Let’s begin with a song, to wake us all up. Your starter for ten is: whose national anthem are these sentiments taken from?

Heroes of the sea, noble people,
Valiant and immortal nation,
Raise once again today
The splendour of ???????!
Among the haze of memory,
Oh Fatherland, one feels the voice
Of your distinguished forefathers,
That shall lead you on to victory!

To arms, to arms!
Over land, over sea,
To arms, to arms!
For the Fatherland, fight!
Against the cannons, march on, march on!

Let the echo of an offence
Be the sign for a comeback.

Ten points if you spotted this as the national anthem of quiet little Portugal. A bonus of twenty if you know the back story of how this became Portugal’s national anthem. No? Well, let me plug this gap in your education.

England and Portugal, as you may know, are the co-signatories of the oldest alliance still in force. The Treaty of Windsor was signed on 9 May, 1386, 638 years ago, and is still active today. However, despite the alliance, relations have not always been amicable between these two great erstwhile maritime powers and imperial nations.

In the mid-19^th Century, Portugal strove to consolidate its control of territories in Southern Africa, creating a ‘rose-coloured map’ of contiguous control of a large area of land linking its colonies of Mozambique and Angola, passing through what are now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, and essentially offering a Portuguese land route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. England disputed Portuguese claims to these territories, and eventually issued the British ultimatum in 1890.

This was a memorandum sent to the Portuguese Government by Lord Salisbury on 11 January 1890 in which he demanded the withdrawal of the Portuguese troops from the areas where Portuguese and British interests in Africa overlapped. It meant that the UK was now claiming sovereignty over territories, some of which had been claimed as Portuguese for centuries. Within a year or so, Portugal had, with scarcely a struggle, acquiesced to the demands, an action seen by many Portuguese as a national humiliation. This led ultimately to the fall of the government, and contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy 20 years later.

In response to the ultimatum, republican Portuguese composed a patriotic protest march, which was adopted, after a democratic government replaced the monarchy, as the national anthem.

All of which is merely an introduction to this week’s topic: a look at national anthems. If you want a hook to hang it on, consider the fact that the world will, over the next two weeks, be listening to a lot of national anthems, at the Paris Olympics. (Portugal’s anthem may not feature, since Portugal won its first gold medal at its 16^th Olympics, in 1984, and in the nine subsequent Games has won only another four.)

The Portuguese national anthem celebrates a glorious history, while wryly recognising that things have gone a bit downhill since then. “Portugal has not perished…Let the echo of an offence be the sign for a comeback”.

Compare that to Britain’s national anthem (especially the verses that never get sung).

God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the King!

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks…

…Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world o’er.

No recognition there that things have gone downhill! Rather a declaration that, with Charles on his throne, and God on their (our?) side, the British will conquer all enemies and, simultaneously, teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Our next exhibit is the French national anthem. Composed overnight during the French revolution, and reflecting the invasion of France by Prussian and Austrian armies, it does not pull its punches.

Arise, children of the Fatherland
Our day of glory has arrived
Against us the bloody flag of tyranny
is raised; the bloody flag is raised.
Do you hear, in the countryside
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They’re coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons, your comrades!

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions
Let’s march, let’s march
That their impure blood
Should water our fields.

Banned outright from 1804-1830, for its revolutionary associations, it was officially reinstated only in 1879.

Which brings us to the American national anthem, and a nuanced change. The war and bloodshed are confined here to the country’s foundational struggle, like La Marseillaise but unlike God Save the King or A Portuguesa. However, The Star-Spangled Banner is written from the perspective of a time in the immediate wake of the struggle for independence. The struggles are all in the past. The anthem celebrates the golden age.

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Bosnia and Herzegovina, as befits a country created artificially as an amalgam of various ethnic groupings, has been unable, to date, to reach consensus on a suitable lyric, and so their anthem is officially wordless. However, the following unofficial lyrics are sometimes sung. You will note that they are carefully uncontroversial. Despite that, even the tune is not universally accepted, with Bosniaks generally liking the national anthem, Croats being ambivalent towards it, and Serbs overwhelmingly disliking it,even booing it at some performances

You’re the light of the soul
Eternal fire’s flame
Mother of ours, o land of Bosnia
I belong to you

The beautiful blue sky
Of Herzegovina
In the heart are your rivers
Your mountains

Proud and glorious
Land of ancestors
You shall live in our hearts
Ever more

Generations of yours
Show up as one
We go into the future
Together!

