First, a quick update for those of you who haven’t slept since last week. The tyre mechanic, true to his word, phoned on Tuesday morning, and, within an hour, he had changed the tyre, balanced the wheel and fitted it, and all was happily resolved. I am now armed with photographs of the gash in the old tyre and a tax receipt, both of which we shall be presenting to Europcar, more in hope than expectation.

Speaking of Europcar, while walking and driving round the village this past week we have several times seen Europcar vans whizzing around. We are very tempted to stop one and ask what they are so busy doing, since it clearly isn’t serving their customers!

This week’s blog offering is a bit of a gallimaufry – or, if you prefer, a potpourri, mishmash, hodgepodge or, indeed, salmagundi – of various bits and pieces of things we have done or noticed on this trip. From this collection of interesting synonyms for a miscellany, I chose salmagundi to use in the title, for the simple reason that this post was born on a Monday. (Salma Gundi, Born on a Monday? Perhaps not!)

Here, incidentally, is a typical (and typically generous) 18^th-Century recipe for the varied dish that is salmagundi:

To make a Cold Hash, or Salad-Magundy. TAKE a cold Turkey, two cold Chickens, or, if you have neither, a piece of fine white Veal will do; cut the Breasts of these Fowls into fair dices, and Mince all the rest; to the Quantity of two Chickens you must take eight or ten large Anchovies, wash and bone them, eight large pickled Oysters, ten or twelve fine green pickled Cucumbers, shred the Oysters, the Anchovies, the Cucumbers, and one whole Lemon small, mix them with the shred Meat, lay it in the middle of the Dish, lay the Dices of the white part round the Dish, with halv’d Anchovies, whole pickled Oysters, quarter’d Cucumbers, sliced Lemon, whole pickled Mushrooms, Capers or any Pickle you like; cut also some fine Lettice, and lay round among the Garnish, but put not Oil and Vinegar to the Minced Meat, till it comes to Table.

Personally, I think I’d prefer the Jamaican dish where the original name is corrupted to Solomon Gundy: a dish made of salt herring and spices.

The first ingredient in our particular salmagundi is something Bernice and I saw on our drive from Lisbon to Penamacor. As we were cruising at 120kph on the motorway, I spotted a road hazard sign ahead. I was initially puzzled, because it seemed to be taking us rather a long time to reach it. I eventually realised that the sign was on the back of a slow-moving road maintenance van travelling on the hard shoulder. As we approached it, I saw that the sign was indicating that the outside lane was closed ahead, and was instructing traffic to move into the middle lane. I commented to Bernice that it was rather confusing to load the sign on the van so that it was visible, because drivers would assume that the outside lane was indeed closed, rather than realising that the sign was just being transported to its destination.

A little further on, we passed another road maintenance van, travelling very slowly in the outside lane, collecting traffic cones from the road. We then realised that the two vehicles were travelling in convoy, and the road sign was indeed ‘active’. Not for the first time, when comparing Portugal’s traffic control practices with Israel’s, we both agreed: What a clever idea!  

Speaking of invidious comparisons, time was when visitors to Israel would enthuse about the fresh fruit and vegetables. In recent years, the quality, particularly of fruit, in our local Rami Levi supermarket has been getting steadily worse. However, we needed to come to Portugal to realise just how much worse. Here, we are enjoying a variety of different apples, all crisp and full-flavoured, some sweet, others sharp, and delicious, and firm but succulent pears. This is in addition to the start of the citrus season, grapes, melons, bananas, mangoes, and, in the Fundao supermarket at least, plums, kiwi, and, to our surprise, pomegranates.

Nuts are also popular here, and we are all indulging our taste for fresh peanuts (yes, I know they are not nuts) in their shells, and, thanks to Tslil’s recent discovery of a grove of trees in the forest, enough chestnuts to satisfy her appetite and mine. Thankfully, neither Bernice nor Micha’el likes them, which means that we even have enough to pickle and thread some for playing conkers, if we ever decide we want to.

