caught up in a horrendous traffic jam. It also seemed that they were driving much further into the heart of the city than they would have expected, for an airport car park. However, there was not much they could do except follow Google Maps, which eventually led them to a location that was clearly not a car park.

At this point, they started wondering whether the entire transaction (which had involved paying in advance) was a scam. That’s just the kind of thought you need when you are suffering from both chronic and short-term sleep deprivation, you are at what you hoped would be the end of what has so far been a nine-hour drive, with a two-year-old who, however sunny his natural disposition, is about to start expressing the wish that the journey would end, and you are now only two-and-a-half hours from take-off.

With no internet, and no local phone, they wondered what they could possibly do, especially since the ‘ridiculous’ cushion of time that Tslil had insisted on allowing was swiftly losing all of its stuffing. Micha’el, displaying a typical combination of sound commonsense and total faith in karma, suggested that they drive to the airport, since the car park must be somewhere around there.

At the airport, they found a long-term car park, which was, however, deserted. So much for commonsense. They also found a passing pizza deliverer, who spoke enough English for them to be able to explain their difficulty. That’s karma for you. The pizza boy very kindly entered the correct car park’s address into his phone, found the location on the map and showed the map to Micha’el. Micha’el then found the location on his Google Maps map, and marked it manually.

The kids then drove to the correct car park, where the guard admitted their truck, took the keys, hung them up with hundreds of others, and then drove them to the airport, leaving the key cupboard and the car park unlocked and unmanned. We’re all hoping they will find their truck still there when they return.

‘Within ten-minutes’ drive of the airport’ of course means ‘within ten minutes’ drive of the outer perimeter gate of the airport’, which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be another ten minutes’ drive from the actual terminal. However, they arrived, without further trouble. The guard/shuttle driver gave the kids a phone number which (theoretically) they can call to order a shuttle when they return.

Astonishingly, after all that, check-in, including security and Covid documentation, was smooth and fast. A shuttle train whisked them to the departure gate, where they arrived 15 minutes before boarding started. Easy, really.

It was only some time later that Micha’el realized that he must have originally loaded into Google Maps not the address of the car park, but another address that he had saved earlier for another reason. I suppose we should all be grateful that the address was at least in Madrid.

Tao (and Tslil) slept well on the flight; our regular taxi-driver (who had driven them to the airport when they left Israel for Portugal almost two years ago) collected them, and they were on our doorstep before 7:30 last Monday morning. Despite his surfeit of vehicles – truck, car, shuttle train, plane, taxi – over the previous 17 hours, Tao arrived with his usual smile, and it took him hardly any time to make himself at home here.

For me, he has been the best incentive to recover from my op; for Bernice, he has been the best fitness exercise program imaginable; for both of us, his company, and that of his parents, has been an absolute joy; of which more next week, bli neder.

So, this was the plan. Last Monday: operation; Tuesday: out of bed and walking the ward; Wednesday: home; Thursday: off painkillers; Friday: graduate from the zimmer frame to a walking stick; Saturday: start building up from 300-metre to 1000-metre walks in the streets. By Monday (yesterday, when this is published), I expected to be able to keep up with Tao and to be completely ready for a wonderful five-and-a-half weeks.

First of all, wipe that smug, knowing, pitying smile off your face. I’m right alongside Harry and Megan on this: It’s my body and my truth and you simply can’t deny it. I can remember exactly how things went 9 years ago, and even though I am now 9 years older and 6 kilos heavier, I have absolutely no intention of letting that make the slightest difference.

Next, I hope you will understand that I am not in any kind of state to write a 1500-word post, let alone one that is a light, frothy entertainment. I can’t handle that, and I’m not going to allow myself to break down in public (the only other realistic option), so you’ll just have to accept my apology. Sorry, but… no post this week, because I have a very sorry butt.

Not a good enough excuse? Well, perhaps you’ll not be quite so judgmental, and at least first let me explain why I can’t come up with the goods this week.

I don’t know what kind of a week you had, and, frankly, I don’t care, because unless you’re married to me, it was quite conceivably better than mine.

First of all, as mentioned last week, my op was inexplicably delayed two days, setting my whole timetable back before it even started. On Wednesday, I was taken down fairly early. The anaesthesiologist had planned to give me a very light general that would, he assured me, be just enough to give delightful dreams of running as a 12-year-old through fields of corn. Instead, it turned out to be just enough to make me vomit, so I ended up hearing every detail of the op.

