A confession: I had to go online just now, to check on a mainstream news site how many days it now is since October 7, 2023. It is 451. That I had to go online to check is confirmation to me that I no longer carry in my head and my heart, all day every day, the scale of the tragedy of October 7. I am no longer continually reminded of the continuing suffering of those of the 100 hostages not yet returned by Hamas who are still alive, and the continuing suffering of the families of all of the 100, alive and murdered, and the continuing trauma of all those injured on October 7 and since then, and their families, and the continuing trauma of all those not physically injured, but still caught up in, and witness to, the horrific events of October 7, and their families.

There are those who will tell you that this amnesia, whether at some level elective or subconscious, is natural: as human beings, continuing to live, we have to ‘move on’. To which the Israeli answer is: “How can you move on when so many of your brothers and sisters don’t have that privilege?”

There has undoubtedly been a certain lifting of spirits in Israel in the last two months. The brilliance, effectiveness, and fundamental morality of the pager attack on Hizbollah operatives; the continued assassinations of key Hamas and Hizbollah figures; the humiliation of Hizbollah; the overnight destruction of the Syrian military threat, at no loss; Israeli dominance over the skies of Syria and Iran; all of these have helped to restore a certain spring to the step of the Israeli in the street.

Yet at the same time the roller-coaster ride of the hostage negotiations has continued, and, even now, none of us can feel at all confident that a deal will be struck. Many of us admit that we also do not know whether we feel that a deal should be struck, if its terms are the mass release of terrorists with blood on their hands. Speaking for myself, I thank God that I am not the person who may, ultimately, be faced with the decision whether or not to accept a deal on such dreadful terms.

Of course, the families strive every day to keep the hostages in the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. The media, too, continue to keep the story front and centre: even now, after 451 days, every day on the radio family members of hostages are interviewed about their understanding of developments, about how they are coping, and about the hundred and one ways in which their family’s hostage is exceptional and normal. At this stage, there are radio show hosts and relatives of hostages who have built a personal rapport that can be heard on air.

Into the uncertainty of the hostage situation, the Israeli Ministry of Health last week delivered its report entitled “The State of Israel’s Submission to the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment Report on hostage-taking as torture: legal frameworks, supporting victims and families, and strengthening global response”. Among its other impacts, the report makes it clear that talk of time running out for those hostages that remain alive is not hyperbole. Here we have an undeniable, and undeniably immediate, humanitarian crisis.

If you want to understand the Israeli, indeed the Jewish, approach to life, you need look no further than this report. Its first four pages cover “Aspects of neglect, ill-treatment, torture and humiliation of the returned hostages and their consequences on their physical and mental health”. The 19 paragraphs cover the following topic areas:

• Physical and sexual violence against men, women and children (1 paragraph);
• Torture by withholding medical treatment or causing intentional pain during treatment (3 paragraphs);
• Starvation, poor nutrition and holding of hostages in harsh sanitary conditions (5 paragraphs);
• Psychological abuse of the hostages (10 paragraphs).

The last page comprises an annex giving details of specific examples of the treatment covered in the first four pages.

So far, the report reads as an impassioned, if dispassionate, attempt to confront the United Nations with the facts of the inhumanity of Hamas’ treatment of the hostages.

Between these two sections is a one-page section that has a completely different purpose. It seeks to find, in this darkest of accounts of man’s inhumanity to man, some ray of light. The section is entitled: “Beneficial Therapeutic Models for Returned hostages – Insights from the Field” and its six paragraphs offer general guidelines to any other national health service unfortunate enough to find itself confronting a similar situation.

It is easy, but, I believe, careless, to overlook the significance of this section. Out of the depths of the horror of this situation, Israel’s Ministry of Health has identified, and exploited, an opportunity to offer just a little light and hope to a humanity that may, sadly, face similarly unimaginable situations in the future.

