First, some context for those to whom the title doesn’t speak volumes. In 1932, Harold Arlen wrote the music and Yip Harburg and Billy Rose the lyrics for a song that was to be the only song in an unsuccessful Broadway play. That song was entitled: If You Believed in Me. The following year, the song was recycled in a film, having been retitled: It’s Only a Paper Moon, and Paul Whiteman recorded a version later that year became a hit. During the later years of the Second World War, many artists recorded versions, including Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman.

Speaking of changing names, my second sentence could have spoken, not of Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg and Billy Rose, but of Hyman Arluck, Isidore Hochberg and William Rosenberg, but that’s a whole other story.

Let’s have a listen to Ella’s version. She is backed, incidentally, by the incomparable vocal group The Ink Spots. Now, I know many of you don’t follow these links (which are, I admit, often simply pleasant diversions, and nothing more than the musical equivalent of serving suggestions). However, in this particular case, I’m trying to build an argument of which Ella’s version is, I believe, a significant part. So go on, click the link; it won’t bite.

OK. Now imagine for a moment… (Listen, you spent last week’s blog laughing at my travails in Portugal; it’s time you did some work yourselves.)…Just imagine for a moment that you speak no English. If you heard that song, how, just judging from the tune, the arrangement and Ella and the Ink Spots’ delivery, would you describe the mood of the song? To me, it sounds far more cheerful than wistful. If you listen to Nat King Cole, or Sinatra, they are, if anything, even chirpier.

Now let’s look at the lyrics (including the 8-line intro that I haven’t been able to find in any recorded version)   

I never feel a thing is real
When I’m away from you
Out of your embrace
The world’s a temporary parking place

Mmm, mm, mm, mm
A bubble for a minute
Mmm, mm, mm, mm
You smile, the bubble has a rainbow in it

Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it’s only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It’s a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It’s a melody played in a penny arcade

It’s a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me

This seems to be a tale of unrequited love, a bittersweet reflection on how empty life’s pleasures seem because the object of the singer’s love does not return that love. Yes, they are in a relationship – the singer speaks of ‘your embrace’ and says that ‘you smile’. However, the other person is not truly invested in the relationship, and it is that lack of investment that makes everything phony. For the singer, the default state is that the moon and sky, and love, are real.

What makes it even more interesting is that, in the Broadway play for which it was written, the song was sung by a character who was a barker for the Coney Island theatre; in other words, he walked the boardwalk trying to persuade passers-by to buy tickets for the theatre vaudeville performances. He knew that this (honky-tonk, Barnum and Bailey) vaudeville that he was selling had no intrinsic value, but his job was to persuade the punters that it did. The song argues that if you believe it has value, then it actually does.

The first word of the chorus – ‘Say, it’s only a paper moon’ – is seldom heard on recordings, but it seems to me to subtly change the balance of the song. It can be understood to mean: Yes, it’s only a paper moon, but I believe it also hints at: You may say it’s only a paper moon; however, if you believed in me, it would be real.

What started me thinking about the song was a couple of stage plays that Bernice and I have seen recently. We have a subscription to ntathome, the British National Theatre’s streaming service that makes available a rolling selection of several of their productions filmed during live performance. Now, watching a live theatre performance captured on camera is not the same as seeing it in the theatre, and some of the productions we have seen have survived the transition less successfully than others.

Broadly speaking, intimate theatre fares less well, because the emotional projection that is necessary for an actor to reach the back row of a theatre often looks ‘stagey’ and exaggerated when viewed in close-up. However, farce, spectacle and ‘dramatic’ narrative usually come across well. Adaptations of Frankenstein and Jane Eyre, or, to take something completely different, One Man, Two Guvnors,for example, all ‘transferred’ very successfully. Antony and Cleopatra, on the other hand, lost, in translation, all of the languid sexuality of the Egyptian scenes in what had been a highly-praised production.

