Last week I promised two examples of what can go wrong when you travel…and then had time to tell you about only one. So, this week, let’s start with the second.

There are, I am told, some people who, when tackling a jigsaw puzzle, just put their hand into the box, pull out a piece, look at the picture on the box-lid and decide where the piece goes. I’m very pleased to say that I’ve never actually met any of these people, but I suppose I have to believe that they exist, in much the same way as I believe in pygmies, despite never having met one.

Any truly civilised person knows that the correct way to tackle a jigsaw is to sift through the pieces, sorting out all of those with straight lines, and then to sift through the straight-line pieces, sorting out the four corner pieces. Once you have those four, you can put them in place; then you are free to continue to complete the frame, and then, and only then, can you tackle the middle.

Preparing to come to Portugal is rather like tackling a jigsaw. Every time we plan our next trip, we start with the four corner pieces, which allow us to set our dates. The first corner is checking with the kids, to ensure that our visit will not clash with a visit from Tslil’s parents, or other family or friends. Next is checking the Hebrew calendar, to see what constraints there are regarding any Jewish holidays. Next is our personal calendar, to see whether we have any unbreakable commitments. These days, these are more likely to be medical appointments than family celebrations. Finally, armed with all of this information, we see what our flight options are and make a firm booking, based on price and convenience.

The next set of tasks involves finding and putting in place all the jigsaw pieces with one straight side. There is a clear division of labour here. I deal with all of the ancillary arrangements: car hire, transportation to the airport in Israel, travel insurance, transferring money to our Portuguese account. Bernice, meanwhile, finds and puts in place far more pieces. She solicits from Tslil (and, these days, also Tao) a shopping list, and starts acquiring whatever clothes, food items, pieces of household equipment the kids need or would like. This trip, for example, included silan, shorts and a telescope: included, but was not remotely confined to, these items.

As we draw closer to our departure date, scarcely a day passes when Bernice doesn’t return from the mall with something. Ritual requires that she then make a declaration that “It really doesn’t matter if we don’t have enough room for this. It isn’t vital. We can take it next time.” I am required to reply: “Don’t worry! We’ve got plenty of room. We’ll manage easily.” This dialogue continues with little variation until the morning before we leave, when we start filling in the middle pieces of the jigsaw. This involves gathering from the four corners of the house everything we are taking and bringing down the suitcases.

Once everything is laid out on the sofas in the salon, I divide each pile into two, so that if one suitcase is lost in transit Tao will at least have some t-shirts, Micha’el will have at least one pair of sharwalim, we will have one bottle of grape juice for Tao and Tslil, and so on. At some point during the morning, I introduce a brief variation on our dialogue: “You know, I’m not 100% sure we’re going to be able to take everything.” However, in the end, through some alchemical process, everything we want to take is distributed between the pieces of luggage in such a way that the El Al clerk will let it pass, and, so far, we have never had to leave anything behind.

Apart from the flight, the only other preparation that I make very early is car rental, which almost always offers cancellation with full refund up to a day or two before the rental begins. This trip was no exception: I actually booked a car, through an online booking company (VIP Cars), three full calendar months before we flew. It is always a very reassuring feeling to print out the rental voucher and know that a second corner-piece of our trip is firmly in place. Or so I used to think, before this trip.

Picture my reaction when the following happened. On the day of our trip, we arrived at the airport in good time after a smooth trip by taxi and train. Checking in took a very long time, but everything went smoothly., We then made our way to Aroma in the departure lounge for a salad, while we waited for our flight to be called.

While I was sitting waiting for Bernice to bring our order, I received an email from VIP Cars, and was, by turns, puzzled, then horrified, then outraged, to read that (sic): “We have got an urgent update from the supplier, due to some technical issues Keddy car rental cant honor the booking, hence, instead of Keddy we will be providing you FREE UPGRADE car from Klass Wagen car rental from the same location in Lisbon airport and at the same price…Please acknowledge this email” (Puzzled, because Klass Wagen sounded to me like a joke; horrified, obviously, by the very sloppy punctuation; outraged, that our agreement was being broken so cavalierly at such short notice.)

I immediately acknowledged receipt of the email and sought further clarification. The key question was whether the pick-up point was still at the airport terminal. This is a big factor for us; since we have a lot of luggage and a three-hour drive from the airport, having to take a shuttle bus to an off-airport location is a major drawback, costing us effort and time. At Lisbon airport, car pickup is a level four-minute walk from the Arrivals terminal.

