Clearly, there is only one topic to write about this week. As more and more of my friends line up on one or other side of the road with their Israeli flags and placards; as folk on the down escalators at Jerusalem railway station on their way to the pro-judicial-reform demonstration in Tel Aviv exchange friendly greetings (I kid you not) with folk on the up escalator on their way to the anti-judicial-revolution demonstration outside the Knesset in Jerusalem; as, inside the Knesset, legislators begin the day that will probably (possibly) end with the passing into law of the (Thin end of the wedge? First slice of salami? Or, just possibly, Only meagre scrap thrown by Bibi to placate his coalition lapdogs?); as eleven-and-three-quarterth-hour behind-the-scenes talks between representatives of the Prime Minister and the opposition possibly lead to a compromise; as said Prime Minister rushes from hospital, after a dizzy spell, a minor coronary event and the fitting of a pacemaker, to his office; as….

Enough, already. The chances that anything I write now, on Monday morning, will be at all relevant when you read it, at best at 9:01AM on Tuesday, are considerably less than the size of the majority of the voting public that voted for the bloc of parties identified as supporting Bibi as Prime Minister. Incidentally, if you want those figures, here they are, in a not-untimely reminder.

(If you don’t want the numbers, just be aware that the vote for and against the coalition parties was virtually split down the middle at the last general election. Much less than one per cent of the vote (under 30,000 votes) separated the two blocs. Now you can skip the next paragraph.)

Voter turnout was 70.6%. To put it another way, 29.4% of the electorate couldn’t get worked up enough to exercise their democratic right.
Of that 70.6% turnout, 1.49% voted either for parties that did not identify either with ‘Bibi’s’ bloc or with the ‘opposition’ bloc, or for parties that did not pass the electoral threshold and are, therefore, not represented in the Knesset.
Of the remainder, 50.32% of the votes were cast for parties that identified with ‘Bibi’s’ bloc and 49.68% of the votes were cast for parties that identified with the ‘opposition’ bloc.
In other words: only 29,951 more votes were cast for ‘Bibi’s’ bloc than for the ‘opposition’ bloc, out of an electorate of over 6,748,000, and out of a total number of votes cast of 5,110,927.

Whatever else you say about these figures, you cannot say that, as one letter writer did in the Jerusalem Post this morning, “…the only way our prime minister can save democracy is to go ahead with putting into effect the policies for which he was elected by a very comfortable majority of the voting public” [my emphasis]. 0.59% is not ‘a very comfortable majority’.

By the same token, over 100,000 turning out on the streets every week for over half a year are certainly demonstrating their own conviction and dedication, but they are not necessarily demonstrating the will of the vast majority of the country. They ‘only’ managed to muster 48.94% of the vote at the last election.

My particular position is that what all of these numbers show is that there is no way forward without finding common ground on which a majority of the population of the country can comfortably stand. We have a start: both sides rally round the flag. What we have to find now is a definition of what that flag stands for that all sides can sufficiently identify with to ensure that this Zionist project can continue.

In truth, this has always been the monumental challenge facing the Zionist endeavour, from its earliest days, through the foundation of the State, and in the 75 years since. The task has been easier in those periods when the external challenges facing us made us focus on standing shoulder to shoulder and temporarily putting aside our differences. However, even at its inception, when Israel was fighting an existential war even before it existed as a state, as the drafters of the Declaration of Independence wrestled with its wording, they struggled to find a formula that all 37 signatories would be able, in all conscience, to sign off on.

Hence the delicately ambiguous metaphorical language of the Declaration. The two signatory rabbis wished to include the phrase: “and placing our trust in the Almighty”. The secularist Mapam signatory strongly opposed this. The eventual wording used the phrase “the Rock of Israel”. which could be interpreted as referring either to God, or to the land and concept of Eretz Israel. Ben-Gurion said: “Each of us, in his own way, believes in the ‘Rock of Israel’ as he conceives it. I should like to make one request: Don’t let me put this phrase to a vote.”

We could do with some Ben-Gurionic fudging pragmatism today. Today is not a day for laying down your life on the battlements, but for co-existing in the stronghold. It is a day for reaching out, finding the common ground and building on that. If either side in this current struggle ‘wins’, then the country loses, and loses about half of the population. That cannot be a result that anyone wants to see.