The two productions we have seen recently are WarHorse and Peter Pan. The first is a very simple story of a youth and a horse who form a close bond until the horse is drafted into the cavalry during World War I, but who (spoiler alert) are ultimately reunited in France. What is remarkable about the stage adaptation of the original novel is the puppetry. I won’t attempt to describe it, but rather ask you to watch a short trailer illustrating how the horses (and a very characterful farmyard goose) were created on stage. You will have to take my word for it that, when we were watching the play, we ceased to notice the puppeteers, and this despite the fact that, as you can see for yourselves, there is no attempt to conceal them. The fact is that, if you believe the horses are real, they become real…which is, I would argue, the way all theatre works.

Anyone who has performed on stage knows that, from the back, the most elaborate stage set is revealed as just a paper moon. However, viewed from the front, it can poersuade us that it is real, if only we are prepared to believe. Whether using a hyper-realistic set, with all of the trickery of modern lighting effects and other techniques, or a minimalist set, leaving almost everything to the audience’s imagination, every play asks for, and requires, the audience’s willingness to be deceived…and then it becomes real.

I don’t pretend to know how this works. How is it that we can sit in Row 25 of a theatre, part of an audience of several hundred, and watch what is ostensibly happening in the drawing room of a house, whose fourth wall has been removed so that we can see in, and believe that what we are seeing is real? Believe it so completely that it can make our pulse race or move us to tears of despair or joy? It remains, for me, one of the most blissful mysteries of art.

And so to Peter Pan. I find myself mildly surprised that I have been writing this blog for over two years and haven’t yet mentioned Peter Pan. The fact is that I have long felt that the story of the boy who never grew up is one of those remarkable tales that resonates. Like all the greatest fairy tales, it touches upon profound truths about the human condition, and, also like them, it has attracted to itself several variations on the story that drink from the same well of humanity. I am especially fond of Spielberg’s Hook and Mark Forester’s Finding Neverland adapted from Alan  Knee’s play The Man Who Was Peter Pan. Both celebrate the creative genius of J M Barrie and find new regions to explore in Neverland.

The production of Peter Pan that we recently saw was devised by the company, and included several interesting deviations from the standard Peter Pan conventions. It is traditional for the actor playing Mr Darling to double as Captain Hook. If Peter Pan represents the child in all of us, then this double-casting naturally invites the exploration of the tension between children and their fathers. In the National Theatre production, Mrs Darling doubled as Hook (and a chillingly bloodthirsty job she made of it, too). This introduced even more fascinating Oedipal elements into the story.

However,the main reason why I mention the production here is because of the way it handled the flying that is an essential part, and a technical challenge, for anyone staging Peter Pan. In this production, the flying wires were far thicker than they often are, and the technique used was not the standard one of flying technicians in the wings letting out and pulling in the wires, but rather of counter-balancers being harnessed to the other end of the wire and racing up and down scaffolding that was set onstage, so that the mechanism was completely visible.

The same transparency was true throughout the production, with pirates in small rowing boats that ran on castors across the stage, and were propelled by the actors scooting with their paddles. The crocodile was a minimalist, unrealistic pair of jaws that emerged through the stage trapdoor; the pirate ship was a barely disguised rubbish skip. And it all worked absolutely perfectly, because, if you believe in fairies, and clap loudly enough, then Tinkerbell won’t die. (Spoiler alert: ‘she’ doesn’t die…and this is a Tinkerbell like no other you’ve ever seen: Julia Roberts he ain’t.)

It’s only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea.

But if you believe in it, it isn’t make-believe; it’s great theatre; and it’s one of the most exhilarating and life-affirming experiences I know. Seeing it onscreen is definitely second best, but second best can still be pretty wonderful.

Of course, some people don’t even have to go to a screen to believe.

One of the commenters on last week blog explained that “every time my life seems beset with problems I read one of your blogs and recognise someone somewhere has it worse.” I can’t tell you how much better that made me feel. So, it is in a spirit of public-mindedness that I offer you, this week, an account of yet another of the mishaps that seem, these days, to make up most of life’s rich tapestry for me.

Blogger’s Note: But just before I do, I have to make it very clear that I am in no doubt about how fortunate and privileged my life is. Everywhere I look – my wife, our children, their wives, our grandson, our wider family, friends and community – believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by that I do not thank God for showering these gifts on me. However, nobody wants to read that kind of gush, so on with the story.