An exchange of emails followed, the upshot of which was that VIP were unable to provide me with any car from the airport. I assured them that I did not want an upgrade; negotiating the narrow, cobbled streets of Penamacor is enough of a challenge in a budget car. Even so, they claimed there was not a single car available at the airport. They assured me that Klass Wagen’s office was only a four-minute ride by shuttle bus from right outside the terminal, and sent me what seemed like clear details of where to pick up the shuttle bus, and the phone number of Klass Wagen in case anything went wrong, “but,” they assured me, “nothing will go wrong.” (Stop sniggering at the back.)

Basically, we had no choice but to accept. They sent me a new voucher and instructed me to print it out and present it at the desk. I pointed out, as my patience ebbed away, that I was already at the airport and hadn’t brought my printer with me. They quickly assured me that would not be a problem, as I could show the voucher to the company on my phone.

Our flight went smoothly (apart, of course, from the fact that I was worrying the whole time that picking up the car would prove a nightmare). Lisbon airport is in the middle of renovations, which meant that our walk from passport control to baggage pick-up was not the direct three-minute affair it usually is, but rather a twelve-minute trek against the traffic through the gate area and then the duty-free area for departures.

Despite the longer walk (which, to be honest, is never unwelcome after several hours in economy), we still arrived at the carousel some time before our luggage. However, both cases arrived safely, and we made our way out, as per instruction, through Exit 4, opposite the Vodafone shop, and the shuttle stop is in the second traffic lane.

There was, you may not be entirely surprised to learn, no shuttle bus waiting, and, indeed, no shuttle bus-stop waiting. Or, more precisely, there was a shuttle bus-stop, but it was a little too far from the Vodafone shop to be accurately described as “opposite”, and it gave no indication that it served “Klass Wagen” (although, to be honest, if I served a company called “Klass Wagen”, I’m not sure I would advertise it). I decided it would be wise to phone the rental company.

When I did so, I got an automated multi-option system. I had great difficulty hearing it, because we were standing in the middle of a four-lane drop-off and pick-up area. When I managed to tune my ear in, I realised that all of the instructions were in Portuguese, rendering it useless for me.

There was a taxi rank 50 metres away, and I was armed with the address of the rental company, so we trundled our cases over there to take a taxi, which I fully intended to charge to VIP Cars (a name that was acquiring a more ironic ring by the minute). The taxi dispatcher was very pleasant but too busy to really listen to our pathetic story and simply confirmed where the shuttle bus-stop was.

While we were attempting to make progress with him, a shuttle bus pulled up at the bus-stop and Bernice (who had just one case) raced to ask the driver to wait while I (who had a case and a carry-on case) lurched behind, expressing, at every kerb, amazement that the architects had not thought to provide ramps.

By the time I arrived, Bernice had established that, as I had suspected, this bus was an internal airport transfer bus. However, the delightful driver agreed to listen to the Portuguese menu on the rental company’s phone number, and to put me through to the right extension. I dialled the number, and heard the first message (the one I had missed when I phoned because of the ambient noise): “For English, press 1.”  The driver was kind enough not to look at me as if wondering whether I was allowed out alone, and wished us luck, while I got through to an English-speaking receptionist, who assured me that the shuttle-bus had already left their office for the airport, and that although there was, indeed, no bus-stop, he would stop opposite Vodafone.

So, it’s a four-minute ride, and the driver has already left. You do the maths. When did he arrive? That’s right, ten minutes later, which, in case you’re wondering, is just a little more than long enough for a couple of septuagenarians who started their journey 12 hours previously to start wondering whether they are going to be spending the night at the airport.

In fairness, from the moment the shuttle-bus arrived, everything went very smoothly…apart from the fact that the driver had obviously agreed to drop off his colleague who was going off-duty on the way. It actually did not seem to take us out of our way, and the entire drive was only about 12 minutes. The driver spoke very good English. He loaded and unloaded our cases, without being asked. The clerk who processed us was efficient and pleasant.