We are currently moving towards the end of Chanukah. In the words of the title of Raphael’s favourite Chanukah song: Banu choshech l’garesh – ‘We have come to drive out darkness’. If, may it be when, the hostages are returned to the bosom of their families, we know that the treatment they receive from the first day of their return will be built on the lessons learned from the treatment the hostages returned almost 400 days ago received. As a nation, Israel is magnificent at playing the hand that it has been dealt.

However the hostage situation plays out, there are more than 1,815 people whose families will never welcome them back alive. Even more so than for the hostages, as the days turn into months and now well over a year, the challenge of keeping alive the memory of those fallen becomes greater and greater. Recently, I have become aware of two very similar initiatives to keep the flame of the memory of these 1,815 burning.

The first is on Reshet Bet, the news and current affairs station of the national broadcaster. Every day, multiple programs are interrupted by a one- or two-minute slot that features one of the fallen. It gives their name, cherry-picks a few of their defining characteristics and often adds an audio clip of the person talking or singing or joking.  

The second, very similar, is designed for smartphone display. Our niece posts one of the brief sketches every day. Over the background of a photograph of the person is printed a brief portrait, again focusing on a handful of vivid details.

In both cases, the person focussed on emerges as a unique and very special person, while, at the same time, being a very normal person. This recognition of the uniqueness in the normal, the specialness in the mundane, is, I would argue, part of the essence of our humanity. Each of these 1,815 people is irreplaceable, obviously to their family and friends, but also to anyone who cares about humanity.

One last observation, one which I have made before. Israel has a very small and close-knit population. Repeatedly, radio hosts have revealed that one of the previous day’s fallen was someone known to them personally. Himmelfarb High School, a prestigious Jerusalem religious Zionist high school, with an annual intake of about 140 boys, has, today, lost its tenth alumnus, Staff Sergeant Yuval Shoham, by all accounts another extraordinary, ordinary, young man. In any country, in any war, every fallen soldier is someone’s son or daughter. However, in Israel, he or she is much more likely to be the son or daughter of someone you know, or your neighbour knows, or your doctor knows, or the guy who sits behind you in shul knows.

A glance at the calendar this week confirms that, whichever side of the Judeo-Christian alliance (or, if you prefer, divide) you stand on, you’re liable, if you’re not careful, to be within range of the season of giving presents this week. It may be doughnuts or mince pies you’re committing to limiting yourself to one of. You may be delaying until the last minute any attempt to clean the year-old wax off the chanukiya or a year’s accumulated dust off the synthetic tree. Either way, you’re almost certainly failing to come up with one good present idea…or, alternatively, eight.

Personally, I never find buying gifts for someone else easy. By the time you know the recipient well enough to be confident about what they would like, you have already probably bought them all the things that you are sure they will like. As thinking of a suitable gift gets easier and easier, it gets more and more difficult to find something you haven’t previously thought of.

One would expect that this is one of the areas where artificial intelligence would be able to help out. Feed in the name and ID number of the recipient, define an acceptable price range, and AI should be able to come up with a surefire suggestion or two for the gift that will light up your loved one’s face in delight, surprise and gratitude.

You might have thought that you would need to provide some background information about the recipient’s hobbies, interests, taste in music, books, jewellery, cars or real estate, depending on your budget. If so, you either don’t possess a smartphone or you really haven’t been paying attention these last couple of years.

For it has gradually dawned on the rest of us that our device has, for some time, been serving not only us. Unwittingly, we generously carry around, at all times, a sophisticated piece of eavesdropping kit, which records, it would appear, every keystroke we make.

It can’t have escaped your notice that, if you check out, say, car rental deals, or model figures compatible with Lego, or bluetooth speakers, or, indeed, anything, then, starting immediately, and for what seems an unconscionably long time afterwards, your phone will present you with advertisements for the same or similar items. It seems that your phone passes on the information about your internet habits to interested parties.