On our last visit to the kids, and just a few days before our return  to Israel, I had the opportunity to take part in what I am assured is an old rural Portuguese custom. I believe the locals call it: ficar preso na lama, or, sometimes, ficar preso na vala, which certainly sounds suitably intriguing and exotic, until you discover that it translates roughly as: getting stuck in the mud, or in the ditch. Of course, it may be that Tslil, tender and considerate soul that she is, was simply trying to make me feel less a totally incompetent idiot when she assured me that everybody did it, and that she herself had indeed done it, when she was with Tao but not with Micha’el, and had no mobile reception. I choose to believe her, and to embrace the orthodoxy that this is just another hazard of life in the Portuguese countryside.

What happened was this. One afternoon, when Micha’el was away from home with their truck, visiting clients in connection with his water management consultancy, I drove Tslil and Tao to a birthday party. An English couple have bought land 10 minutes outside Penamacor, and are living in a tent there while they work towards building a house. Their son was celebrating his 4^th birthday. So, Bernice, Tslil, Tao and I set off. The plan was to drop Bernice at the supermarket, drop Tslil and Tao at the party, and come back to meet Bernice at the checkout, pay and go back to the house with the shopping. The track to this couple’s land led off the main road; we found it easily, since they had thoughtfully hung balloons on the post. A hundred metres or so up the track, I steered slightly to the right to avoid a pothole, and instantly felt the car veer right, out of my control. I was unable to correct this, and very soon came to a halt with almost the entire front passenger wheel submerged in a ditch that carried a ridiculous depth of water, considering that there had been no rain for the entire previous month.

The party hosts, having observed this from their encampment 50 metres further up the path, came to meet us and assess the situation. Fortunately, no other guests had yet arrived, so my humiliation was less than it might have been. The father, Harrison, immediately ran back to the camp to bring a couple of stout planks, and started wedging these under the wheels with the help of rocks. However, it soon became clear that it was going to be impossible for me to get sufficient purchase to negotiate the steep bank of the ditch.

I kept apologising to Harrison for putting him to all this trouble when he had been expecting to host a quiet birthday celebration. However, it was perfectly clear that he was relishing the logistic and physical challenge, and regarded the whole exercise as a useful learning experience, which made me feel a little less awkward.

I suddenly realised I should alert Bernice to the situation. However, she had only taken her Portuguese phone with her, and, as luck would have it, this pay-as-you-go phone needed a top-up, so I couldn’t reach her. (How did we ever manage in a pre-mobile age? I genuinely can’t remember.) I knew that, being Bernice, she wouldn’t panic; she is not a panicker. She would simply and calmly come to the conclusion that I, indeed all three of us, were lying unconscious in a ditch somewhere. It was, of course, essential, to reassure her that it was only the rental car that was in the ditch, and not any or all of us.

At this point, I realised that, painful as it would be to extend the circle of people that knew what a hopeless case I was, we simply had to tell Micha’el. So, Tslil phoned him, to discover that he had finished early and was at home. She asked him to drive over, with the truck and its towing webbing, and, on the way, to stop at the supermarket, pay our bill and pick up Bernice.

By the time they arrived, Harrison had got himself seriously muddy attempting to dig a trench out of the ditch. However, that also proved fruitless. Micha’el parked behind me and started looking for a secure point on the rental car to attach the towrope to. Of course, being a modern car, our Clio had flimsy plastic bodywork reaching almost to the ground all round. Eventually, Micha’el settled for the axle and managed to attach the webbing. He ratcheted up the slack in the strap.

I still sometimes wonder how we produced a son who has a truck, towing webbing and a ratchet strap and knows how to use them all!

Micha’el and Harrison then repositioned the wooden planks for me to attempt to drive free in reverse. It was, I think, around this time that Harrison asked me whether the car was front-wheel drive. Clearly, he didn’t know me very well. Not only had I no idea, but I also had no idea how one would have an idea. (Googling later, I learnt that the Renault Clio is, indeed, front-wheel drive, a fact I shall file away in the, sadly not sufficiently unlikely, event that we hire another Clio and I drive it into another ditch.)