There was one small further twist when for some reason I couldn’t retrieve the voucher on my phone and the clerk couldn’t find our order on his printout, but everything was resolved in a minute or two (which, in case you’re wondering, is just a little more than long enough for a couple of septuagenarians who started their journey 12½ hours previously to start wondering whether they are going to be spending the night at the car rental office).

We eventually drove off in our Opel Corsa about half-an-hour later than we probably would have done if we had picked the car up at the airport. Incidentally, the clerk was in shock when I rejected the larger and more luxurious Skoda. I didn’t tell him that, if you drive a Kia Picanto – a car we really love – then a Corsa seems like a luxury car.

Fortunately, the rental office was only five minutes’ drive from the motorway that we take out of Lisbon, and we enjoyed an untroubled night-time drive, over three-quarters of which was on cruise control, which makes concentrating on the road so much easier and driving so much simpler.

Next week, I will endeavour to tell you something about what we have actually been doing here in the first half of our stay. Where did those two weeks go?!

Meanwhile, here’s something to tide you over.

Let’s start with the good news. We arrived safely in Penamacor after a very long day last Tuesday. I had woken at 4AM on Tuesday and been unable to get back to sleep. It appears that, as I get older, I worry more about travel arrangements not working out. We didn’t reach the house in Penamacor until 1:45AM. after a very easy drive: easy, but still almost three hours. Lua, taking her duties as guard dog very seriously, chose to bark warningly as I fumbled with the front-door key. (The door has always been temperamental. Sometimes I manage to catch it just right, and the key actually works, but Tuesday night was not, it is fair to say, one of those times.) This meant that we disturbed Micha’el’s sleep, which was not an entirely bad thing from our point of view since he took care of shlepping in the heavier luggage.

Everyone very kindly allowed us a lie-in on Wednesday morning…until 6:30. Bernice, of course, went straight into Nana mode, entering into all of Tao’s games, and offering a shoulder to Ollie which she was delighted that he took to almost immediately. It is no longer a surprise that Tao is very comfortable with us, but it was a delight to rediscover what a friendly, sunny and trusting soul Ollie is. We really are made to feel very very welcome by everybody (even Lua, once she had established that we weren’t breaking and entering),

Late morning we went to the excellent supermarket 30-minutes’ drive away. The boys had taken it in turns to come down with colds in the week before we arrived, and so Micha’el and Tslil hadn’t managed to do a big shop. We actually broke our Portuguese supermarket bill record this time, ably assisted by Tao. I am by now used to the fact that cashiers ask me whether I need a tax bill, because they assume we are buying for a modest hotel. Small-town Portuguese tend, so Micha’el tells us, to shop daily, buying small amounts each time. We seem to buy enormous quantities, and still seem to need to shop almost every day.

I just about managed the drive back from the supermarket before crashing for a three-hour nap, which made up for my twenty-two-and-a-half-hour Tuesday. Bernice, on the other hand, didn’t manage to catch up with herself until Shabbat, when she actually slept until 9AM. I think we are now both recovered from the exertions and stress of the journey, and are into Portugal mode.

The non-stop thunderstorms that Micha’el had warned us of disappeared just before we landed, and our weather has been hot (mid-high 30s) and sunny ever since. Fortunately, the house seems to enjoy its own mini ecosystem: the narrow street at the front is shaded by the houses on both sides, and is therefore significantly cooler than the backyard. The result is that, with the front windows, the glazed double doors between the living room and the kitchen, and the back doors all wide open, there is a cooling breeze blowing through the house for most of the day. This suits us.

The open windows and doors, unfortunately, also suit the house flies, but we choose to regard them as a necessary evil. It is remarkable what one can adjust to when there is no alternative. Lua devotes quite a lot of time to attempting to catch them in her mouth, but has yet to succeed.

Returning to the “exertions and stress of the journey”, I never fail to be surprised by the creative ingenuity of the unappeasable god of air travel. He always seems to be coming up with new ideas for things that can go wrong. This time he excelled himself in the stress stakes, with two original ideas.

When we come out to Portugal, we take an ‘overseas package’ of data and local calls and SMSs through our mobile provider. This is a very straightforward arrangement, in theory. (My more sensitive readers may have picked up on the fact that behind that casual phrase (“in theory”) lies a whole world of possibilities of practice deviating from theory.