Which brings us, finally, to an anthem that is, I suspect, unlike any other. I have brought only a few examples here, but many others that I have read in preparing this post tread the same well-worn path: celebrating the bloody foundation, either at the time (as it were) – La Marseillaise – or the day after (as it were) – The Star-Spangled Banner – or declaring the justice of the continuing struggle – La Portuguesa, God Save the King – or celebrating the beauty and greatness of the country – the as yet untitled anthem of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Let us look, now, at the Israeli national anthem.

As long as in the heart, within,
The Jewish soul yearns,
And towards the ends of the east,
An eye gazes toward Zion,

Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our own land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Consider the following.

Hatikva (The Hope) was written as a poem by Naftali Herz Imber in 1878, 70 years before the state was founded. After he came from Poland to Eretz Yisrael, the poem struck a chord with the pioneers, and, in 1887, Shmuel Cohen sang the poem using a melody he knew from Romania. The song then spread rapidly throughout the Zionist communities of Eretz Yisrael, and was eventually adopted as the anthem of the Zionist movement in 1933.

What makes this anthem unusual is that it reflects neither on the qualities of the country nor on the struggle for independence. In the only verse that has been retained since its adoption as the official anthem of Israel there is no fulfilment, not even any genuine anticipation; there is, instead, hope. The only emotion expressed is hope; the ‘triumph’ is nothing more than the fact that this hope is not yet lost. While it is understandable that, in the uncertainty of the state’s early years, this emotion may have resonated with a population engaged daily with creating a state from nothing, it is, perhaps, a little surprising that this unfulfilled note was not ‘updated’ after the Six-Day War in 1967, when even Zion and Jerusalem were suddenly in our hands.

Listen to the uncertainty in this lyric:
“As long as…” and no longer.
“Our hope is not yet lost”; not yet, but it could be, at any moment.

It strikes me that this is a lyric that has become more resonant, again, since 7 October, when we woke up to the realisation that to be a free people in our own land is still as much an aspiration as a reality. While hostages languish in subterranean dungeons in Gaza, while tens of thousands of citizens in the North have no prospect of returning to their homes, many of which have been damaged by rocket fire, while tens of thousands of reservists face another tour of duty that wrenches them from their families and their livelihoods, talk of being a free nation in our own land seems, once again, as much a dream as a reality.

Hatikvah is an expression of yearning for becoming, not a celebration of being. As such, it seems to me profoundly Jewish, and profoundly diasporic. It is in a minor key (a rarity for a national anthem), cut from the same cloth as the image of the fiddler precariously perched on the roof. (Any excuse to watch that opening monologue.) In the good times, the aspiration expressed in Hatikvah can be inspirational. In the less good times, it can sometimes seem melancholic. Having been profoundly moved by it throughout my life, I still yearn for the day when, with the entire Jewish population returned to Zion, and Israel living at peace and in prosperity with its neighbours and itself, the Knesset will vote unanimously to replace the no-longer-relevant Hatikvah with a new, celebratory, national anthem, in a major key. If that ever happens, I shall miss it terribly. However, rereading the vision of a future Israel that I have just painted, I don’t see Hatikvah becoming outdated any time soon.

Sorting through my store cupboard of potential topics, I see that I still have a few odds and ends from our trip, so, for the purposes of this week’s post, my heart is still in the West (of the Old World, you understand).

First, an epiphany for Micha’el. (If you’re not tech-minded, feel free to jump to the next paragraph.) One of our annual pleasures is asking Micha’el what he would like for a birthday present, because almost every year he asks for something which, until that moment, we had not realised existed. This year was no exception. He asked for (I do hope I get this right) a DIY ergonomic, split keyboard kit (specifically a Dactyl manuform iterated and modifiable open-source design). Once he had shown us the idea online it made a lot more sense, and once he had explained the cost of an off-the-shelf product, his desire to take the DIY route also made a lot more sense. DIY in this case means, among other things, 3D-printing the keyboard and soldering the mechanical keys. We look forward to seeing the final result when we next visit. Meanwhile, here’s an illustration using a Qwerty layout. (Micha’el is going to try using Halmak.) Here endeth my impersonation of someone tech-savvy (a term that is probably, as someone will doubtless point out, forty years out of date).