At this point, Harrison moved round to the front of the car, Micha’el got into his truck and took up the slack, and then I had an excellent opportunity to spatter Harrison with mud as I gently eased my foot off the clutch while touching the accelerator as lightly as possible. Eventually, we made enough progress to lead the two people who appeared, at least to me, to know what they were doing, to believe that, if they uncoupled the towstrap and pushed from behind, I would probably be able to drive forward out of the ditch.

Which is, more or less, what happened, after our two heroes hammered the planks under the front wheels, then went round to the rear of the car. This, of course, gave me an opportunity to spatter Micha’el with mud as well as Harrison. We didn’t seem to be getting very far, until Bernice leaned in, and her Pilates-honed efforts seemed to make all the difference, as I gracefully, and gratefully, crawled out of the ditch and drove forward to a turning point nearer the camp. (I would, of course, have gallantly offered Bernice to drive while I pushed, except that she wasn’t insured to drive the car, exercises more regularly than me, and doesn’t have my heart condition.)

I have to say that Harrison was still behaving as if this was the most fun he had had for ages.

Micha’el then left the truck for Tslil to drive home in and Bernice and I took him back home. Later, he decided he would join the party, and so I drove him back…but dropped him on the main road at the start of the track. Better part of valour and all that. Of course, all I wanted to do was behave as if the entire afternoon had never happened. However, I had reckoned without Tao. The very same day, ‘Grandpa getting stuck in the ditch’ replaced ‘Nana and Grandpa’s puncture’ (from our previous trip) as both Tao’s favourite role-playing game and his favourite story to be told, so that, for the rest of our stay, my humiliation was played out repeatedly before my eyes and rang in my ears. I hope that, by the time of our next visit, he will have forgotten it, but I’m not optimistic. I think Tao, like his grandfather, might get stuck in a rut.

Blogger’s Note: Don’t be fooled by the title. Although it is almost identical to last week’s, this is an entirely new post. Apologies for late posting, but we only got to bed at 5AM.

I’m writing this on Sunday evening as we cruise from West to East over Portugal, having driven from East to West through Portugal what was in fact just eight hours ago, but seems more like eight years.

I had a topic all lined up to regale you with this week, but the events of the last three-and-a-half hours have, perforce, swept aside all thoughts of a light amusing divertissement. Instead, prepare for a full-scale horror continuation of last week’s episode. See a grown man reduced to a gibbering idiot and a grown woman break down and cry. But be sure to always keep in mind that I am writing this from an El Al plane inexorably winging its way to Tel Aviv, so rest assured that you are guaranteed a happy ending.

The story so far. After a small fortune in international calls and several hours of assorted mindless call-queuing jingles, someone I hastily described last week as a ‘very helpful Opodo agent’ emailed us our etickets for today’s flight.

Now read on.

When El Al sent me an SMS with a link to check in online, I tried last night. Unfortunately, the link they gave me threw up a booking code which, when I tried to check in, elicited a response in red: We have identified a fault with this ticket, Please call customer service at this number.’

I waited until after 9PM (when, as we discovered last week, the kids’ landline cheap international rate kicks in) and called the number in Israel. This is, I would remind the members of the jury, a number explicitly for dealing with problems of passengers with flights within the next 72 hours. A recorded message informed me that this (basically emergency) number was only manned during normal working hours, 8–5, Sunday to Thursday, and a half-day on Friday.

Deciding to try my luck online again, this time I overrode the booking code and entered the number of our eticket. Wonder of wonders, it was accepted, and, within two minutes, Bernice and I were checked in, with seats across the aisle from each other,

I then set my alarm for 6AM (8 in Israel) to try to remove any niggling doubts about that ‘fault with the ticket’. After an understandably rather fitful night, I woke to the alarm, slipped downstairs, made myself a cup of tea, dialled El Al, and settled down for a long wait while I chopped up the fruit for today’s breakfast.

At this stage of the game I could only tolerate `18 minutes of El Al’s jingle assuring me that it was: ‘the most at home in the world’. Sadly, it may conceivably be the case that parents ignoring complaining children for hours on end may well be the most typical domestic experience in the Western world today, but, even so, it seems a poor choice of slogan. As I say, after 18 minutes, I hung up, put the diced fruit in a bag in the fridge, finished my tea and convinced myself that, after all, I had actually managed to check in, so what could go wrong?