To repeat: this is a very straightforward arrangement, in theory. I simply go online, log in to our account, select the package (available in a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer, so that Bernice can take the offer as well) and click Approve. So, on the Thursday before we flew (over four days before our departure) I went online. (My more sensitive readers may have picked up on the fact that behind that casual parenthetic phrase (“over four days before our departure”) lies an entire animated discussion with Bernice about the appropriate amount of time in advance that I should have arranged the overseas package.)

To repeat: I went online, then I logged in to our account, selected the package (available in a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer, so that Bernice could take the offer as well), and clicked Approve. At which point, up popped a message saying how excited out provider was that we were buying this package, explaining that we needed to speak to them directly to complete the process, and inviting me to WhatsApp them. I naturally retrieved my heart from the bottom of whatever hearts sink into when they sink, and WhatsApped a short message explaining the situation.

It is true that the more modern AI chatbots are uncanny in their impersonation of a human being. It is, sadly, equally true that the kind of automated messages that most service providers use gives themselves away as soon as they don’t open their non-mouths. This one responded to my message, in the cheery tone they all effect:

Hi! Thanks for contacting us on WhatsApp (smiley face icon)
We’re doing everything to respond just as quickly as possible. Meanwhile you can carry on with what you’re doing and we’ll be in touch soon. (smug smiley face icon)
You can also go into your personal zone on our webite and carry out all sorts of activities easily, quickly, and without waiting for a rep.

Pausing only to explain icily to the phone that “Actually, no, I can’t, because you won’t let me”, I carried on with what I had been doing (which was, you will remember, discussing ever more animatedly with Bernice what the ideal time would have been to order the package).

Astonishingly, not another minute had passed before a living, breathing rep WhatsApped me. It took just a little longer to explain the situation to him than I was prepared to allow him without wondering about his general intelligence, but, once we were on the same wavelength, he was soon able to clarify that the problem was that my current SIM card did not support the overseas package (although it had supported it three months previously, when it was in my old phone). All I needed to do (he informed me, employing even more smiling and heart-eyed icons than his bot colleague) was to collect a SIM card, free of charge, from any branch of a national chain of electrical retailers or an alternative chain of mobile shops, and then contact the provider to associate the new SIM to my mobile number.

I pointed out that we were flying on the following Tuesday and asked whether the whole process could be postponed until our return, but he regretted that that was not possible. He assured me there were several branches in Jerusalem, but I had already established that there was one only six kilometres from us, in Mishor Adumim. He was delighted to hear this, and we parted in very good humour.

On the morrow, I made my way to Mishor Adumim, and was given a new SIM with very little fuss. When I returned home, I phoned the provider, and spoke to a delightful rep who established, in just a couple of minutes, that I had been given a 4G SIM, whereas I needed a 5G one. I pointed out that it would have been useful to have had that explained to me in the first place. To her credit, she agreed. She asked where I had obtained it from, and, when I told her, she explained that that particular branch did not stock 5G SIMs, I mentioned, almost as an aside, how useful it would have been if her colleague of the previous afternoon had known that. To her credit, she agreed.

More than that. She seemed genuinely mortified, and assured me that she would instruct her Jerusalem office to courier the SIM to my house. Since this was now Friday noon, she explained that the office wouldn’t be able to process the request until Sunday, and the SIM would arrive only on Monday. She told me that if it had not arrived by 3PM on Monday, I should contact her again, so that there would still be time to deliver it.

In the event, the courier company made contact early on Monday, the SIM was delivered in the early afternoon, and it was associated to my mobile number in a matter of minutes. To our great surprise, our package worked as soon as we arrived in Portugal, both on my phone and on Bernice’s, even though she had not been told that she needed a new SIM. She had, indeed, been told (and I clarified this several times, believe me) that she did not need a new SIM, and this proved to be true.

So this first instance of exertion and stress was all in the days leading up to our departure…unlike the second instance, which, my word count tells me, I will have to leave for next week.

Just time for a reminder of what we come to Portugal for, and what we leave behind.

The world, they say, is divided into two groups of people. (Ed. Note: ‘They’, in that sentence, can be translated as ‘I’, as so often. Last week I invented friends to illustrate a point I wanted to make. Today, I’ve invented an entire swathe of society. Next week, the world!)

The world, they say, is divided into two groups of people: those who have one or more dirty little secrets that they don’t care to share with others, and – depending on which particular group of ‘they’ I am favouring today – either those who don’t, or those who pretend to themselves that they don’t.