All of this is only a prologue to Micha’el’s early Chanukah present. His birthday present from Tslil was a punchbag (or, more accurately, a heavy kick-boxing bag). He planned to suspend this from a bracket arm attached to the solid wall of the outhouse/shed. He fashioned an excellent bracket from an old bicycle fork and then started drilling the holes in the wall. When I realised that over an hour’s work had resulted in one-and-a-half holes, and a considerable sweat, the penny dropped that Micha’el did not possess a hammer drill. When I questioned him about this, he said, reasonably enough, that it had never achieved a high enough position on his list of priorities.

I explained that that was because he had never used a hammer drill, and, after a brief conversation, Bernice and I offered him an early Chanukah present. Fortunately, thanks to Amazon Germany, whose service to Portugal is very fast, the drill arrived a day or two before we left. This was when I discovered that Micha’el had not ordered hammer drill bits; indeed, he had not realised that he needed different bits. Fortunately, his local hardware store stocked them, and so I was able to witness the moment of epiphany, when Micha’el first drilled into the wall with the correct tool. It was, as I suspect it is for anyone who has long struggled to penetrate a wall with a rotary drill, a moment as powerful as hearing Verdi’s Requiem for the first time. His whoops of delight were well worth the cost of the drill.

On the subject of presents, Ollie and Tao received a joint gift of a bumper bundle of books, among which was one that I have subsequently been thinking about a lot. The book is entitled Where’s the Poo?. The reader is challenged on every page to “search for six very special poos in every scene”. For the benefit of those of you who had managed to get through life until now without being aware of the book, I’ll pause here for a moment to give you time to read that sentence again.

My initial reaction when I looked at the book was one of extreme discomfort. Since I don’t think of myself as a prude or particularly Victorian in my attitudes, I was curious as to why I found it so distasteful. Having given a great deal of thought to the matter (conceivably an unwarranted amount), I have come to certain conclusions that I would like to share with you.

First, there is the fact that the concept of the book (searching for something hidden in plain sight in a very ‘busy’ pictorial scene) is shamelessly copied from the Where’s Waldo books. In this case, even the style of drawing and the palate used seem to me modelled on Waldo. The book makes no attempt to develop the concept at all; it simply plagiarises it.

Second, the premise of the book, that poos with distinct characters and appearance (an Elvis poo with shades and pompadour, a Queenie poo with a crown) wander around shopping malls and airports once they have been flushed, is clearly ludicrous. However, the book does not attempt to develop the potential humour in that situation at all. Everything is presented in a serious and informative tone.

Whereas many children’s books operate simultaneously at two levels, designed to appeal equally but differently to the child being read to and the adult reading, Where’s the Poo? Is completely flat and one-dimensional.

All of the ‘humour’ lies in the bad taste. This is, for me, a disturbing trend in modern children’s fiction: the introduction of scatology as a substitute for humour. Let me emphasise: this is not scatological humour – it is not jokes based on scatology; it is rather scatology used as humorous in itself. There is nothing clever, or funny, or witty, in saying:”Poo!”

The reason why children find saying “Poo!” funny, and exciting, is because they know it is dangerous and forbidden. Where’s the Poo? removes all of that excitement, danger and humour, by making the adult complicit in the seditious act. For an adult to share this book with a child is to deprive the child of an important experience of childhood rebellion. This book should be passed secretly from older to younger child, and hidden between the mattress and the bedsprings, not read out to the child by an adult.

For some reason that I cannot fathom, neither Micha’el nor Bernice share my discomfort. They both enjoyed searching for the poos with Tao. Here endeth the rant.

Let me end with a less controversial topic. On one of our major supermarket visits on this trip, at the checkout the cashier, who spoke good English, asked me whether we had a cartão de poupança or savings card. When I said that we didn’t, she urged me to get one, because it could save us 10% of our bill. Since that seemed a significant saving, I told Bernice that, next time we came, I would start by enquiring about the card at the main desk.

This I duly did, or would have done, had there been anyone at the main desk. I pointed this out to a cashier, who put out a call for an English speaker, and, within a minute, a young male shelf-filler arrived, and explained to me that “My colleague will return in 20 minutes.” Sure enough, when I interrupted my shopping to check, there was a woman on the desk. I managed to explain to her what I wanted, principally by pointing to the poster advertising programa geração +. Some 15 minutes later, when she had put into her computer all of my passport details, and my NIF (a financial identity number that serves as the standard ID in Portugal), she handed me a card with a barcode, and explained that all I had to do was to present the card to the cashier before checkout. In addition, she gave me a second strip of plastic with perforations that made it easy to split it into three mini-cards, each of which contained the same barcode. This enables families to share a card. There you have another example of a simple, smart idea that has been adopted in one country but not another.