However, the chestniuts are far from being Tslil’s major culinary contribution on this trip. The last time we were here, I baked bread for the house. When we flew back, I left the sourdough starter that I had grown, in the hope that Micha’el and Tslil would keep it alive and be able to use it. Returning now, I discover that Tslil, who was always appreciative of my baking, has carried on where I left off, and, indeed, with the help of YouTube tutorials and various podcasts, has taken her bread baking to a level far above mine. She usually bakes once a week, and her two loaves last her family the week.

And what loaves! A really crisp and crunchy crust, a wonderful springy but firm crumb with holes just large enough for butter to fill without falling through, and the kind of flavour that you can only get by leaving your starter out on the kitchen counter, feeding it every day, and using the surplus to make sourdough pancakes, crackers and other goodies. (At home, I lock my starter in the fridge and feed it once a week, only letting it out to wake it up before use. The result is good, but nowhere near as complex and rich as Tslil’s.)

While we are here, I am supplementing these loaves with challot for shabbat, as well as beigels and platzels that can be frozen and defrosted individually. I have been baking three challot a week, and we (all but) finish two at the shabbat table, which leaves one to be toasted, or French toasted, for the next day or so.

Defrosting individual rolls is now very easy because, on our trip to Castello in our first week, Bernice and I bought a microwave, at the large electrical and electronic retail chain Worten. This was the shop where, on our first trip, we bought an oven, hob and washing machine to replace the barely functioning machines that came with the house, and a tumble dryer to make life easier for young parents who were then struggling with nappies and a family wash during a wet and cold winter. The microwave was Worten’s in-house brand, and represented good value. So far, it meets our needs, which are basically defrosting rolls, cooking salmon, and reheating cups of tea that have cooled to below a drinkable temperature, which one or other of us does roughly every 45 minutes through the day.

Let’s talk now about some of the changes Bernice and I have noticed since we were last here, 19 months ago. Obviously, the biggest change is in Tao, but, since the kids were staying with us for 5 weeks in the summer, this is not as dramatic as it would otherwise be.

The other big change (and I do mean big) is Lua, the puppy the kids adopted in March. She is now 10 months old, acquired to be a guard dog on the land. I’m not sure she quite understands that she is supposed to be a guard dog, being very placid and a real softie. Unfortunately, she really needs to be on the land, or at least in a house considerably wider than ours. When she is stretched out on the salon floor, she tends to derail toy trains, demolish Duplo houses, and block any adult’s passage to the kitchen. However, she is so adorable that nobody could take offence at any of that.

A less pleasant change for the two of us is that, since our last visit, the local authority appears to have increased the gradient of the street we live in. Walking back from the local corner shop, the park and playground or the bank, particularly with a bag of shopping and pushing Tao in his buggy, which to the best of our memory was an excellent aerobic exercise last time, is now an excellent anaerobic exercise, and, we suspect, will, at some point in the not-too-distant future, become an insurmountable challenge. Fortunately, a large car park in front of the Town Hall is conveniently situated a short walk from the shops, park and bank. If, at some point, we are reduced to that, then so be it.

Another change, much more welcome, is that, despite Covid-19, the steady flow of new arrivals to the area, seeking an alternative and healthier lifestyle, has continued, and Micha’el and Tslil have, since our last visit, acquired a circle of friends, Israelis, other Europeans, and some locals, many of whom have children around Tao’s age. Tao now has organised activities with other children twice a week, as well as a weekly playdate with one friend. In addition, Micha’el has started a music chug for young kids, which meets, theoretically at least, every week.

In addition, Tslil is out today with a women’s group that meets monthly. They both went out for an evening with friends last week while we officially babysat. Micha’el spent another evening with friends and has one as-yet-unexplored offer of a jam session. I must confess that we were initially a little concerned about the potential lack of opportunities for a social life for all three of them, but both Micha’el and Tslil have proved proactive in making this happen.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. While browsing in our favourite China shop last week, Bernice and I discovered butter knives, as well as fish cutlery. Clearly, dining in Portugal is a more formal experience than in Israel, and matches the world we grew up in. We shall be stocking up before we return to Israel.