I thought today I would remove another of Salome’s seven veils and share one of my dirty little secrets with you. When I read articles in The Times online, I am addicted to reading the comments from readers. Most people are shocked and horrified when I admit this, but let me attempt to justify my habit.

 A couple of different factors feed this addiction. First, it is always interesting to see how many comments it takes until two or more readers descend to personal abuse. Despite The Times’ algorithm for filtering and blocking comments based on the language used, creative readers are still quite able to be very unpleasantly abusive. Clearly, some of these readers come with a prior agenda. However, in other cases, it is simply part of the social media phenomenon that allows otherwise civilised individuals to feel no restraint in engaging in the kind of insulting exchanges that they would be horrified to witness, let alone to instigate, in a face-to-face encounter.

A second factor that draws me to these comments is that sometimes readers are able to contribute a personal anecdote that confirms, contradicts, or otherwise sheds more light on, the news story, op-ed article or obituary they are commenting on. These personal insights often add another dimension to my appreciation of the original story.

And then there are the serendipitous moments, one of which arose last week. A casual comment from a reader led me on a Google trail that uncovered a story that I found fascinating, and that I hope will tickle your fancy as well. It is a tale of tragic loss, hubris, irony, urban development and popular culture, and it begins on the Obituary pages of The Times.

On June 1, less than two weeks ago, Cynthia Weil died. I readily confess to wondering who she was when I first saw the obituary. However, experience has taught me that the Obituary pages are often the most interesting, and sometimes the most enlightening, in the paper, and certainly consistently contain the most uplifting stories in the paper – not that the bar is set very high in that regard.

I soon learnt that Cynthia Weil was the lyricist, and her husband Barry Mann the tunesmith, of an astonishing and wide-ranging collection of popular songs from the early 60s. Together, they wrote, inter tin-pan-alia, You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ for the Righteous Brothers, On Broadway for the Drifters and We Gotta Get out of This Place, recorded by the Animals. I felt less embarrassed by my ignorance when I learnt that when Mann and Weil, staged, in 2004, a musical revue based on their songs, they named the show, ironically, They Wrote That?

The obituary made reference to the couple sharing a cubbyhole in New York’s Brill Building in the 1960s, a building that boasted many such upright-piano-equipped cubbyholes.

One of the commenters on the obit asked: ‘Who was Brill?’ For some reason, I found the question intriguing, and so I did some research. This is the story I uncovered.

A property on the corner of Broadway and 49^th Street was leased early in the last century to a men’s clothing store, Brill Brothers. In 1929, the Brills sublet to property developer Abraham Lefcourt, with the requirement that he build a structure to be completed no later than November 1931. Lefcourt, whose ambition exceeded his practicality, announced plans for the tallest building in the world at 1050 feet, with a $30 million price tag. This was a deliberate attempt to upstage both the Chrysler building, on which work had started, and the Empire State building, on which work was about to start.

Two factors made Lefcourt’s plans unrealistically grandiose. The first, for which he must take responsibility, was that the site he had sublet was a third of the area of the Chrysler lot, and a seventh of the size of the Empire State lot. Such a small area could not reasonably be expected to support so tall a building.

The second unfortunate fact, which Lefcourt, like many others, failed to foresee, was that, 25 days after he announced his plans on October 3, 1929, the New York Stock Market crash would begin. Ever an enterprising businessman, Lefcourt calculated that investors who survived the crash would prefer to put their money in bricks and mortar, and he started rethinking.

Then, just four months after his initial announcement, Lefcourt’s 17-year-old son Alan, who was the apple of his father’s eye, died of anaemia. Within a month, Lefcourt had filed plans with the authorities for a 10-storey office structure on the site, to be named the Alan E. Lefcourt Building, in his son’s memory.

Within a year of the building being completed, Abraham Lefcourt defaulted on his sublease, and the building reverted to the Brill Brothers, who reopened their store there. As early as 1932, the building became known as the Brill Building, and the only reference to Alan’s memory was the busts, which bear no plaque.

When Lefcourt Sr died, in December 1932, his net worth, which had stood at over $100 million in 1928, was declared as being $2,500, none of it in real estate.