Presenting the card worked perfectly. Unfortunately, when I looked at the final bill, I saw that no reduction had been given. When I questioned the cashier about this, she explained that I was not eligible for the geriatrics’ card, because I wasn’t old enough. I wondered whether, given the aging population in rural Portugal, the age of eligibility was perhaps 75, but, anyway, I asked. When she told me the age of eligibility was 65, I thanked her for making my day and returned to the main desk to get my card amended.

That was quickly done. However, when I returned to the cashier to request a new bill and a refund, she said that the card wasn’t eligible. When I asked why, I thought that the reason she gave was that the card only becomes active after 10 days, and this was only the 9^th day. Since it wasn’t the 9^th day – I had only had the card 5 minutes – I realised I was missing something. Eventually, after carefully rereading the poster, I realised the truth. The card can be used to obtain a 10% discount only on the 10^th of each month, and that day was, as luck would have it, the 9^th.

So we now have another card, this one declaring not, as I at first thought, that we are geriatrics, but, rather, that we belong to Generation +, which sounds rather good – almost as good as being mistaken for being under 65. I have added this card to the customer loyalty card we obtained when we bought the fixtures and materials for our bathroom renovation a couple of years ago. The fact is that these are the small increments by which I persuade myself that we are something a little more than ‘tourists’, if considerably less than ‘locals’, in Penamacor.

And that really is the end of this trip to Portugal. Next week, I suspect my attention will turn back to Israel, in some form or other. Until then, I wish those of you who are fasting today an easy and meaningful fast.

Until yesterday evening, I thought I knew what the main topic of today’s post was going to be…and then life, as it has a habit of doing, got in the way. The result is that this week’s offering is very different from what I had planned…or maybe not. I will leave it up to you to decide whether this results in a happy ending.

I had planned to talk about the domestic pleasures of our last days in Portugal. I particularly admired Tslil and Micha’el’s masterstroke – the decision to make Ollie’s birthday party a pizza party, and kill two birds with one oven stone. The morning of his birthday was dedicated to streamers, balloons, cards and presents, all of which proved very successful, both Ollie’s birthday presents and Tao’s un-birthday presents.

At Tslil’s suggestion, we gave Ollie a kitchen play set, comprising an ‘electric’ hob, frying pan, saucepan, a teapot, crockery and cutlery, as well as a selection of food items that makes for a limited and rather unbalanced restaurant menu: three different kinds of cracker, three different doughnuts, and one fried egg. This means that whoever Ollie, or Tao, is serving first is expected to eat their fried egg very quickly, so that the kitchen can fill the next order.

The hob requires batteries, to power the glowing light of the ‘element’ and to provide sound effects. Much to everyone’s relief, the sound is no more dramatic or intrusive than a convincing imitation of water boiling. I am the only one inconvenienced by this, or perhaps I should say ‘convenienced’, since it means I get the urge to go to the toilet even more frequently than usual.

Then, in the early evening, when the weather was a little cooler, the shaded backyard was a very pleasant pizza piazza. As always, the whole family got involved with the various stages of pizza preparation, and then we enjoyed a relaxed and delicious family supper, of which one of the highlights was a birthday greetings video Esther sent that Raphael had recorded for Ollie earlier. Ollie and Raphael blowing kisses to each other was enough to melt the cheese on the pizza, let alone all of the adults’ hearts.

After our last Shabbat together, which was, as always, very special, we all went to a reservoir beach on Sunday (yesterday, as I write). Only a 20-minute drive north from Penamacor, the site nestles among the tree-covered slopes of the foothills of the Sierra de Malcata national park. The reservoir itself is about 2 kilometres long and 500 metres across, and the beach occupies a triangular promontory that extends 200 metres into the reservoir. Most of the area is a grassy slope, with a stretch of sand at one point.

On one side of the promontory is a small children’s playground and a pizza café and bar, plus a jetty, at the end of which is a floating platform that features a very small infants’ paddling pool, a larger children’s pool and a small diving board. Off the jetty the water is several metres deep.