When I presented that reasoning to Bernice an hour or so later, she was so much less than persuaded. Truth to tell, my sympathies were with her position, but almost 50 years have taught me at least one secret of a successful marriage: If the Eeyore position has already been taken by Partner A, then it is incumbent upon Partner B to play Piglet, however little his heart may be in it. And so I did, arguing that check-in was the irreversible step in securing a seat on a plane.

This was a position I maintained throughout the rest of the morning, and, after our last goodbyes to Micha’el, Tslil and Tao, also throughout the three-hour drive to Lisbon, during which we encountered the first proper threatening clouds of our entire month in Portugal, and even a little, light rain.

We made good time to the airport, returned our rental car without incident, and our pre-booked antigen test at the airport went smoothly, so that we arrived at the El Al check-in desks about half-an-hour before they opened. This gave us time to exchange stories with other travellers who had originally been on the Thursday or Wednesday flights that were cancelled. During this time, our negative results came to our phones! All seemed to be going smoothly, which should have aroused our suspicions.

A pleasant check-in clerk took our passports, weighed our luggage, and then began the elaborate and heart-sinking sequence of actions that always spell disaster. First he looked in puzzlement at the screen, then he rechecked our tickets, then he struck some more keys and looked more puzzled.

Act 2 began with him standing up, and going over to his colleague on the next desk, bringing her back to show her the screen, then engaging in low, slightly stressed-sounding conversation. Of course, since it was in Portuguese, which I don’t speak, and since they were both wearing masks, which muffled their speech and concealed their expressions, and since there was a lot of background noise from other desks and boisterous child passengers, and since my hearing is no longer able to distinguish an ant chewing a leaf 20 yards away,  I had no idea what the problem was…but I was in no doubt that what it was was a problem, and, by the look of it, not a small one.

In Act 3, the colleague, a TAP employee (this was a code-share flight and we were, indeed, booked on it as TAP passengers) phoned her TAP superiors. At this point, while Bernice expressed the conviction that we were condemned to spend the rest of our lives in Portugal, I grew increasingly, and counter-balancedly, calm, and politely asked the original clerk whether there was a problem. He explained that we had been booked onto the flight twice, and our agent (which, as far as I was concerned, was Opodo – only reachable at a British number; but which was, in fact, eDreams – only reachable at a French number that experience had taught me was unobtainable, and, I now discovered in the body of the eticket, also a German number) anyway, our agent, as I say, had failed to cancel the first booking before making the second booking. We had checked in on the second booking, but in the computer system the Print button for printing a boarding card for the second booking was disabled, since there was an open first booking.

Hands up if you knew that it was going to turn out to be an act of human error that had painted the computer into a corner. And feet up if you have also guessed that, when I suggested the clerk override the system, or hand-write a boarding card, he explained that there was, simply, nothing that he could do. All he could suggest was that I phone my agent and instruct him to cancel the first booking; this would, he assured me, resolve everything.

This was the point at which I explained that neither my Portuguese nor my Israeli phone could make international calls, and maybe they might allow me to use their phone to try to contact my agent. I also pointed out that, going by past experience, I would fail to get through to either Opodo or eDreams (whom I now thought of as Opodon’t and eNightmares) before the plane took off.

The clerk, whose calm  and pleasant nature was proving less and less of a satisfying counterbalance to his complete ineffectualism, explained that their telephones were all airport internal only, with no outside lines. This was, if my memory serves me, the straw that broke Bernice’s back. She seldom cries, and even less frequently in public, but there in the airport she simply broke down. The second clerk solicitously brought her a chair, and, as I attempted, with increasing lack of conviction, to assure her that it would all be sorted, a kind passenger came over and suggested that I find a public phone.

I honestly didn’t think this would help, and I was reluctant to leave Bernice, but it at least seemed like a plan, so off I went, having been less than reassured by Bernice that she would be OK. As it turned out, my leaving was a masterstroke, albeit unintentionally so.