Originally, the office floors above the store were leased by the Brills to a variety of ordinary businesses. However, by the 1940s, the building was already full of musicians. The composer Johnny Marks, who wrote Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1949, had space in the Brill no later than 1950, and his firm, St. Nicholas Music, (don’t you love the name!) still has offices there. Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole were among others who rented office space in the building.

By 1962, the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses. A musician could find a publisher and printer, cut a demo, promote the record and cut a deal with radio promoters, all within this one building. The creative culture of the independent music companies in the Brill Building and the nearby 1650 Broadway came to define the influential “Brill Building Sound” and the style of popular song writing and recording created by its writers and producers.

Composers and lyricists who worked in the Brill Building in its heyday included (deep breath): Burt Bacharach, Jeff Barry, Bert Berns, Bobby Darin, Hal David, Neil Diamond, Luther Dixon, Sherman Edwards, Buddy Feyne, Gerry Goffin, Howard Greenfield, Ellie Greenwich, Jack Keller, Carole King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Barry Mann, Johnny Mercer, Rose Marie McCoy, Van McCoy, Irving Mills, Fred Neil, Laura Nyro, Tony Orlando, Doc Pomus, Jerry Ragovoy, Ben Raleigh, Teddy Randazzo, Billy Rose, Neil Sedaka, Mort Shuman, Paul Simon, Cynthia Weil.

Here’s Carole King describing the atmosphere in the building:

Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You’d sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song exactly like yours. The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific—because Donny (Kirshner) would play one songwriter against another. He’d say: “We need a new smash hit”—and we’d all go back and write a song and the next day we’d each audition for Bobby Vee’s producer.

These days, the building houses more offices related to the film-making than to the music-making industry, but in 2017 (the latest reference I could find) Paul Simon still had offices there.

In 2010, in recognition of its art deco design, its impressive facade and its contribution to the cultural history of the city, the Brill Building was officially designated a New York City landmark.

And yet who now remembers Abraham Lefcourt or (which would probably have grieved him more) his son, Alan?

Now, can you blame me for reading the comments following the articles in The Times? You really never know what you are going to turn up next.

Unlike readers of my blog, who always know what (or, rather, who) is going to turn up next. And here they are, right on cue: the lyricist, the performer and the tunesmith. Take your pick.

Ed. Note: If, on the basis of that title, you can correctly guess the exact topic of today’s post, please award yourself 50 bonus points.

‘How fortunate you are!’ declare the imaginary friends whom I invent from time to time to illustrate some aspect or other of this blog. ‘Every week, you get to write about anything you want!’

The truth, of course, is rather less idyllic. There are certainly weeks when I both know what I want to write about and know more or less what I want to say about it. However, most weeks fall into one of two categories. Either there is really only one topic I can write on, like it or not. In fairness, I am capable of ignoring whole herds of elephants in the room if I feel I have nothing to add that is both on the original side of the trite/ground-breaking spectrum and on the amusing side of the dull-as-ditchwater/scintillating spectrum, so the concept of having no choice is more or less alien to me.

Or (picking up the ‘either’ of the last paragraph after an inordinate time), I can’t think of anything to write about. Those are the weeks when I lock myself in the office, fire up the laptop, and wait for inspiration to spark through my index fingers. When it fails to do so, I churn something out, offer it up at the altar of Bernice, my high-critic, and pray that she will judge it more favourably than I do.

This week, unusually, is one when, for me, in my particular situation, there really is only one topic. You see, four weeks ago, I urged you to go to the cinema to see Harold Fry. Then three weeks ago, I offered a pocket review of the film and urged you to see it again. I did also, in the interests of full disclosure, reveal that my cousin was a producer of the film. We would, I hope, all agree that we have a duty to promote the pet projects of family members we are fond of, especially if we actually think those projects are very worthwhile, as, in the case of Harold Fry, I do.

Which brings me to this week’s topic. You see, in a rash of cousinly creativity, Bernice’s cousin (who is, incidentally, both her first cousin and her second cousin – but that’s a story for another post) published a book eight months ago. I didn’t actually get around to reading it until last week, and now domestic harmony dictates that I must dedicate a post to singing its praises.

Which makes it sound as though this week’s post comes to you out of a sense of duty. It will sound even more so if I admit to you that this is a book that, if I were not married to the author’s cousin, I would never have picked out from a bookshop’s shelves or ordered online. It is so not within my fields of interest.