It must now be 20 years since I first, at work, heard talk about the fact that the real winners in the race to make big money from technology were going to be the people who “owned the eyeballs”. If you controlled what people saw on their phones, companies would beat a path to your door to pay you for ensuring that what people saw on their phones was what those companies wanted them to see.

These days, it’s even worse than that. You, like me, have probably noticed, more than once, that it is not only what you look for and look at online that ‘prompts’ what adverts you are fed; it is enough, these days, to mention a topic in conversation, on the phone, or in person. Your device is always listening, and always, it appears, relaying what it picks up. That highly sensitive inbuilt microphone is listening out for you even when you are unaware of it.

All of which is stunningly, and frighteningly, clever. And yet…and yet. There is one respect in which AI seems totally artificial and completely unintelligent. As it happens, I have, in the last week, encountered a classic example of this.

In the last couple of months, my electric shaver has been playing up. It has been growing more and more noisy; it does not shave as closely, and the shaving experience is significantly less comfortable than it used to be. I could possibly have simply replaced the shaving head, but I decided, instead, to treat myself to a new shaver with integral sideboard, moustache and beard trimmer.

While this sounds painfully bells-and-whistles expensive, it actually was very reasonable, nestling close to the bottom of Braun’s range of shavers, a range that reaches, in the heights of Series 9, an eye-watering four-digit price tag, while offering a shave that, according to Which consumer magazine, is not significantly closer than that offered in the humble foothills of Series 3, where you will find me.

So smooth is the shave I now achieve that the only person not impressed is Raphael, who still finds me much too tickly when I kiss him.

The point of this story is not simply the hope that Braun will reward my careful product placement by offering me a lifetime supply of free replacement heads. No, the real point is that, since I made the purchase online, my phone has not stopped bombarding me with adverts for electric shavers, and, specifically, Braun electric shavers. I can state, with absolute confidence, that the single product that I have absolutely no inclination or need to buy at this point in time is an electric shaver, and, specifically, a Braun shaver.

You had probably already guessed that, and you might have expected that the cumulative genius of the algorithms of AI might also have guessed it. Curiously, I take a little comfort from the knowledge that the system is, as yet, far from perfect. However, only a little comfort; I’m well aware that the intelligence gap is closing exponentially.

Mind you, having struggled for over a day to think of a topic to write about this week, the prospect of my blog being taken over by AI some time soon looks less worrying and more attractive that you might have suspected.

It’s not that I don’t want to write something profound about the situation, you understand. It’s just that I don’t feel I have anything useful to add to the mountains of commentary on Syria.

Is it a good thing that a sadistic and brutal tyrant has been forced out of office and into exile in a matter of days? Of course it is.

Is it a good thing that, overnight, the Syrian airforce, navy, and miliary capability were eliminated before they could fall from the wrong hands into potentially wronger hands? Another no brainer. (No need to thank us, world, but if you could avoid accusing us of genocide in Syria, we would appreciate it.)

Is who is going to replace Assad and what is going to replace his regime going to turn out to be an improvement? Ah, there you have me. You see, I think it’s still a tad early to be making predictions, especially, as they say, about the future. There’s a couple of big questions we need answers to first.

Can the Al-Qaida leopard change his spots? You will, I am sure, understand my scepticism.

Is the artificial construct known as Syria, sketched on a map in haste by a couple of outsiders, when the world was a very different place, a thing of the past? Are we looking at its breakup into several smaller states?

Just how far does Erdogan’s dream of the new Ottoman Empire stretch?

Whoa. Some heavy stuff there. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to wait for just a little more dust to settle before making a fool of myself. Safer all round, I reckon, to write about nothing in particular this week.

Take, for instance, the definition of the word “word”. My Oxford English Dictionary (admittedly vintage 1972, but I really don’t believe the definition of “word” has shifted significantly in the last 52 years) offers a definition which I shan’t bore you with in full, but which basically boils down to “a sequence of sounds constituting the basic unit of meaningful speech” and “represented in writing as a sequence of letters flanked by spaces”.