The next 15 minutes were, for me, pure farce, and seemingly interminable. First, no staff that I stopped could tell me where there was a public phone. Then I was directed to a phone that, after a couple of minutes of trial and error, I established was for internal airport and emergency services only. Then, another member of staff  told me where there was a bank of public phones, although she could not guarantee that they were in service.

I eventually found them, two floors down, next to bathrooms that were being noisily cleaned. I was relieved to see that the phones had a slot for cards, so I inserted my Portuguese debit card, and decided to call the eDreams German number. Unfortunately, the eticket did not include the Germany country code, so I quickly googled that, only to discover that the free airport wifi does not reach the basement. So, I grabbed my debit card, ran up the stairs, googled the code, ran downstairs chanting ‘0049, 0049’, inserted my debit card and dialled. The number did not connect. Indeed, I still had the dialling tone.

I eventually realised that my debit card would, of course, not work, and so I inserted my Israeli credit card. When that produced the same result, I removed that card and decided to try to read the Portuguese instructions above the phone. I’m fairly sure they stated that the phone takes coins and phonecards (which, of course, I didn’t have). I quickly fed in the 6.90 euros-worth of coins I had, and prayed that would be enough, but the phone still would not connect me. So, I retrieved my coins, and retraced my steps as far as the Vodafone shop, where I intended to ask the clerk to open my phone for international calls, and, failing that, to throw myself on his mercy and offer to pay him to use his phone.

At this point, Bernice WhatsApp called me, to say that an El Al security man was trying to sort out the problem, and wanted to see the etickets (which, of course, I was holding). I raced back to the check-in desk, where Assaf (who we plan to nominate for the El Al employee of the year award) greeted me calmly. He took the etickets, sent a photo of them to a colleague, and said she would see what she could do. Meanwhile, he explained that he is not technically allowed to intervene in matters of check-in procedure, but he couldn’t stand by and watch our distress. Bernice later told me that an Israeli couple in the queue, seeing the state she was in, had gone over to Assaf and pointed out to him the situation.

Three minutes later, Assaf returned with the news that his colleague expected to have the problem sorted in five minutes, and that the clerk should try to print boarding cards again then. And, sure enough, five minutes later, we had boarding cards and all was resolved, after what we subsequently calculated was 75 minutes of hell.

All that remained was to thank the two clerks warmly, and to thank Assaf very, very warmly, to check in our luggage, and to resolve only ever to fly El Al in future, with a real-life human travel agent. Both the clerks and Assaf assured us that they had endless stories of passengers being let down by eDreams clerks’ incompetence.

This has been a public service announcement, brought to you by the Israel Association of Travel Agents and El Al.

And this is what we have wrenched ourselves away from, and what makes all that trauma bearable.

(You see, I can do American popular cultural references as well.)

I really tried to resist writing this post. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to inflict the same sad story on you a second time. But, what can I do? When I look back over the last week, it has been dominated by one thing above all else – trying to make contact with someone who has the authority to rebook us on a different return flight.

Our story begins in early January, when Bernice and I decided that things seemed settled enough to finalise our booking for this trip. We originally wanted to fly from January 16 to February 13 – 4 weeks, Sunday to Sunday. Bernice then cleverly pointed out that, if Israel continued its new policy of allowing returning travellers to enter Israel on a rapid antigen test only, rather than a PCR test, it would cost us only 10 euros each, a saving of 180 euros (or 660 shekels) on our two tests!

However, since the nearest centre for testing is in Castelo Branco, we would have to travel to the airport via Castelo, and risk having to wait for our test (as we did last time). Alternatively, we could take a full PCR test earlier (there goes another 660 shekels). However, since this has to be within 72 hours of travelling, and since Castelo Branco is only visited by the itinerant PCR-testing lab for an hour in the morning, this would mean going on Friday morning, and hoping that our delay did not drag on too close to shabbat. This would also limit our baking and cooking on Friday for shabbat.

At this point, we both agreed that Sunday was a stupid day to fly back, and so I changed our booking (for only a small additional cost) to the previous Thursday. Shalom al Yisrael (Peace over Israel), as they say.