As you can see, our life here is not action-packed, but then, of course, that’s not the object of the exercise. Just settling into a daily routine centred on Tao has been all that we wanted. The kids have managed to get to the land more than they might otherwise have been able to, as well as occasionally being able to sleep on later in the morning or have an evening out. And Bernice and I have been able to overdose on grandparenthood. Let me tell you, if you haven’t lain in bed at 5:30 in the morning telling your rapt grandson a story that you are making up as you tell it, about a digger and a dumper truck, then you haven’t known true happiness.

With a shock, we discover that, while we were looking the other way, almost two weeks of our month-long stay in Portugal have slipped past. This last week began on a real high with the day on the land that I described last week, helping to lay the cob floor in the teepee. I’m pleased to report that the good weather continued throughout the week. Although we did nothing dramatic, just being with the family has been wonderful: fitting into their routine, spending lots of time with Tao, and freeing up Tslil and Micha’el a little, allowing them to get to the land more (and sometimes even to sleep more).

My personal highlight of the week was the discovery of a children’s book which post-dates our own kids’ childhoods, and was therefore unknown to me previously. I listened as Bernice read to Tao Oi Frog, and by the end was almost helpless with laughter. I realise I am probably very late to the party (as usual), but here is a book that has total integrity. It starts with a simple idea – animals sit on something that rhymes with their names, so frogs sit on logs, cats sit on mats, and so forth. The two characters in the book are wonderfully realised: the sophisticated and urbane cat, who knows all the rules for animal sitting, and who rather scathingly patronises the eager but ignorant frog. The author accepts the challenge of finding some seating arrangements for animals with challenging names –pumas and puffins for example – and the illustrations are full of humour and imagination. Add to all this a great punchline and you have an absolute classic.

The lowlight of the week was a puncture. While they are never welcome, this one proved (and, indeed, is still proving) particularly challenging. It happened on Thursday, when we took Tao to one of his two weekly playgroup activities. This one is in a village a 30-minute drive away. We arrived to find about nine children and half-a-dozen parents waiting to start a walk along country lanes. We walked for two-and-a-half hours, including some breaks for snacks, and, on our way through the gently rolling agricultural landscape,we passed fields with ducks, goats, sheep and pigs, as well as plenty of olive trees and some figs. Even at a slow pace, that represented a good workout, particularly as we had not brought a buggy and, although Tao walked most of the way, we each took a turn at carrying him at various times. Bernice was further burdened by the pocketfuls of acorns that Tao insisted on collecting.

We headed for home around 1:15 and, just after filling the car with diesel, as we reached 80kph, I suddenly noticed a flapping noise. I stopped on a convenient grass verge, at first wondering whether the petrol flap had not been replaced properly. However, when I walked round the passenger side of the car, I saw that the front tyre was completely flat. Remarkably, I had felt no juddering or pulling on the steering wheel: the wonders of modern technology.

I really did not relish changing a tyre on a fast country road (or, indeed, at all), and so I called the car rental office in Lisbon, and, within four minutes, I had been answered by a customer rep who spoke English, and had explained to him what had happened, and exactly what our location was. He said that he would send a tow truck, although I had expected a service van, and that it should be with us in 40 minutes. I was very impressed.

[A brief aside about customer-facing staff speaking English. On the phone, even though I have selected the ‘English’ option, the rep always greets me in Portuguese. I always then say: ‘Do you speak English?’, and the answer is always ‘A little’. I then usually find that the rep’s English is either excellent or more than adequate for the needs of our transaction.]

Bernice and I decided that, since we were only 7 kilometres from home, we would phone Micha’el and ask him to come and pick up Tao, who had slept through the entire incident. After that, we waited, and waited. I was a little less impressed. About an hour after my first phone call, I received a call from the tow-truck driver, who addressed me in Portuguese. ‘Do you speak English?’ Clearly, the answer was ‘No’. He then asked me for our location, which was aggravating, because I had, of course, given our exact location to the English-speaking customer rep. I was a little more less impressed. We managed to agree (as far as I could tell) on the road number and our location relative to Penamacor.