So, it’s rather a shame that the Oxford Dictionaries, as a body, did not consult the Oxford Dictionary, as a resource, before deciding that their word of the year was “brain rot”. Or, as we say in English, ‘their phrase of the year was “brain rot”’. Clearly, the “language experts” from Oxford who compiled the shortlist of six from which the public voted the winner not only proposed “brain rot” but also suffer from it. Words, dear reader, fail me… as they seem to do them.

Passing swiftly on. Men, as we all know, are from Mars, and women are from Venus. In conversations recently, I have been made aware that one of the fiercest battlegrounds of modern life on which that difference is thrashed out is the dishwasher. Apparently, I am not the only man who has a scientific method for arranging the dirty dishes in the washer, nor is Bernice the only woman who hasn’t the faintest idea what her husband is talking about.

It’s beyond my wit how she can’t see what is perfectly obvious from the topography of the space and the array of the racks. It is beyond her wit why I attach any importance to this. I’m now trying to decide whether I find this reassuring or disturbing. On balance, I think, despite momentary petty frustrations, vive la difference! I am reassured by the knowledge that it will all come out in the wash.

While we’re on the subject of diverse opinions within a marriage, one of those questions that never seem to appear on the questionnaires prospective couples are sometimes encouraged to fill out before pledging their troth, in order to determine their compatibility is the question of the temperature of fruit. Nothing, to my mind, compares with the first refreshingly chill bite of an apple or orange straight from the refrigerator. Bernice, however, prefers her fruit chambré (with the room, as the word suggests, preferably being in the South of France, rather than the South of Wales).

To complicate matters further, Bernice enjoys summer fruits when they are not yet fully ripe (or ‘rock hard’, as I put it), whereas I prefer them ripe (or ‘edible’). In the brief peach season, to take one example, this can prove taxing, since I have to hide some of the fruit, so that Bernice doesn’t eat it all before I have even started.

Of course, I can’t hide it in the fridge, because that is the first place she will look. This means that, when it is, to my taste, ripe, it is at room temperature. What we need, I have come to realise, is a microantiwave, that can bring a piece of fruit from room temperature to 6^oC in 30 seconds. Yes, I know it is a first-world problem, but that’s where, most of the time, I happen to believe I live.

While I’m feeling not particularly gruntled, let me vent about another of the world’s petty injustices. Several months ago, while Esther’s car was parked outside their house, a neighbour smashed into it. (This, incidentally, had the wholly positive effect of pushing the girls over into seriously looking to move, which quickly yielded a wonderful result. It is, as they don’t say, an ill wind that has no silver lining.) While the insurance claim was being processed, Esther, following the insurer’s instructions, had the car repaired at her own expense and submitted the receipts with her claim.

Negotiations with the insurance company were rather protracted. In fairness, this was in part due to the fact that the insurance company customer is myself, rather than Esther. (Esther’s car was originally ours, and the insurance premium stayed lower if we kept the policy as part of my package of policies with the same company.) This meant that there was a certain amount of juggling, explaining, and passing on of codes sent to phones to be done every time Esther tried to expedite the claim.

Eventually, the insurance company was ready to settle. This happened while we were in Portugal. We transferred to Esther the amount of the payment that we were due to receive from the insurance company. (No need for her to wait while they dragged their heels.) Meanwhile, I checked our account every day for the transfer from the insurance company. About a week later, I received an email from the company, informing me that they would be sending a cheque to me within a day or two. Those of my readers who are of a certain age may remember cheques from the last century.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have fumed at the weaselly method of posting a cheque (through Israel’s decrepit postal service) rather than electronic transfer. As we all know, the extra few days’ interest that the insurance companies enjoy on the millions of shekels they delay paying out cumulatively fund their annual bonuses. However, in this case, I was much more furious at the fact that, when the cheque did arrive in our postbox in Maale Adumim, it would sit there for days or weeks while we languished helpless in Penamacor.