Except that, of course, over Israel, peace tends to be a short-lived state. And indeed, on the Thursday before we flew to Portugal, I received an email from eDreams, informing me that the Thursday TAP flight back to Israel had been cancelled. This email was a surprise for several reasons. First, because this was the first I had ever heard of eDreams; as far as I knew, I had booked through Opodo. Second, the email was in French, representing neither the language of the either of the two countries we were flying between, nor of the agent (Opodo) I had booked through. Fortunately, with my failed A-level French, I was able to understand that they provided a phone number in France to contact. Unfortunately, this phone number was unobtaionable. However, once we arrived in Portugal, I was able, with relatively little effort, to reschedule our flight to the previous day,  through TAP customer service in Portugal.

And then, last Monday, when I woke up, I saw that I had received, at 4AM Portugal time, an email from El Al, who, it transpired, actually ‘owned’ the Wednesday flight that was being code-shared with TAP – the flight TAP had moved us to from the Thursday flight. This email informed me that that Wednesday flight had also been cancelled, and, if I wished to rebook, I should contact El Al vis WhatsApp. After publishing my blog and having breakfast, I sent a WhatsApp message at 11:12. Five minutes of wrestling with a chatbot convinced me to try my luck on the El Al website. I logged on using my Frequent Flyer number, to be told that there were no reservations in my name. After an hour of attempting to find my reservation online, I gave up.

I next tried to call El Al Customer Service in Israel, where a message informed me that they were only handling calls for flights within the next 72 hours, and referring me to the same WhatsApp. I then obtained, from the El Al website, the phone number of their office in Madrid (which I knew from previous experience handled flights from Lisbon as well). All I got was the same message.

The following morning, refreshed by a good night’s sleep, I felt ready for a rematch with the chatbot. We started at 5:48 Portugal time, and by 554 I had been able to explain my situation and request to talk to a live agent. The bot assured me that they would get back to me within 24 hours.

I then decided to request assistance in English, and got a bot reply, an hour later, that my message had been transferred to the prioritized line, and would be answered by the first available agent.

A little over two hours later, an agent joined the WhatsApp chat. Once I had explained that I wished to rebook, the agent sold me the line: ‘Our digital service allows you to continue your daily routine.’ As I was to discover, their digital service would actually allow me to binge-watch an entire series of The Wire. (Not that I did, you understand.) ‘The waiting time,’ the agent added, ‘may be longer than usual. I will be with you shortly.’

Two hours later, he returned to thank me for waiting and to tell me: ‘I can look at alternative dates if you’d like.’ I refrained from telling him that I had stupidly imagined that’s what he had been doing for the previous two hours, and instead politely confirmed that I would like that.

‘Our digital service allows you to continue your daily routine.’ Or, indeed, to binge-watch another series of The Wire. (Not that I did, you understand.) ‘The waiting time,’ the agent added, ‘may be longer than usual. I will be with you shortly.’

This was followed, over two hours later by: ‘Thanks for waiting. Allow me to check.’ Then, 4 minutes later: ‘The earliest is 13 Feb’.

At this point, I should have said: ‘Book it’, and not, as I did: ‘This is ridiculous and completely unacceptable. Please give me a phone number where I can speak to someone in real time and resolve this, and without having to wait three hours on a phone first.’ I ranted on for another couple of messages. This was, as you will have realized, a bad mistake.

Two hours later, the agent replied: ‘Thanks for waiting. You may call us at 800-2234-6700.’ He then immediately left the chat, so that, when I replied a minute later: ‘Is that an Israeli number?’, I found myself back with the bot. ‘Dear customer, glad to have you back. Are you addressing the same issue as the previous one? 1 – Yes. 2 – No.

By the way, my varied attempts suggest that the 800 number was neither Israeli nor Portuguese, nor, indeed, any bloody use.

I heaved a sigh of frustration and started the whole process again, which took about 15 minutes with the bot. If you have been keeping track, you will know that the time was now 4:59PM Portugal, or 6:59PM Israel, which is why the bot’s next message read: ‘Our digital service is currently closed. If your inquiry is still relevant, please contact us during our working hours Sunday–Friday at 08:00–19:00 (TLV LOCAL).’