While we waited, again, Bernice sensibly suggested that I send the driver’s phone number to Micha’el and ask him to phone the driver to ensure he had understood our location. This Micha’el did and, 15 minutes later, the tow truck (actually a single-car transporter) arrived. The driver had clearly been expecting to arrive at the scene of an accident and, when I showed him the punctured tyre, he said ‘Problemo’. He was not prepared to change the tyre on the road, and said that he would load our car and drive us to Penamacor, to replace the tyre. However, he could only take one of us in the cab with him, so we had to call Micha’el out again. (In fairness, the original service rep had asked how many people were in the car and, thinking that Bernice would go home with Micha’el and Tao, I had said ‘One’. However, Bernice didn’t want me to wait indefinitely by myself, so we were two.)

When Micha’el arrived, it occurred to me to ask him to clarify with the driver whether I was expected to pay for the new tyre and be reimbursed, or whether the rental car company – which was, after all, Europcar, and not some fly-by-night cowboy – had an arrangement with a chain of tyre repair centres throughout Portugal. The driver (who works for a contracted haulage company, rather than directly for Europcar) knew of no such arrangement. I was starting to be rather unimpressed.

In the end, the driver took the car to the large parking area of the petrol station in Penamacor, changed the wheel for the temporary (80kph maximum) spare, got me to sign a couple of forms, and left. I phoned Europcar in Lisbon, and asked where I could take the car to have a new tyre fitted. The rep told me that I had a choice of bringing the car to Lisbon (270 km) or Porto (280 km). This was the point at which I became very unimpressed. ‘Do you honestly expect me to drive for 4 hours, at not more than 80kph, on a temporary tyre, and then for 3 hours back? That is not an acceptable solution. Do you not have a service centre closer?’

The rep promised to find out and asked me to hold. After a few minutes, he returned to say that I could take the car to Fundao (35 km) or Castelo Branco (50 km), where they would try to sort out the problem. I called the Fundao office and spoke to a rep (who, I suspect, may be the only person staffing the Fundao office) who clearly had little idea what to do with our problem. Determined not to despair, I called the Castelo office, where the rep said that, if I brought in the car the next day, the mechanic would look at the tyre, and repair it if he could. (Since the tyre has a six-inch gash in it, I knew that would not be an option.) If it proved irreparable, the office would exchange the car. ‘For a car of the same size?’. The rep could not guarantee this, and I felt sure that we would end up being given a much larger car which would use more petrol and would be much more challenging to drive and park on the country roads around here.

When I came off the phone, Tslil pointed out that the Israeli solution would be not to notify Europcar at all and to get the tyre replaced privately. In the end, that is what we decided to do.

So, the following morning (Friday), Bernice and I took the car (and Tao) to Penamacor’s tyre repair centre. Micha’el pre-armed me with the necessary vocabulary: to change = trocar, tyre = pneo (which is a sound not entirely dissimilar to Jack Lemmon clearing his sinuses in The Odd Couple). We found the place easily, even though we had never noticed it before, despite driving past its entrance every time we enter or leave the village. I parked and walked over to the owner-mechanic. ‘Bom dias! Trocar…pneo.’ Not for the first time, I realised too late the drawback of arming yourself with the two initial words you need: once you have fired them off, you are utterly defenceless. Understanding nothing of his response, I was forced to ask: ‘Do you speak English?’ ‘A little.’

In fact, his English was excellent. He was able to explain that he did not have the Bridgestone tyre we needed in stock, and he was not prepared to fit one tyre of another make, because we would not pass the MOT test if he did. I explained that the car was a rental and I couldn’t care less about the test, but he was still not prepared to fit another tyre, for safety reasons. Fair enough. He suggested that we try the nearest large tyre centre, in Fundao. I asked whether he could possibly phone to check whether they had a tyre in stock. He then asked where we were staying, and when I told him we were in Penamacor, he suggested that he try to get the tyre we needed himself. I told him that was an excellent idea. He took my phone number and said he would phone when he had the tyre. ‘How long will that be?’ I asked, expected him to say: ‘A week’. Instead, he said: ‘An hour or two’, which should have made us suspicious, but didn’t.