As I say, anything I write now will, by the time you read it, only be useful for wrapping virtual phish, so I have decided not to write about what is happening in Israel today. And yet, somehow, that appears to be what I have done. All that remains is for me to explain today’s title.

The ostrich was what I thought I was going to be, burying my head in the sand of something whimsical, in order to avoid having to look at the political reality, thereby enabling me to pretend it doesn’t exist. That didn’t exactly work, did it?

The anchorman is what I planned to write about. What that means, you will have to wait a week to find out.

The good news (for me at least) is that I now have a ready-made topic, already completely plotted out in my head, for next week. Which means that I am looking forward to a stress-free week. (I told you to stop laughing at the back!)

And then we really do still need to talk about the cricket.

Until next week, may I wish all of those who are planning to fast from Wednesday night that there will be no need, because, by then, the Messiah will have come and the Temple will have been rebuilt; failing that, I wish you an easy and a meaningful fast; and finally, my fervent wish is that all of the House of Israel, both those who are fasting and those who are not, may find, in the commemoration of the fall of the Temple and of the end of Jewish sovereignty over the land, meaningful lessons for our current troubled times.

Meanwhile, everybody else seems to have escaped from Israel (some permanently, some temporarily), and to be having a wonderful time.

Ed Note: The Declaration of Independence (both in its original Hebrew and in English translation) is a fascinating subject, which can teach us a great deal about, among other things, the history of Zionism, the vision of Israel’s founders, and Israel’s relationship with world Jewry. Since it, like the flag, is both being invoked by the protestors against the judicial reforms, and being counter-invoked by the protestors in favour, it is worth revisiting at this time.
You can read the full text in Hebrew here and in English here.
A comprehensive overview and analysis by an emeritus professor of political science at Hebrew University can be read here.
Daniel Gordis writes a brief but fascinating article on it here.
The authors of an exhaustive and authoritative book on the Declaration also wrote an extended article giving the ‘biography’ of the Declaration, which you can read here.

Let me first describe how we got down from the cliff I left us hanging from last week. In the event, our journey home from Portugal was uneventfully smooth. As I write that, I am struck by just how low our expectations of air travel have sunk. What ‘uneventfully smooth’ means, in 2023, is that our drive to Lisbon was easy, as was returning the car and transferring by shuttle bus to the airport. Because everything was so hitch-free, we actually arrived at the airport over four hours before our flight was scheduled. All of the waiting for the check-in to open, queuing and processing took about two hours, so we had another two hours to kill in the airport departure lounge.

We boarded on time and then sat on the tarmac. After 15 minutes, the pilot announced that we were not being given clearance to fly yet, because of ‘heavy air traffic over Europe’. (In Hebrew, he actually said: ‘…over France and Iran’, but I assumed, and very sincerely hoped, that was a slip of the tongue and he meant Italy. ‘Heavy air traffic over Europe’? If only they had asked me, I could have advised them that air traffic is, indeed, heavy over Europe in mid-July. It is slightly disconcerting that this appeared to come as a surprise to air traffic control at Lisbon airport.

We sat on the tarmac for an hour, and then, after taxiing to the runway, sat for another ten minutes while two other flights landed. Thankfully, the air conditioning was working throughout this time. The result, unsurprisingly, was that we landed almost an hour late. So, there you have your answer. Spending four hours in an airport, then experiencing a 70-minute delay in departure, resulting in an arrival time an hour later than scheduled, is what constitutes ‘uneventfully smooth’ air travel in 2023.

Our last few days in Penamacor were low-key, but very enjoyable, although we all spent most of the time wandering around saying: ‘I don’t know where these four weeks have gone?!! We only just arrived!!’ In our last week, Lua seemed to have recovered from her lack of discipline when walking off the lead with me. Bernice cleverly worked out what had caused it.

One morning, on our walk, we had encountered a woman with two dogs, one a very friendly and lively dalmatian. Lua, who was traumatised as a puppy by a very cruel owner, is very much of a nervous disposition; when this dalmatian, off the lead, came loping towards her, she fled; the dalmatian, thinking this was a game, gave chase. Eventually, Lua ran all the way home, and my troubles with her began there.