This actually didn’t bother me. Although some people find it offensive to hear the operating team joking around and mocking each other and feel insulted that they are not taking the whole thing seriously, I actually find it immensely reassuring. As long as things are jogging along in a jokey atmosphere, I am persuaded that there is nothing to worry about. The last thing I want to hear is the surgeon screaming: ‘Will you all shut up? I think we’re losing him.’

My experience back on the ward on the first day was far different from my memory of my left hip. I’m sure that I was in considerably more pain, far less mobile, and, on the whole, not my usual sunny self. Strangely, I did not find Bernice’s assurance that I was kidding myself about the previous experience at all comforting, and, piecing together the events of last Wednesday, I am fairly convinced I was not the happy bunny that I usually am. It is fortunate that Esther was with us throughout Monday, so that they could console each other about my black mood.

The hospital physiotherapist shed light on this experience. He took me to the back staircase of the ward on Friday morning, to teach me how to negotiate stairs. This is the last obstacle that a patient has to get over before being released. I remarked that the stairs hadn’t changed in 9 years, and then reflected on how strange it was that I remembered the staircase vividly, but I did not remember the pain at all. His reply was: “Have you got any children? Then ask your wife what the pain is like.” I immediately realized how true this was. It is probably a good thing that the body is usually very good at forgetting the experience of pain.

By the time we left the hospital at noon on Friday, the progress I had made in manoeuverability and muscle-strength was very encouraging. Since then, my time at home has been spent working out the logistics of keeping equipment near at hand in a two-storey house, while trying to keep the number of times a day that I say to Bernice: ‘Could you possibly fetch my…?’ down to below 500. The problem is that our staircase at homs is narrower than the one in the hospital, and I cannot use the zimmer frame on the stairs. I am therefore using a stick and the railing, which means that I arrive upstairs while the frame is downstairs, or vice versa.

I think the solution is to hire two zimmer frames and two mechanical grabs from Yad Sarah, rather than one, although Bernice assures me this would simply result in my being downstairs while both zimmer frames were upstairs. (She speaks as the daughter of a man who single-handedly guaranteed the continued economic viability of the British umbrella industry for a couple of decades by building up a stock of several dozen umbrellas at work while having none at home.)

As I write this, it is Sunday noon. On Shabbat, I walked to the children’s playground 150 metres from our house…and back. This at least means that I will be able to go on some outings with Tao. I’ve also worked out strategies for independent showering and dressing, so that I feel less of a burden. This morning I prepared our usual breakfast. Even though it took three times as long as usual, and left me totally exhausted, I felt very empowered, a bit like SuperWetRag. So, we are getting there.

And, lo and behold, my non-post is over 1000 words long. Small but beautifully formed, as they say.

Next week should bring lots of news of the Portuguese family, who arrive early tomorrow. Meanwhile, they appear to have found a smart way of reducing the cost of travel.

They have also just produced a new video on the YouTube channel, which gives a detailed account of one of their major projects, You can view it (and also like, subscribe and comment), here.

Blogger’s Note:

This week’s blog was written early, in the expectation that by now (Monday afternoon) I would be either under the knife or not yet coming round from the anaesthetic. However, as my email on Sunday briefly explained, my surgery has been postponed to Wednesday. This may be because the hospital had, yesterday, run out of money (see below). It may, on the other hand, be because the nurse who is the ward’s eminence grise took objection to my suggestion to her, after we had waited over four hours on Sunday, that giving all of the candidates for surgery a 9:00AM appointment for pre-op was possibly inefficient and even inconsiderate.

Whatever the reason – and I don’t expect we will ever know the real reason – I should probably rewrite this entire blog, in the light of the changed reality. However, I prefer to argue that the whole essence of a blog, like any other diary, is that it captures the blogger’s subjective reality at a specific moment. This post, then, reflects with searing authenticity my thoughts last Friday, and, for that reason, is a valuable artefact – although reading it through just now I can’t honestly see its value. Anyway, here goes….

Last week, on two occasions in my post, I made passing reference to a particular topic, and promised “…of which more next week.” By the time you read this, next week will have come, although I am actually writing this last Friday….Or should that be: I wrote this last Friday? Or perhaps: I am writing this this Friday? Or maybe: I am/was writing this on what is/was/will have been this/last Friday. Oh, what the hell!