He phoned me an hour later to say that he had located a tyre, and I said I would drive straight down. That, of course, was when he explained that locating and taking delivery of a tyre are two different things. You will not, at this stage, be surprised to hear that we are still waiting for his phone call to tell me that he has received the tyre.

Once he has changed the tyre, and we have paid, I will then have to start the process of complaining to Europcar about their appalling service, and requesting a full refund for the tyre. And we all know how that will end, don’t we?

None of which is actually spoiling the wonderful time we are having here. We are very grateful that the whole tyre incident did not result in anything worse than a few hours’ inconvenience and some damage to the pocket, especially since we were carrying such a precious cargo.

Today’s post, dear reader, is a race against time, for reasons that will become clear as we continue. Probably the first thing to tell you is that I am writing to you from the glassed-in balcony (which, I suppose, makes it a kind of conservatory, although that sounds a lot grander than the reality) that leads off the bedroom of our house in Penamacor. Yes, we are here!

Last Monday, we went through a very thorough check-in process at Ben Gurion airport, which involved presenting our vaccination certificates (of course) and (a requirement of the Portuguese authorities) a passenger location form giving our seat allocation on the flight and our contact details in Portugal, so that we could be located in the event of any close-by passenger having Covid-19.

We also had to complete, online, (a requirement of the Israeli authorities) a form of which we had been completely unaware, stating that we were not travelling to any country classified red by Israel. Ironically, by the time we landed in Portugal, Israel had taken all countries off the red list. Completing this form provided a healthy adrenaline rush while we were queuing for check-in.

My phone refused to read the Q-code displayed on boards in the queuing area. Bernice had more success with her phone and completed and submitted the form online in both our names. Showing astonishing presence of mind, she then took a screenshot of the confirmation that the form had been submitted successfully, which is just as well, because, although the form was supposed to be sent to her email, it never arrived. Fortunately, the check-in clerk accepted the screenshot as sufficient proof of submission.

At each stage of this process, we were allowing ourselves to believe with a little more conviction that we were actually going to make it to the kids.

After that rather stressful 45 minutes, we were through to the departure lounge, for our traditional airport Aroma snack: tea and a sticky bun – an almond chocolate croissant for Bernice, a cheese bun for me. We regard this as advance compensation for the fact that we cannot enjoy a similar snack in any of the Penamacor cafes, because of kashrut.

By the time we finished that, it was time to make our way to the gate. Boarding was on time, and very quick, with the plane about two-thirds full. We took off on time, and, after a smooth flight, landed 15 minutes early. The official at passport control asked to see only our passports, and then waved us through with a smile. Our luggage arrived at the carousel a minute after we did, We were not stopped at customs, and stepped through to Portuguese soil, feeling like Steve McQueen sailing over the wire on his motorcycle in The Great Escape. On a more prosaic note, there was no queue at the car rental desk, and, apart from one superfluous lap of the airport car park, we made it to our hotel without incident, arriving about 70 minutes after landing.

The hotel was absolutely fine for our needs, clean and comfortable, with a 24-hour complimentary hot and cold drinks machine in the foyer and the usual channels on Portuguese hotel TV: 24 channels of Portuguese news, game shows and reality shows, a couple of movie channels and several sports channels, all with Portuguese commentary. This, for some reason, always includes Eurosport snooker. Over the years, I think I have watched Ronnie O’Sullivan in at least ten languages.

The following morning, the weather was bright and clear, and we were on the road by 7:40, having spent 10 minutes taming the car’s nat sav system. The hotel was only a two-minute drive from the motorway, and since I felt well rested and we did not need to break the journey, we arrived at the house at 10:30. It was wonderful catching up with the kids and, to our delight, Tao was completely at ease with us immediately. Even Lua, the kid’s dog, seemed cautiously accepting of our presence, which is just as well, since she is (theoretically) a guard dog, and, although a puppy, she is already the size of a small pony: the perfect size for the kids’ land, but ridiculously oversize for our little house.