However, as I say, I tried to take her for a walk again during our last week, and she behaved as beautifully as she usually does. On the Sunday and Monday morning, Tao decided that he wanted to join us on our morning walk. This represented, for Lua and myself, a trade-off. We both enjoy a vigorous walk of several kilometres in the morning, which, obviously, wasn’t possible with Tao. However, what we did get was an endless string of adventures. First, I got to stand lookout on the stretch of lawn in front of the sports hall, which, I discovered, is actually Tao’s pirate ship in disguise, complete with main mast (flagpole) and crow’s nest (retaining wall) from which I was required to keep an eagle eye open for any passing giant octopus.

We were also required to run races (me, with my two artificial hips, took inspiration from Andy Murray) to the tree at the side of the sports hall. Lua, unsurprisingly, won these races convincingly. We were then able to cool off by swimming in the lagoon, which I had previously heedlessly walked over every day, labouring under the delusion that it was a concrete platform. We even managed to work in some nature study, discussing the variety of shape and colouration of different trees’ leaves, and the way lichen always favours the same side of the tree.

A good walk with Lua is a great way to start the day, but a good walk around Tao’s ever-bubbling mind is a large part of the reason why we continue to put ourselves through these ‘uneventfully smooth’ journeys two or three times a year.

And then, all too soon, it was Tuesday, which was Ollie’s first birthday. We had a family celebration that included music and bubbles and decorations and individual frozen yoghourt cupcakes and blessings and wishes. Ollie was largely unmoved, although he gave his absolutely undivided attention to everyone’s blessings to him. He spends a lot of his time focussing with intensity on what others, especially his big brother, are doing. He is definitely taking it all in.

Then, there we were, saying our goodbyes, and then it was Wednesday, and we were unpacking in Maale Adumim, and then it was Sunday, and we were off to Zichron to catch up with Raphael, Esther and Maayan. Initially, Raphael was just a little wary of us in the flesh, rather than on the phone, but very, very soon we were back to our usual relationship.

He, of course, has changed while we have been in Portugal. His progress in walking and talking over the month were very noticeable. These Portugal trips involve a curious kind of not-really-catch-up, where, over the course of our month abroad, we watch Ollie ostensibly closing the gap between Raphael and himself, and then, when we return, we discover that Raphael is not where he was when we last saw him.

So now we switch back to the more normal routine of weekly visits to Raphael in person and a weekly video chat and story-time and puppet-show with Tao and, we hope, increasingly with Ollie.

Micha’el and family are, God willing, planning to come to Israel in the late autumn. We then plan to go to Portugal next in February–March, where, because it is a Jewish leap year, we will be able to stay later into March and, for the first time ever, celebrate Tao’s birthday with him. That’s something very special to look forward to.

Here’s Tao, enjoying Ollie’s birthday frozen yoghourt and fruit,

Raphael, enjoying a walk,

and Ollie, rejecting Tao’s doctor’s scissors in favour of one of his best-loved dance tunes.

A mixed bag of vignettes this week, all designed with the sole purpose of taking my mind off the elephant in the room this week, and all failing miserably in their purpose.

The elephant, in case you haven’t realised already, is almost certain to be let out of the bag (if you can have a cow elephant, I don’t see why you can’t have a cat elephant), later today (Monday). If the Israeli parliamentary opposition’s expected filibuster is particularly effective, that may be much, much later today, indeed in the early hours of tomorrow (Tuesday). The item in question is the first reading of a bill covering one (theoretically less controversial) element of the Israeli government’s proposed judicial reform: namely, the reform of the reasonableness standard. I really don’t wish to antagonise any of my regular readers, who range from the looniest of lefts to the most raging of rights. (How am I doing so far in not antagonising them?)

I’m not sure I can walk the tightrope of explaining this legislation without inflaming someone, but let me try. Broadly speaking, decades ago, the Supreme Court gave itself the right to apply judicial review against any adminstrative decision taken by the government on the grounds of it not being reasonable. Before you ask: ‘What did they mean by reasonable?’, let me ask you: ‘How long is a piece of string?’ The justices did not see fit to attempt to define reasonableness. So (back to Humpty Dumpty) a decision is unreasonable if a majority of the sitting Supreme Court justices deem it unreasonable.

A large segment of the population sees in the government’s total package of planned judicial reform a genuine threat to Israel’s democracy. For many of them, this first piece of legislation is the thin end of the wedge. They are therefore planning a National Day of Disruption tomorrow. The principal target of that protest will be the international airport, Ben Gurion. A similar, but smaller-scale, protest last week disrupted the smooth running of the airport but did not cause flight delays. At least one of the leaders of the protest has stated that it is not the object of this week’s protest to disrupt flights. However, it seems likely that there will be flight delays.