The following morning (this was now Tuesday), I tried the bot again, with no further success. Meanwhile, I had received another email in French from eDreams, which, I had meanwhile worked out, was the actual company that had arranged the flight, even though in booking I had dealt only with Opodo. A quick phone call confirmed that the French phone number was still unobtainable.

I next tried to rebook online with Opodo. However, their site informed me that I had no booking with them.

At this point, I was left with three options. I could call TAP in Lisbon, or Opodo in London (which would cost me more money, although we thought our landline contract allowed cheap calls throughout Europe, and not just EU), or El Al in Tel Aviv. Although it was true that our flight was not within 72 hours, the fact was that it was getting closer to 72 hours with every passing hour, and, technically, since I did not know what flight we would finally be booked on, it might well be less than 72 hours away.

Instead, I took a few hours off. Bernice is keen to return to Israel to be able to offer any assistance as needed by Esther, whose due date in mid-March is fast approaching. She was starting to get a little anxious, but I simply had no energy for further efforts.

So, on Wednesday morning, I decided to start with El Al. I got through to a very helpful agent, who, after some time searching online, was able to update me that the change from the Thursday flight to the Wednesday flight had been carried out by Opodo, and since neither the agent (Opodo) nor the airline booked with (TAP) was El Al, there was no way that El Al could change my booking from the now cancelled Wednesday flight to another flight (even though both the Wednesday flight and any replacement were bound to be officially El Al flights.

Grateful to El Al for a) answering the phone (finally), and b) clarifying the situation, I hung up and dialed both TAP in Portugal (on my Portuguese mobile phone) and Opodo in London (on our landline) simultaneously. TAP answered first (although Opodo ensured that the bar was set embarrassingly low). A very helpful agent examined the situation online and then expressed doubt that anyone other than Opodo could effect the change. However, she transferred me to TAP Central Booking, in the hope that they might be able to oblige.

While I was waiting for TAP Central Booking to reply, Opodo replied, and a helpful agent heard out my explanation, found my booking, offered me a return flight on Sunday 13 Feb, and explained that, since there was a difference in price, which would be absorbed by the airline (TAP), he could not finalise the rebooking without prior authorization from TAP. He assured me that this was purely procedural, and that I could expect a confirmation email and etickets in my inbox within 24 hours (in other words, by 12:00 noon on Thursday).

On Thursday afternoon, I phoned Opodo and their recorded message requested that anyone waiting for rebooking confirmation allow 48 hours.

When the email did not arrive before Shabbat, nobody was surprised, but Bernice grew visibly more anxious over Shabbat.

What also happened over shabbat was that MEO, our phone and internet provider in Portugal, detected unusual activity over our landline (a phone call to Israel and two more to Britain that together chalked up a bill whose details I am not going to share with you, for fear of upsetting those of a delicate nature). MEO followed standard procedure: they stopped our service and called Micha’el on his mobile to verify whether the activity was legitimate or we had, in fact, been hacked. Despite Micha’el assuring them that the calls were genuine, it took them some time to restore the service.

Thankfully, once the bill was paid, service was restored. However, no email had arrived over Shabbat, and so, on Saturday evening, I called Opodo again (this time making sure to phone during the cheap rate 9PM to 9AM window). My call was answered within a minute, and a very helpful agent confirmed we were booked on the Sunday, 13 Feb flight, and, while I waited on the phone, she emailed me our etickets.

If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed that the flight we are returning on is exactly the same flight as the one I originally booked us on several weeks ago. If there is a lesson here, I cannot for the life of me work out what it is.

However, the experience has given us two takeaways. First, I am now able to recite 6-letter booking codes (we have, so far, had four of these from Opodo), in the NATO alphabet, blindfolded. Second, and of more practical use, Bernice and I are firmly in agreement that, going forward, we will always book through a flesh and blood personal travel agent.

Meanwhile, spending another four days, including a fourth shabbat, has meant a last-minute rethinking of the rationing of the grape juice that we bring with us from Israel as a Shabbat Kiddush treat. Even so, another four days with the family here has its upside as well.