On the other side is a mooring for pedalos that are available for hire. Grandpa went out with Tao, who demonstrated a confident and capable hand on the tiller, managing to steer us away from crocodiles and marauding pirates. Micha’el then managed to persuade the delightful young man in charge to let him go out with Olly, who thoroughly enjoyed his short voyage, but very wisely held on to Abba’s hand and to the guard rail the whole time, while Nana hid her face in her hands and prayed very hard.

After both younger generations had worked up an appetite in the pools we all enjoyed a picnic tea with sandwiches made with the last of Grandpa’s rolls and rye bread. Then it was time for sandcastles, and burying Tao in the sand. Eventually, at around 7:45, we packed up and headed home, where I discovered that I was not wearing my wedding ring. I remembered taking it off to wash before the picnic, and I assumed I had put it in my trouser pocket. However, I soon established that it was in none of my pockets. It was then that I remembered that I had stupidly put it down on the picnic blanket, rather than in my pocket, and I had no recollection of putting it on again. It is, anyway, too tight a fit to slip off.

Even though I knew it was pointless, I searched the car. Bernice then searched the car, although I made her promise that if she found the ring there she would pretend that she had picked it up from the picnic blanket and not told me, as a practical joke. When I undressed last night, I searched all of my clothes thoroughly, then shook them all thoroughly, but with no success. I went to bed last night having decided that I would drive back to the beach this (Monday) morning, arriving as soon as it opened at 9AM, and search the area of the grass where we had picnicked.

So, this morning Lua and I had an earlier and rather shorter walk than usual, and I was indeed able to arrive at the beach just after 9 o’clock, feeling not very hopeful and not at all expectant of a good result. The whole area was completely deserted, and I started combing through the grass around where we had been sitting. Automatic sprinklers water the grass early every morning, so it was sodden, which didn’t make the search any easier.

After twenty minutes of searching in ever larger circles, I went down to the sand and combed through the area where I had dug a trench for Tao. I then worked my way down to where Tslil and Tao had run with the picnic blanket streaming out behind them. Finally, I returned to the area where we had sat. I made deals with bees: “The third flower you settle on will be where the ring is hiding in the grass.” I spun round with my eyes closed, walked four paces forward, turned left, walked another two paces, and looked down, hoping to see the ring gleaming in the grass.

I returned to the spot where I was fairly confident I had set the ring down on the blanket and scoured a circular area with a 30-centimetre radius as thoroughly as I could. I then walked to where we had parked the car the previous day and searched the unpaved area there. At this point, having spent in all 40 minutes searching, I accepted that I would not find the ring.

I walked back to my car and started the engine, feeling rather despondent. It’s not that my ring is particularly valuable. It is a thin, plain band of 9-carat gold that Bernice paid ₤3.50 for in 1972. Even allowing for inflation, the equivalent today is only about ₤35, or 165 shekels. While that was about all we could afford back then, I do accept that it is a modest sum. However, the sentimental value is of course very great.

And yet…As I drove, I started thinking, and, by the time I arrived back in Penamacor, I realised that this band of gold represented how precious is the life Bernice and I have made together over the last (very nearly) 52 years, but it was not in itself the preciousness of that life. What is truly valuable is the bond between us and the life and family that we have built together. Having spent the last month with the Portugal branch of the family, I don’t really need reminding about what is truly valuable. In the same way, returning tomorrow to Israel and to the other branch, I again won’t need any reminder.

As we steel ourselves for the inevitable downsizing that will have to accompany any move that we make to Zichron, the loss of my ring is a useful reminder that what we will be parting with does not measure up to what we will be gaining by being able to spend more time with Esther, Maayan and Raphael.

So, don’t you think that’s really a happy, 24-carat ending?

In addition to all of the expected pleasures, our life in Penamacor sometimes brings completely unexpected satisfactions, one of which I experienced last week.

Olly, in his taste for stories and songs, is very much a creature of habit. Most days, at some point, he asks, or agrees, to sit on my lap for songs. There are six or seven songs that I sing to him, all of them including various actions. However, the decisions as to the choice of songs and their running order are firmly in Olly’s hands. This can be quite challenging, since his vocabulary is still limited, However, he usually finds a way to make himself understood.