Technically, we land at Ben Gurion not on Tuesday, but in the early hours of Wednesday. In addition, disruption is likely to be caused to departures from and not arrivals at Ben Gurion airport. However, an El Al flight is due to depart from Ben Gurion at 11AM tomorrow morning and land in Lisbon at 3PM. I am assuming that this plane is scheduled to turn around and fly us back to Israel, departing at 10:25PM.

My expectation is that this flight from Israel will be disrupted and our flight will be delayed until Wednesday morning or cancelled and we will have to hope to get onto the following evening’s flight. My hope is that we will find out about the change of plan early enough to be able to change our arrangements without stress. Since Bernice will be reading this, I won’t tell you what my expectation is.

In either event (delay or cancellation), we will not be insured for the extension, since, in common with all travel insurance, we are nor covered for any of the actual reasons why flights are delayed in the real world. We will therefore incur additional costs in extending our travel insurance. An extension of our car rental will also incur an additional charge, which, the small print informs me, is not required to be at the additional daily rate. I will probably suggest to Bernice that we leave Penamacor as planned, return the car on time, and, if necessary, stay overnight in a hotel near the airport.

And after the elephant, we have the vignettes.

First, I have to update you on the neighbourhood supplies front. The neighbour who has been dropping round bags of fruit outdid herself last week. First, she brought about two-and-a-half kilo of plums, assuring Tslil that these were the last of her crop. The following day, she brought a second bag of plums, of equal weight, and a slightly smaller bag of peaches. All of this fruit, I have to say, was deliciously ripe and juicy. The plums were mouth-wateringly tart, and the peaches were sublimely sweet.

Tslil and I spent an hour or so pitting plums and making jam. By the time the jam was ready to pour into jars, the neighbour had brought yet another two kilos of plums round. Tslil has an electric fruit dehydrator, which she put to good use, and the following morning she and Tao went round handing parcels of dried fruit to neighbours. Having brought silan to Portugal, we will now be taking a jar of plum jam back from Portugal.

Next, another quick supermarket story that occurred this last week, and that is a typical foreigner experience. There is a local cheese that Micha’el is very fond of, called Castelões. Before we left for the super last week, I checked the pronunciation with Micha’el. At the cheese counter in the super, I thought I saw the cheese at the back, but the label was obscured by a price stake. When my turn came to be served, I pointed to the cheese wheel and asked ‘Castelões?’ in an almost perfect reproduction (you’ll have to trust me on this) of what Micha’el had said.

The assistant hesitated, looked at me questioningly, and, I presume, asked me what I had said. I pointed again and repeated the name. After three times, I leant as far as I could over the counter and pointed unmistakably at the specific wheel. “Ah! Castelões!!” the assistant declared triumphantly, pronouncing it, I promise you, exactly as I had. My every encounter with this language seems to bring its own humiliation.

In other news: While the Portuguese heath service is highly spoken of, it is probably true to say that it is more efficient in the large cities than the rural backwaters. Several months ago, Micha’el trod on a branch, and it seems that there may still be some foreign matter in his foot. The doctor has told him to have a CT at the hospital in Castelo Branco, for which he expects there to be a three-month waiting list. The other day, he phoned the hospital to make an appointment. After a fairly lengthy call, he reported to us that, in order to make an appointment, he has to physically bring the necessary papers to the hospital, which is, of course, 40 minutes’ drive away. Presumably, the documents exist in the health service’s computer system. However, he is still required to present them. He cannot email the documents, or upload them to the hospital website, or fax them; he has to bring them in person.

And finally this week, a car story. When I was growing up, the joke that did the rounds was of a friend who had applied to join the police force, but was rejected because they discovered that his parents were married. (This joke represents more or less the extent of my teenage rebelliousness. Pathetic, I know.) Well, we think we have discovered another ‘profession’ that has the same entrance requirement: vehicle road test examiner. The kids’ experiences in Portugal have been about the same as ours in Israel.

The examiners, who clearly relish the power they wield, appear to assume that every driver both understands car mechanics and has mastered the entire arcane vocabulary of the subject in (in our case) Hebrew or (for the kids) Portuguese. They also assume that every driver already knows the procedure for the test, and that when a mechanic who does not enunciate clearly, and who is standing in an inspection pit directly under the car, shouts a command that can barely be heard above other shouts, and revving of engines, and whirring of power tools, then the driver will hear and understand the command. When the driver makes a not unintelligent but mistaken guess at what he is being asked to do, the mechanic becomes either sarcastic or belligerent.