David’s blog, Earth date 2021.05.28.
Not to be read before 2021.06.01

The first of the two topics was my hip. More time travel: I am writing this with one artificial hip and one crumbling natural hip. By the time you read this, I will, God willing, have two artificial hips. Of course, since the Israeli Treasury has been dragging its heels (as have I, coincidentally – or at least one of them) shamelessly over transferring the Government-pledged 600 million shekels to the 7 public hospitals, and since the head of Hadassah Hospital Har Hatzofim (where I am having my surgery) announced yesterday on the radio that the hospital does not have sufficient funds to pay its suppliers after May 31, there is always the possibility that, by the time you read this, the supplier will have repossessed my artificial hip!

However, I have every confidence that everything will turn out for the best. I take my inspiration from Geoffrey Rush’s immortal line in Shakespeare in Love, trusting that his comment applies to all kinds of theatres, including operating ones. (Blogger’s note: Some regard my Polyanna optimism as my most endearing feature; others see it as an embarrassment.)

I realise that it is unrealistic of me to rely on being able to update you in detail after my op, in time to publish my blog at 9:00 am on Tuesday. So, I have decided to write the post early, and just leave the dispatching of the emails for Tuesday. If, for any reason, the blog isn’t published on Tuesday morning, don’t panic. (This last sentence is, of course, completely pointless, since, if the blog isn’t published on Tuesday morning, you won’t read the sentence telling you not to panic.)

Which brings us, not a moment too soon, to the second topic, the ever-more-imminent arrival of Micha’el, Tslil and Tao from Portugal. They are due to arrive on Monday 8 June, which gives me even greater incentive to plunge myself into post-op physiotherapy and exercising in the hope of making my recovery time as short as is safely possible. They will be in Israel for about 5 weeks, including an initial 10 or 14 days of isolation for Tslil and Micha’el. They will be based with us.

This means, tragically, that Bernice and I will have to entertain Tao for that first period. Bernice started her preparations weeks ago, touring Ma’ale Adumim to discover a park that has baby swings (although now we understand that Tao has meanwhile graduated to a swing without a safety bar), making lists of possible outings, writing shopping lists, planning in-house activities.

Last week, we had a grandparent shopping day, starting at Ikea outside Bet Shemesh, continuing to the Hadar Mall in Talpiot, and ending at our own mall. We returned home with a number of practical pieces of equipment, as well as all sorts of goodies to supplement the fairly good toddler’s library and the Duplo and other toys that we have kept for decades for just such an occasion.

This morning, I discovered a used spice jar soaking in a bowl of water in the kitchen. When I asked Bernice what that was about, she explained that she was soaking off the label, because the jars are such fun for water play. Something tells me that our house is going to be looking like the set of Blue Peter for much of this summer. (If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, Blue Peter is now the longest-running children’s TV programme in the world, having been launched in 1958 for a planned six episodes. This clip, from the 1980s, will give you an idea of what I am alluding to, and of just how wholesome the programme was…and still is.)

And, speaking of ‘Here’s one I made earlier’, the last couple of weeks have also been devoted, on my part, to preparing for the culinary onslaught that awaits us. Micha’el is, by nature, something of an obsessive in all things, including food: he knows what he likes, and he doesn’t hold back. I have therefore made two kilo jars of piccalilli, with the expectation of needing to make two more halfway through their visit, and also some shesek (loquat) chutney, which is another wonderful use of that versatile fruit I celebrated a few weeks ago.

This week I have devoted to baking. Whereas I normally bake 500-gram loafettes, which last the two of us a couple of days, I went this time for a 2-kilo loaf, and also a 3-kilo batch of platzels and baigels. I only hope that my recovery from surgery is fast enough for me to be up to baking again by the time that all gets eaten…but I’m not optimistic.

As regular viewers of the videos will know, Tao is a keen baker, and Micha’el tells me he is excited at the prospect of making bread with me. I’m not trying to be competitive, but I bet he isn’t half as excited as I am. I’m sure he will also be cooking with his Nana, and gardening.

Touched by the news of Eric Carle’s death this week, I just hope that Tao hasn’t outgrown The Very Hungry Caterpillar yet. It was one of his absolute favourites when we were last in Portugal…but that is now 15 months ago. I know he’s moved on to loftier things, but some of us are in no hurry to let go of the old favourites.

Of course, some friends are warning us that we don’t know what’s hitting us, and that suddenly increasing by 150% the mouths to feed, bodies to clean clothe, minds to entertain, is going to hit us very hard – and particularly the one of us that doesn’t have a note from the doctor. However, I know that Bernice is more than up to this. After all, she’s used to handling 25 times this number of toddlers, and their parents! On the other hand, grouchy one-legged septuagenarians are another matter entirely.

Meanwhile, Tao’s wheelbarrow is still right up there at Number 1. Does anybody have one we could borrow for a few weeks?