When we did return home, I nipped down to our local mall to pay the cheque in through our bank’s ATM. (To pay in across the counter, you need to make an appointment in advance, and you are charged for the transaction.) I wasted 20 minutes, attempting to pay in the cheque by machine, at two different machines, but each time the display informed me that it was unable to read the details. This was, needless to say, a cheque filled entirely by machine; the print was as crisp as it could possibly be.

It was only after we returned home that Bernice remembered that cheques can also be paid in online through the bank’s app. This proved ludicrously quick and simple. In my defence, I will say that I cannot remember the last time I received a cheque, so this all seemed like very new territory to me.

A couple of days later, the insurance company wrote to ask me to complete a customer satisfaction survey. I must admit I derived a certain satisfaction from venting my wrath at their antiquated and devious reimbursement method, even though I knew my rage would crash against some completely unsympathetic manifestation of AI   If they were really smart, the insurers would write and ask me to complete a survey stating how satisfied I was to complete the customer survey. It was very much a therapeutic exercise.

Well, thank you. I feel a lot better having got all that off my chest. You will gather that there are ways in which life here sometimes seems to be returning to something that occasionally feels close to normal, although, of course, it can’t really.

It can’t, while 100 hostages, dead and alive (many, one fears, barely alive) languish in Gaza. It can’t, while tens of thousands have still not returned to their homes in the North or the South. It can’t, while a whole population of schoolchildren have still barely known a normal educational experience. It can’t, while thousands of family men (and some women) are only now beginning to be able to focus on attempting to rescue their stalled businesses and careers, and find again the rhythm of their family life. It can’t, while some ten thousand are still undergoing physical rehabilitation of some form or other, and who knows how many thousands are receiving, or should be receiving, psychological rehabilitation.

And then, of course, we read the International section of the paper, and know that we couldn’t possibly live anywhere else.

I promised you two weeks ago an update on Micha’el and Tslil’s plans. So here, only one week late, it is.

Part of me – and it’s the part that I really strive to nurture – embraces the excitement of being Micha’el’s father. One of the traits that best characterises Micha’el is the enthusiasm and commitment with which he embraces new initiatives. When life’s measuring spoons were being handed out, Micha’el got only the one-cup spoon; he is incapable of doing anything by half-measures.

This can, naturally, be wonderfully thrilling and exhilarating, although there sometimes comes a point where I, personally, feel ready to come off the roller coaster and spend a little time on the roundabout. However, at the moment, a moment which looks suspiciously like the start of a ride on a whole new roller coaster, I am really looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

For some time now, Micha’el and Tslil have realised that their original hope that they would be able to commit themselves full-time to developing their piece of land is not realistic. A combination of circumstances have compelled them to adapt to a changing situation: two young sons at home full-time; COVID’s effect on international travel preventing an influx of short-term visitors to share work on the land in return for bed, board, and a taste of working the land; the vagaries of Portuguese bureaucracy.

Currently, Tslil is teaching some frontal and some online yoga classes and Micha’el is teaching English online. However, these endeavours are not enough to generate surplus income that can be invested in developing their land and they are not prepared to take the time away from parenting that would be necessary to earn enough from this work to provide that income.

In parallel to their exploring a business proposition with the potential to generate that needed revenue flow, Micha’el in particular has been going through some fairly drastic lifestyle changes. A couple of months ago he finally managed to quit smoking, in its various forms, and, at the same time, started a regime of physical exercise and a protein-rich diet designed to get him back in shape and build up his muscle.

The effect was instantly noticeable when we arrived in Portugal five weeks ago, both in Micha’el’s shoulders and upper-arms and in his energy first thing in the morning. He is very happy with the changes that he has made and is determined to keep it up. While we were staying in the house, Micha’el lost his exercise room (our bedroom) and had to exercise early every morning in the backyard. Now that the bad weather is coming, he will, I am sure, be grateful to have got his ‘gym’ back.