“Wheel”, for example is a word Olly only acquired last week but already drops casually into his conversation as if he had mastered it months ago. When he asked for “Wheel’ today, I initially, understandably, but mistakenly, assumed he was asking for “The wheels on the bus”, which is actually more often one of Bernice’s songs than one of mine. However, when I launched into that, and was met by a firm rejection in the form of a dismissive shake of the head, I thought again and eventually realised Olly wanted “Horsey, horsey, don’t you stop”, which includes a particularly extravagant rotating of my knees, on which he is precariously balanced, to accompany the line “And your wheels go round”.

When we are not working through those English songs, Olly often wants to thumb through the Israeli children’s classic “מאה שירים ראשונים” (100 First Songs) a collection of nursery songs and Israeli folk songs that our children’s missed out on in their own (English-language) first years. This is, for Bernice and myself, a doubly evocative book. First, it is illustrated by Dosh, who was, for the first decades of Israel’s existence, the national daily caricaturist, capturing the national spirit very accurately over the years.

For anyone who came of age in a Zionist movement in the 60s, Srulik (Dosh’s Israeli version of Uncle Sam or John Bull) is a very familiar figure.

Equally familiar are many of the songs in the book, because a lot of them are ones we sang and danced to in Hanoar Hatzioni in the 60s. In those halcyon days – now 60 years ago – we sang with considerably more enthusiasm than accuracy. It was in these years that I first developed the technique of fudging the words of songs I did not know the words of. This was a technique that I perfected when I was required, as a resident of Wales and a teacher in a comprehensive school, to join in the singing of the Welsh national anthem. I was fairly confident about the first three words, but from there on I was more or less completely at sea. If I show you the first two lines, you will understand that I was in a scarcely better position on those rare occasions when I had the words in front of me.

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi,
Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri.

Fortunately, in Wales, the national anthem is always sung with tremendous gusto, and so the gibberish of my tuneful rendition always went unnoticed.

The other day, while he was thumbing through the songbook, Olly stopped at Zemer, Zemer Lach: a very familiar song from the movement days. As I sang it to him,. I was amazed to discover that the remembered gibberish of 60 years ago was actually a coherent and fully comprehensible verse. In an instant, the mystery was solved. It is fair to say that this mystery had not kept me awake many nights in the intervening years, but nevertheless I felt a very satisfying sense of closure.

The same experience happened later with Al Sfat Yam Kinneret. I plan to flick through the entire book before we leave. Who knows what other secrets my own personal Rosetta Stone will reveal?

Incidentally, if the early 1970s British cultural reference in this week’s title escapes you, you can listen here. I won’t pretend it’s up there with Schubert lieder; indeed, part of me regards it now (and regarded it then, to be honest) as a waste of Georgie Fame and Alan Price’s not inconsiderable talents, but it does, for some of us, evoke a moment in time.

Back to 2024 and Portugal. On Sunday this week, Bernice and I took the boys out for the day. We went to Castelo Branco, to a gymboree. Tslil had kindly phoned ahead, to ensure that they would be open on Sunday, and established that they were open from 10:00 till 12:30, at which time they had a private block booking. Thanks to Bernice’s magnificent powers of organisation and shepherding, we drove off at 9:17, only two minutes behind schedule, having negotiated the morning preparations with no voice raised (by child or adult), no tear shed (by child or adult), everyone having visited the bathroom and performed successfully (you get the picture). Bernice, I need hardly explain, has no idea where the humour lies in Michael McIntyre’s Leaving the House routine.

It was an uneventful journey, punctuated only by a couple of small savoury treats to keep the boys going, and by Tao’s repeated: “Are we nearly there yet?” It is a mystery to me how this exact wording is passed down from one cohort of children to the next, through the generations. Who teaches them these things?

When we arrived at the industrial estate where the gymboree was located in a huge warehouse, we took a little time to find the place, since it was singularly under-signed, but, once we did, we were very impressed. More accurately, I was very impressed, largely because I had very deliberately tempered my expectations in advance. To achieve that, I had simply imagined what the experience would be like if we were going to a gymboree in Israel.

How did the reality outshine my expectations? Let me count the ways. First, rather than 437 children fighting over the equipment, there were about 15 children, all well behaved and quietly spoken. Then, the equipment looked not only very sturdily built and thoroughly cushioned, but also almost brand new. In addition, three young and very alert staff constantly patrolled the play area, anticipating problems and ensuring safety and order. There was also a complete absence of vending machines offering junk food and drinks for sale. Instead, there was a constantly refilled jug of water and beakers on offer, with the staff suggesting to children that they stop for a drink. Finally, and most welcome of all, the inevitable background music was played at a volume that still allowed conversation in a normal speaking voice.