Over the week, Lua has grown much more relaxed. The first night, when I got up to go downstairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night, Lua was sleeping in the hall outside the kids’ bedroom, and gave one low, quiet growl. By the end of the night, she had realised that my wanderings throughout the night are just bathroom breaks, and not attempts to murder the kids in their bed, and she remained silent. When we took Tao to bed with us one night to give the kids a break, Lua spent the night on the floor in our room, just to make sure Tao was okay. Since then, she has slept downstairs, as usual.

The rest of the week was fairly routine: shopping, playing, shopping, playground, shopping, shabbat. We managed to combine one shopping expedition with a visit to a fairly large playground, which Tao enjoyed, but apart from that most of our time has been spent reading to and playing with him at home. Since we have a long video call every week, we did not expect to see any dramatic changes. However, we have been surprised by the complexity of Tao’s sentences. One example, from before our visit to the hypermarket 40 minutes away, was: ‘Go to supermarket, buy truck with doors that open and close.’ What grandparent could fail to comply with a request expressed with such competent complexity!

We have also been struck, not for the first time, by the intensity with which Tao plays, and the length of time that he can stay absorbed in what he is doing. He is passionate about diggers and dumper trucks, and can play by himself, narrating to himself what he is doing, for a very long time.

He is also an avid devourer of books and songs, giving the reader or singer his undivided attention. Needless to say, both Bernice and I are quite comfortable with that state of affairs, and it is nice, for a change, to read a book with him on our lap or sitting next to us, rather than having to turn the book to face the screen and read the story upside down, peering over the top of the page.

Shabbat was very special for us. Tao had been eagerly looking forward to it: not only because he had spotted the bottle of grape juice we had brought, and because he loves challa. On Friday night we sang, and he remembered that he had to wait for the bracha before drinking his wine. On shabbat morning we sang, and then ate lunch. When we finished singing havdala, Tao said: ‘Now we eat’, and was rather disappointed to discover that, no, now we go to bed.

Today (Sunday) was a very special day indeed. The long, complex and multi-layered process of preparing the floor of the tipi* on the kids’ land has been continuing for many months. After levelling the ground, building a retaining dry-stone wall, laying a layer of rocks, a layer of gravel, a layer of soil and then a levelling layer of fine-sifted soil, Micha’el and Tslil were now ready for the final layer of cob. This is a mixture of clay-based earth, double-sifted to almost the consistency of sand, water and straw. The kids had prepared what they hoped would be enough soil for the cob, and today was the day for laying the floor.

They enlisted the help of a few friends, and invited us along to watch the momentous event. First, Bernice, ably assisted by Tao, watered the floor to ready it to receive the cob, while one team began mixing the cob, by hand, by foot, and then with spades and trowels in a wheelbarrow. The second team then began laying it like plaster in the tipi. Micha’el was uncertain whether we had enough sifted soil, and, after the first couple of loads, it seemed likely that more would be needed.

By this stage, I found, much to my surprise, that I felt invigorated by watching so much hard work, and wanted to join in. So, Micha’el and I headed off to a nearby part of the land, where he had started digging a swale – an open trench following the natural contours of the land, to catch rainwater and channel it to be used for permaculture irrigation. We carried on digging, then sifting the dug soil, and wheeling it back to the tipi area for a second, fine, sifting. Bernice, Tao and other two toddlers (children of the friends helping) joined in with this. We were able, over the rest of the day, to sift enough extra soil so that just enough cob was produced to complete the floor.

After a delicious alfresco lunch of pasta, salad and fruit, work proceeded a little less energetically in the afternoon (certainly, as far as I was concerned). Bernice and I headed back home with Tao early enough to shower before the kids arrived home. Once we were showered, I came upstairs to start writing this, knowing that it was a race against time. It’s now 7PM and I can already feel myself starting to flag. So, I’ll stop here, and leave you with some shots and videos from today’s activity.

*When I was growing up, Red Indians lived in teepees. (Well, of course, they no longer did, but you know what I mean.) Now, I understand that they are Native Americans, and it appears that they live (or, more accurately, no longer live) in tipis. Some people might call this progress, but I’m not entirely convinced myself!