Tslil had to take their truck for its annual road test last week. In preparation, Micha’el replaced a damaged headlight cover and their mechanic (a near-neighbour) checked the truck, finding no reason why the vehicle should fail. On the day, more in hope than expectation, we all awaited the result. The truck failed the test, for the following, most aggravating, of reasons. When Tslil took the truck last year, it passed; she returned home triumphant, with the green certificate and the disc to display on the windscreen.

This year, when she arrived at the test centre with last year’s green certificate, the examiner tested the truck and then asked why none of the repairs required last year had been carried out. ‘What repairs?’ asked Tslil. “These four’, the mechanic replied, pointed to four clauses on last year’s green certificate that neither Tslil nor Micha’el had read.

In their defence, they took the truck to be tested last year and they got a green certificate, meaning that the truck had passed. Nobody pointed out to them at the time the list of repairs that had to be carried out before the next year’s test. If someone were to ask the mechanic why this wasn’t pointed out, he would probably reply that ‘everyone knows about it’. So now the kids have a week’s grace to carry out these repairs, and, in this part of the world, there is no such thing as a garage mechanic who will carry out repairs within a week. Time moves much more slowly here. All very frustrating!

To end on a happier note. Tao and Ollie enjoyed a day at the pool last week, and Raphael enjoyed a morning at the supermarket!

Ed Note: When Bernice read this post, she commented that it all sounded as though I wasn’t very happy with the world. I hereby undertake that next week, whether I am writing from the comfort of our own home office, or the discomfort of Lisbon Airport, I will endeavour to be less Eeyore and more Piglet.

By the time you read this, we will have been in Portugal for three weeks, which is a lot of book-reading, nursery-rhyme singing, rocking to sleep, playing in the park, magnetile construction (and destruction), puppet shows, craft projects, serving on pirate ships, and not a huge amount else. (Not that we are here for a huge amount else, to be honest.)

 I haven’t even managed to get my regular daily walk with Lua, who seems to have lost her enthusiasm for walking with me. On several days, after I let her off the lead at the start of the path off the road into the forest, she refused to go any further, whereas normally she relishes her walk. I must admit that the weather, even relatively early in the morning, has been oppressively hot, so I can’t completely blame her.

On the last couple of days she has spent a few minutes just standing looking at me walking on. She is completely unmoved by any amount of calling or whistling. When I gave up and attempted to walk back towards her to put her on the lead again, she simply turned around and trotted back home. So, I have lost the external incentive for my morning walk, and now it is a question of whether I have the discipline to go out anyway, by myself. I might try one more day with Lua, much earlier in the morning, although, to be honest, on the one morning I suggested that, she gave me one of her: ‘Have you completely lost your mind? It’s the middle of the night’ looks.

We did all go last Sunday, en famille, to a dammed-river reservoir ‘beach’ about a 35 minute drive away, which was very uncrowded (it did not officially open until 1 July), quite beautiful and great fun. There was a small children’s playground, a sand mini-football pitch, a huge clean sandpit, grass and vegetation, picnic tables, and a very pebbly beach, as well as a cafe-kiosk (that was not open yet) and clean toilets (that were). The river bed was equally pebbly, but the water was clear and cool. We all thoroughly enjoyed two or three late afternoon and early evening hours there, including a delicious picnic, until the sun set and we headed for home.

Apart from that, it’s been the usual cycle of playing, shopping and cooking. A week after arriving, we did our second big shop, going to Castelo Branco this time. This actually qualified as a day out for Bernice and myself, without the kids. We combined it with a couple of other errands – a guitar string for Micha’el (which we got right), a phone cover for Tslil (which we got wrong), and lunch at our favourite vegan restaurant, which every day offers a full set meal at lunchtime, including a main course comprising a tasting platter of four small portions.

This time, since the waitress spoke no English, the chef came out to explain the dishes. One of them was what he described as a traditional Portuguese dish comprising a cooked leaf in a dressing. He did not know the name of the leaf in English, but he explained that it is, in itself, quite bland, and the dressing makes the dish. The Portuguese name he gave sounded to me like ‘shparkosh’, and I tentatively asked if it was asparagus, but he assured me it was not. When it arrived, Bernice thought it looked like spinach or kale. In the dressing, it was very tasty.