As for the equipment, it was aimed ideally at children a year or two older than Tao, but he managed to handle almost everything, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time for all of two hours. He repeatedly came down the vertiginous tube-slide that caused Nana almost to pass out when she first saw it; He mastered the climbing walls. He repeatedly ‘swam’ around the foam cube pit and bounced on the trampolines.

After a little while, Olly ventured in and, although he could not be tempted onto any of the equipment, unsurprisingly, he enjoyed running around on the squelchy foam mattresses and having his feel tickled on the artificial grass floor. After expending prodigious amounts of energy, the boys retired together to the playhouse where they cooked up a magnificent meal in the play kitchen.

One more pleasant surprise awaited us. Tslil had been quoted a price of EUR7.50 per child per hour, which we thought was a little expensive. In the event, we were charged nothing for Olly, and for Tao we paid EUR10.00 in total, for just under two hours of unmitigated fun.

Our plan was to drive from there to a vegan café we have eaten in before, that offers simple fare that the boys would enjoy. However, when I checked online I found they were closed on Sunday. Fortunately, belt and braces Bernice had brought enough food for a modest picnic, and so we decided to go to the City Park, which we know well. It offers shade under trees, an excellent adventure playground, and, we also knew, a café, that might offer something for the boys.

In the event, despite considerable language challenges, we were able to procure cheese toasties and strawberry juice for the boys, and a couple of excellent chilled beers for Bernice and myself, and to spend a little time playing in the playground.

On the drive home, both boys, unsurprisingly, fell asleep very quickly, while I, very surprisingly, didn’t. This was as well since I was driving. 45 minutes later, we arrived home, after an action-packed day, throughout which both children and adults behaved impeccably, and a thoroughly good time was had by all.

By the time you read this, we will have, at most, seven more days to enjoy with the family here. Highlights to come include Olly’s birthday celebrations and – if Micha’el, Tslil and Tao can be persuaded to strut their stuff – a home-made pizza evening. I can hardly wait.

To be honest, not much has happened since we last spoke. This week’s post is going to consist of nothing more portentous than a few random observations about our life here.

We’ve been to the ‘big’ super a couple of times. On each occasion, we have been lucky enough to be checked out by the same cashier: a speedy and efficient young woman whose English is excellent. I have actually more or less mastered ‘check-out Portuguese’. I don’t speak it very well, but I can understand such hardy perennials as: ‘Do you require a tax invoice?’, “Will you be needing any bags?’ and ‘Do you want the receipt sent to your mobile number?’ Fortunately, all these questions require of me by way of response is ‘Nao’, ‘Sim. Dois, por favor.’ And ‘Nao’, respectively, all of which I can just about manage, provided I have had enough sleep the night before.

However, since there is always the risk that a cashier may think of a new question to ask, it is much less nerve-wracking to conduct any negotiations in English. This is especially true since we typically have two shopping trolleys that together contain about ten times more items than anyone else in the shop is buying. So the last thing we want to do is hold up the queue any longer than is absolutely necessary.

I’m not sure what it is about rural Portuguese. They seem to prefer a daily shop to a weekly shop. It takes Bernice back over 65 years, to going down Ridley Road market in Hackney every day with her grandmother, to buy fresh bread, fruit and veg, fish and meat.

Every time we arrive, it takes us a little while to adjust to shopping, cooking and baking for a family of six, rather than for two retirees, one of whom has virtually given up on sweet things, and the other of whom perplexingly finds himself, as he gets older, ever more able to exercise self-control where food is concerned.

At home, for example, I make a batch of granola, and it lasts me over three weeks. In Penamacor, I have to prepare it every six days or so. As for my spelt sourdough crackers, I barely have time to let them cool and pack them away in the Tupperware before it is time to bake another batch. With both the granola and the crackers, Olly is now a fully fledged member of the family, and he is definitely a boy who enjoys his food.

Since each batch of crackers take a cup-and-a-half of sourdough starter, I find myself feeding my starter twice a day, rather than once a week, as at home, and keeping it out all the time, rather than keeping it in the fridge and ‘waking it up’ a day before I need it.