In the fortnight (that’s two weeks in new money) since I last updated you about our forthcoming trip to Portugal, much has changed (or, to put it another way, nothing has). By the time this post reaches you, we will probably know no more than we do now. However, a week from now, I expect to be writing to you from…who knows where?

Let me try to explain. In mid-September, the Portuguese Government was reported in the media as having rescinded its previous decision to ban Israelis from entering the country. However, even now, no Portuguese Government website that I have been able to find states this explicitly. In addition, the decision was reported as being valid until the end of September, with the expectation that it would then be renewed.

As our planned trip on 4^th October grew nearer, Bernice and I grew more nervous. We sought reassurance that we would not be refused entry at Lisbon airport, or, alternatively, not be blocked from boarding the aircraft in Israel. However, I was unable to find any clear statement online. TAP’s site still linked, in its Covid update, to a statement from the Portuguese authorities from 2^nd September.

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeking clarification through other channels. Not the Portuguese embassy in Tel Aviv, by the way. Their website has a helpful list of telephone numbers, all of which lead to a recorded message informing you that the embassy staff will only interact with Israeli citizens in face-to-face meetings. On the website, it is possible to book such an appointment, but I wasn’t able to, because I haven’t yet bought a diary for 2022 – the earliest available date.

I decided to try TAP, reasoning that they would know whether they are currently flying Israelis to Lisbon, and, if so, they would have surely noticed whether the Lisbon arrivals lounge was becoming clogged with Israelis all wandering around like Tom Hanks in The Terminal. So, I phoned their Help Desk on a Thursday – twice, actually: once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Or, more exactly, from 9 till 11:30 in the morning and then from 2:00 till 4:00 in the afternoon. Apart from devising a striking four-part harmony for the TAP call-waiting jingle, it was an unproductive day.

By the following Monday, I had recovered sufficiently to try again, and I actually got through to a living, breathing, English-speaking person. I kept my question nice and simple: ‘Can Israelis enter Portugal by air at the moment?’ I should have been alerted by the fact that the help-desk rep did not know the answer; instead, I was charmed by the fact that she said she would immediately find out, and asked me to hold. ‘Don’t hang up,’ she urged me. I assured her that that was the last thing I would do, having got this far.

After holding for around five minutes, I was surprised to hear a different voice beg me not to hang up. This voice then proceeded to ask me to participate in a brief survey about my satisfaction with the service I had received today. At this point, I realised I was listening to a recorded message.

Question 1 invited me to choose between tapping ‘1’ to indicate that I was satisfied with the service I had received, and ‘2’ to indicate that I was not. I decided not to answer, for two reasons. First, by tapping either number, I would have implied that I agreed that I had received service, whereas I felt that what I had received was a start, but it wasn’t really substantial enough yet to constitute service. My second piece of reasoning was that, if I kept the voice waiting for long enough, my rep might return to rescue me with an answer.

After telling me that my answer was inappropriate, the voice gave me just one more chance, then, without seeming to be at all perturbed by my lack of co-operation, it went on to Question 2: ‘Has the service you have received today resolved your problem?’ Again, both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ made me complicit in the charade that I had received service. So, again I abstained, and the system hung up on me in disgust.

Undeterred (shades of Robert the Bruce’s spider), I dialled again. This time, I was connected within three minutes. Another helpful rep asked me to hold while she found out the answer to my question. This time I immediately responded by asking her to write down my number, so that, if the system again hung up on me, she could call me back. She took my number and promised to do her best, but explained that the system feeds her another call as soon as her current call is terminated. I should have responded: ‘Well, then, I hope that a fire doesn’t break out in your office, because you will never be able to call the fire brigade.’ However, this was, sadly, l’esprit de l’escalier, and did not occur to me until I was retelling the story later for Bernice’s benefit.

This time, the rep returned before the surveyor could step in, and told me that Israelis were not allowed to fly to Portugal. At this point, it occurred to me to ask whether the rep was based in Lisbon, which she said she was. I found this reassuring: cocooned in an office block in downtown Lisbon, she obviously knew nothing about, and knew nobody who knew anything about, what was actually happening at the airport. I really needed to speak to someone from TAP in Tel Aviv, but, of course, there is no way to reach them.