A few days later, the kids’ near-neighbour, a very sweet, elderly lady who constantly brings them produce from her land, arrived with a huge bag of shredded leaf, which we realised was what we had been served at the restaurant. She explained that she has a special machine for shredding it very fine, since the leaves are very tough, and that it is cooked by boiling in water and used as the basis for a national dish, caldo verde, a soup or ‘green broth’ that often includes, in addition to onion, garlic and potato, a spicy pork sausage. Some research online convinced us that what we had was collard greens, which I see made their way to the Southern states where they were originally boiled in a broth and eaten by African-American slaves.

What is puzzling is that online, the Portuguese translation is given as ‘couve’, which is a (semantic) root that is used in cauliflower (couve-flor), brussels sprouts (couve de bruxelas) kohlrabi (couve-rábano) and so forth. I cannot find anything that sounds like what the chef told me was the name. I can only assume that it is a regional name.

The same neighbour who brought the collard greens, incidentally, has been plying us with figs (as well as plums and a couple of aubergines) since we arrived: large, ripe, sweet, bursting figs. Since only Tslil, myself and, we discover, Ollie, enjoy them, I am having a field day. They certainly add another layer of flavour and texture to my morning fruit salad and granola.

Back to our Castelo day. At the supermarket, Bernice and I divided, as usual. I shopped for the fresh fruit and vegetables, the nuts and dried fruits I use in making granola, and the fresh fish, while Bernice took on everything else. She covers more mileage than I do, but my cart is more fully laden at the end. Not that it’s a competition, you understand!

Just as I was finishing, Bernice came over to remind me that the last time (the first time) we had used this super, we had discovered at the checkout that we should have weighed, and printed out labels for, all of the items that we bought from dispensers (the loose nuts and dried fruit). It was quite embarrassing when we discovered this, and had to wait in mid-checkout while an assistant took these items and weighed and priced them, as the queue grew inexorably behind us.

Warned by Bernice, I now had to dig out these items, which were, of course, at the bottom of my very full cart. I then had to retrace my steps to the dispensers, and, for each item, find its particular dispenser, memorise the four-digit item code displayed there, go to the electronic scales (one on each counter), place the bag on the scale, punch in the code, then take the price-tag printout and stick it to the bag.

As I was finishing this for the six relevant items, I noticed, on the next counter, that all of the loose fruit and veg needed to be priced in the same way. This meant that I now had to juggle 90% of the items in my cart, praying that I didn’t miss anything buried under a mound of produce, then remember where the tray was that I had chosen the produce from, memorise the four-digit number, find the nearest electronic….you get the picture.

At some point in this process, I started musing whether the supermarket was offering its customers a service in this way, or exploiting us as unpaid labour. On the one hand, this method allows you to keep track of just how much each item is going to cost you. In addition, your checkout time is significantly reduced, and cashiers do not need to memorise dozens of codes.

On the other hand, even if you remember to weigh your items as you buy them, printing out your own price tags takes some time and effort. I genuinely cannot decide whether I regard it as a cunning ploy or a reasonable business policy. I will probably have to wait until our next trip, when, I hope, I will remember to weigh as I buy, to see how much of a bother it actually is, if you get it right the first time.

One way in which our shopping has been made easier is that I have discovered a list of kosher fish with their names in various European languages, produced by the KLBD (Kosher London Beth Din). Until now, I have had to google translate all of the names written (often barely legibly) on price stakes at the fish counter. This has often proved frustrating, for example when I do not recognise the name in English.

Bizarrely, the KLBD list is printed in alphabetical order of the English names, which is not much use for looking up Portuguese names. However, it was the work of only a few minutes to copy the list, paste into Excel, sort by Portuguese name alphabetical order, scale down the font and print out a list of 28 kosher fish that I can carry in my wallet. Of course, we have never seen more than four or five of them in any supermarket in this part of Portugal; however, we are now ready for any contingency. (If it is of interest to you, the list offers names for most European countries, and some destinations further afield from Britain.)

Which brings us more or less up to date. Meanwhile, our video chats are now with Raphael, for a change (and Esther). We see that his walking has come on, he is getting taller, and he says “Bye bye” when he’s had enough. All healthy developments.

And one more thing. All three of the boys enjoyed the sunshine and water in their garden(s) this week.