This week has also marked a milestone in the slow decline of Bernice and myself. As I know I have mentioned before, probably more than once, the main street of Penamacor runs along a valley, with streets running up the steep incline each side. Our house is situated two-thirds of the way up a street that climbs straight up one of these inclines. Strolling down to the centre is a little vertiginous, but an easy walk. Climbing back up, on the other hand, is a challenge.

The other day, we were planning to take Olly in his buggy for a walk to the centre, to do a little shopping in the China shop for various household items. Olly’s buggy (which was, of course, originally Tao’s) was one of the first purchases we made after the kids bought land in Portugal. It is an all-terrain buggy, with independent suspension and two modes: urban and country. While it was not cheap, it has proven a very good buy, not only able to handle rough terrain, but also coping well with the cobbled streets of Penamacor.

However, it is a very heavy piece of equipment. Pushing it uphill is a real challenge, one which I surrendered to Bernice some time ago. This last week, when we were planning to go to the centre, Bernice suggested I drive down to the centre (about half a kilometre), park in the central car park and start shopping. Meanwhile, she would walk down with Ollie in the buggy and meet me. When we had finished our shopping, we would all drive home. She was prepared to admit that we were (how kind she is: actually, ‘she was’ rather than ‘we were’) getting too old to push the buggy up the hill.

It wasn’t until we had reached the last stage of executing this plan that I realised how neatly Bernice had stitched me up. It was true that she was now spared pushing the buggy up the hill. I, on the other hand, had to perform three challenging actions. First, I had to fold up the buggy. This is, of course, a simple two-step operation. At least in the instruction booklet and the online video it is simple. You pick up the buggy by the plastic handle and it neatly folds in half as you pick it up. If it is at all recalcitrant, a simple flick of the wrist is all that is needed. I find that, once I have picked up the buggy, I am concentrating so hard on avoiding toppling over under its weight that I cannot focus on flicking my wrist.

Once I had finally managed to close the buggy, I then had to manoeuvre it into the hatch of our car. Fortunately, the Opel Astra has quite a deep boot, so it was theoretically possible to fit the buggy in. However, this required what I believe weightlifters refer to as a deadlift, followed by extending my arms out in front. The sense of achievement when I finally closed the boot on the buggy almost compensated for the humiliation of it taking me two attempts.

When we left Israel, I was reflecting how fortuitous our timing was, in sporting terms. We were moving two hours closer to the match times of the T20 World Cup. (If you need to ask, there’s no point in telling you. However, Americans should be warned that they may need to start boning up on their cricket, which will be played in the 2028 Olympics on the West Coast; I suspect the USA may feature quite prominently.)

We were also moving into the time zone of Wimbledon, which actually started today (Monday). I’m hoping I will at least be able to catch some evening highlights.

I also fondly imagined I was being wise in escaping Israel’s obsession with the Euros. (If you need to ask, there’s no point in telling you.) However, on reflection, if you are planning to escape the Euros, Portugal is probably not the smartest destination. Ten days ago, on Shabbat, our neighbour was having the outside of his house painted. The painters had their truck radio on full blast as they worked, and I was therefore left in no doubt that Portugal had gone 2-0 up, although I did not, at the time, realise that it was as the result of an own goal from Turkey’s Samet Akaydin. You will, perhaps, be interested, if not surprised, to learn that the Portuguese radio commentator was as excessive in his repeated screaming of ‘Go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-lo!’ for that fiasco as he would have been had Ronaldo scissor-kicked the ball into the goal from the halfway line.

In addition to the celebrations late into the night after every Portuguese victory, we have had two days of celebration marking St Peter’s Day. From the side of the house that our bedroom is on, we heard hardly anything of the popular concert in the town square, but Micha’el, Tslil and the boys sleep on the other side, and Tslil says it went on into the small hours on Saturday night.

And this is the everyday substance of our every day here. We find, as always to our shock, that we are already halfway through our four weeks here. If Ollie’s speech continues to develop at the rate it has since we arrived (nothing to do with us), he’ll be conversing normally by the time we leave. If Tao continues to grow at the rate he seems to have grown since we arrived (again, not our doing), then I won’t have to bend down to kiss him goodbye. And if life continues for the next two weeks in just as exciting a way as it has progressed for the first two weeks, then this will have been another great trip.