So, another two days had passed, and we still had no clear proof that we were going to be able to get into Portugal. At this point, I whatsapped a friend who had been due to fly to the Azores from Israel. She was able to assure me that she and the entire group of Israelis she was travelling with had had no problem at the airport.

Sadly, when I checked the Portuguese government website again, I discovered that, indeed, the Azores had a much more lenient admissions policy that mainland Portugal.

At this point, I realised something interesting. As I seem to be mentioning with increasing frequency, while I am, by nature, somewhat Eeyorean, Bernice is considerably more Pigletish. This ought to have meant that she was optimistic about our chances, and I was not. However, in fact, she was really disturbed by the situation, and had great difficulty sleeping for a couple of nights. I, on the other hand, viewed the situation with more equanimity, as just another example of how things can turn out badly. Exactly as expected!

Throughout this period, Micha’el was assuring us that there were a number of Israelis in their area who had arrived in September by air from Israel without incident, and we, of course, found this heartening. It even calmed Piglet down.

At this point, I decided to contact my old friend Tal at the consular section of the Israeli embassy in Lisbon (see the post of two weeks ago) and ask whether she had heard back from the Portuguese authorities regarding our application to be considered as an exceptional case on the grounds of family reunification. At the same time, I asked whether she knew what the situation was for Israelis entering Portugal.

In her reply, which she sent within three hours, Tal told me that the situation was unchanged, and Israelis were only being allowed in for essential reasons. She also sent me the embassy’s own statement from their website explaining the situation.

This news caused Piglet to have a relapse, despite my brilliant deductive reasoning, which ran as follows. If Israelis were being turned back at Lisbon airport, at least some of them would have contacted the consular section of the embassy. If that had happened, Tal would not have quoted from the website, but would have told me that Israelis were actually being turned back. Therefore, since she had told me no such thing, it had to be true that Israelis were entering Portugal without incident. Elementary, my dear Piglet.

What finally calmed Bernice down again were screenshots from Micha’el and Esther. Micha’el sent us a facebook page answering a question from an Israeli in our position. The answer read that there were lots of Israelis at the airport with only an Israeli passport and no problems. Micha’el then followed that up with an excerpt from the TAP Covid guidelines stating that citizens of countries with whom the EU has reciprocal vaccination certificate recognition can enter mainland Portugal. Israel, we know, is such a country

Esther, meanwhile, forwarded us a link to a site that provides worldwide travel updates, and that also stated unequivocally that Israelis can enter Portugal. It is wonderful to have two children who are both finely attuned to the hysteria in our voices and who are so prepared to humour their angst-ridden parents.

So, while it is true to say that neither of us will actually breathe freely again until we can watch Lisbon airport receding in the rear-view mirror of our rental car, we are both feeling a lot calmer. Indeed, Bernice now feels relaxed enough to devote considerable attention to worrying herself sick over the fact that our luggage is going to be way overweight, which, of course, it is not. This, at least, feels like a traditional pattern of our last 49 years together.

[A couple of quick updates on Sunday afternoon.

Now that we have packed, even Bernice is convinced that we are comfortably underweight (at least our cases are).

We also both received negative test results today, so that’s one more obstacle removed.

Finally, at 6AM today, I saw sense, suddenly realising that driving from the airport immediately on landing makes no sense, both because of the strain and stress it places on the driver and, even more so, the passenger, and also because Micha’el will have to wait up for us, even though we have a key, because their puppy, though lovely and sweet-natured, is nevertheless a guard-dog, and has never met us. She possibly wouldn’t take a chunk out of my leg, but she would probably wake the entire street at 2AM with her barking.

So, by 6:10AM I had booked us a room in a modest airport hotel. We can now drive, in daylight, after a good night’s sleep, and probably arrive at the house only an hour or two after we would have woken up had we arrived there in the middle of the night. I can’t tell you how relieved Piglet is that good sense has prevailed.]

Have there been moments in the last stressful weeks when we have wondered whether the game is worth the candle? See below, and then you tell me!