One day, in the 1960s, a friend and I took the Central Line Tube from Gants Hill to St Pauls to spend a few hours in the public galleries of the Old Bailey watching a murder trial. I have a strong memory of a lot of seasoned wood panelling and a judge looking splendid in scarlet robe and white wig. I have, however, no memory whatsoever of the details of the case. That day represents, to be honest, the birth and death of my interest in the internal workings of the English and Welsh justice system.

Today’s challenge, then, is to persuade you, (who don’t, to be honest, count for very much in this particular equation) and, more importantly, the book’s author (who, to be honest, I see only very rarely), and, most importantly, the book’s author’s first – and second – cousin (who I wake up next to every day) that this book genuinely gripped me from Page 1 and did not let me go until I had finished reading the Acknowledgements page.

The time has come, I think, to get to the actual meat of this week’s post.

Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC (and to think that Bernice’s family thought she was doing well by marrying the son of a delicatessen!) retired as a High Court judge just over a year ago. Six months later, her book Unlawful Killings, subtitled Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey, was published.

Just in case that mouthful is not sending you rushing to order the book, let me stress. This is an absorbing, moving, thrilling and delightful read.

To categorise the book is not straightforward. It is, on the one hand, a layman’s guide to the (sometimes arcane) workings of a trial for murder under the English and Welsh justice system. Written, as it is, from the perspective of the judge presiding over the proceedings, it gives considerable insight into the function and, perhaps more importantly, the thoughts and feelings of said judge. It is, I think, fair to say that the spotlight, particularly in fictional accounts of trials, is more commonly focussed on the lawyers for the defence and prosecution, on the defendant and on the jury. The perspective of the judge is never less than fascinating.

Those arcane workings make, in themselves, very interesting reading. However, the challenge facing anyone attempting to explain them is to show how fascinating they are, because there is a very real danger of making any account seem dry, abstract, bookish and academic. Wendy (now that she has retired I feel more comfortable referring to her as my cousin by marriage, rather than as ‘My Lady’) finds a very clever hook to hang this exposition on, and thereby establishes, in her first chapter, both her very great sympathy for her fellow human beings and her light and delightful sense of humour, which both leavens and spices the entire book.

The next six chapters unpack the convoluted stories of six trials for murder (fictional constructs each drawing elements from Wendy’s personal courtroom experience and each cleverly designed to illustrate particular aspects of the application of the law). Each one of these chapters could provide the material for a gripping murder courtroom drama novel; taken together, they hint at the flexibility, the range, the complexity and the underlying principles of the law in this area.

Anyone who emerges from these six chapters with less than total admiration for the subtle act of presiding that is the function of a High Court judge needs to read the chapters again for homework. There is no doubt that, for anyone with a conscience and a belief in the legal system, being a High Court judge is an almost religious calling and a supreme responsibility.

As we are sucked effortlessly into the gripping and compassionate narrative of each of these cases, we gradually begin to comprehend the robustness and soundness of the structure of the law. I certainly found myself, at the end of those six chapters, hoping that, if I ever do get around to committing murder, or, on the other hand, being murdered, the murderer (whether myself or someone else) will have the case heard at the Old Bailey, by a judge as wise as Wendy.

The final chapter of the book reflects generally on the success or otherwise of the English legal system in coping with murder. Her conclusion may not be earth-shattering, but it is all the more noteworthy both because it carries the authority of her decades of experience and because it suggests that the courts are failing, and cannot reasonably be expected not to fail, in addressing the societal problems that murder poses. She points out that murder only too often is committed because of the particular circumstances of a personal history, and prevention must be better than failing to cure. She calls for more to be done in educating citizens, from childhood, both to recognise the value of the social contract that lies at the very heart of civilisation and to be aware of the consequences of their personal actions. I can do no better than quote her final sentences.

‘…for all potential offenders who pause, think, change their minds, we save them the waste of their lives, we save victims a world of grief, we save society a huge financial cost, we make a better and happier life for everyone. What’s not to like in that?’

And what’s not to like in this?

Ed Note: If any other of my cousins, by birth or by marriage, is planning on publishing a book, releasing a film, staging a play, mounting an art exhibition, or anything similar, could I prevail on you to hold off for a couple of months? I don’t want to overdo the cultural review theme on the blog. Thanks!