A few months ago, Micha’el and Tslil agreed on a suitable project which ticked all their boxes. If successful, it has the potential to generate the income they need. It could at the same time make a significant contribution to the community life in Penamacor, something in which the kids are very invested. The project represents something they both believe in and are very willing to pour their energies into. It also gives both of them an opportunity to play to their individual strengths.

After that build-up, you are doubtless curious as to what this multi-box-ticking idea is. [Pause for a suitable drumroll.] It is to open a health-focused bodyweight gym. Don’t think arrays of expensive machines, or even, initially, weights, but only minimal simpler equipment such as rings, and with the emphasis firmly on body weight exercises. These will include, but eventually not be limited to, calisthenics, yoga, Pilates, and martial arts. Both Tslil and Micha’el will be teaching classes, and also functioning as personal trainers, a role for which they are formally qualified, as well as both having very much the right personality.

They have pitched their proposition to the local municipality, who have offered to provide the use of a suitable hall for three months, rent-free, and to cover the utility bills. This trial period will allow the kids to make an informed judgement as to whether their business plan is viable, with minimum investment, before committing themselves by moving to permanent premises in which they can, we hope, grow their business.

Since there is no gym less than a 40-minute drive from Penamacor, there is a sizeable potential market. The kids have carried out informal market research, which has been very encouraging. As well as producing a thorough business plan, they have developed a website and publicity materials; they will be advertising in the mainstream media in their catchment area, which is the towns and villages in the administrative area of which Penamacor is the principal town, as well as social media.

If all goes well, then the long-term plan is for them to be able to generate sufficient revenue to employ one or two personal trainers, and for Micha’el to focus on running the business. They hope that this will leave them both able to devote time and money to developing their land.

The other major project looming is the question of Tao’s education. The Portuguese authorities require children to be in an educational framework from the age of 6, so next academic year Tao will be starting school. The state system in Portugal – and certainly in the rural region where the kids are – is fairly formal, and the one certainty at the moment is that they do not want him to attend state school.

They are seriously considering home-schooling, which is legal in Portugal, but which is fairly closely monitored by the Education Ministry. There is an official curriculum that must be followed, including, obviously, Portuguese language and literature, and Portuguese history and culture. The kids would, naturally, need to employ a tutor to cover these subjects, while between them the kids would be well able to cover the other subjects. They are currently exploring a number of options, including possibly sharing the cost of the tutor with other parents in a similar situation.

While we were in Penamacor last month, Tslil picked up some tahina from an Israeli couple who own land nearby and who import the tahina from Israel. One reason I did not offer to make the one-hour round trip was because they live at end of a dirt track and, having once got our rental car stuck in the mud of such a track, I am now considerably more wary. The other reason is that ‘picking up some tahina’ is fairly simple when it is a one-kilo tub; this, however, was a 20-kilo bucket.

While she was there, the seller excitedly told Tslil of a development in local education. Apparently, the Portuguese Ministry of Education has just granted a licence to the Clonlara School, to open its first campus outside the United States. Clonlara is an American initiative started in 1967, to provide an environment where students’ interests and curiosity guided their curriculum. Starting with a campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it has grown into a global learning community offering campus, off-campus and online programmes for students in over 70 countries. You can learn more about the community here.

The campus that Clonlara plans to open in Portugal, for which a licence has just been granted, and for which a contract was signed in 2022 with the local council, for the provision of a building for the project, is actually, and amazingly, in Idanho-a-Nova, the town 25-minutes’ drive from Penamacor, where our favourite supermarket is. I don’t yet know when the school will be opening, and whether it will open with 1^st grade, but the kids will, I strongly suspect, be exploring the possibility of enrolling Tao in the program, whether on- or off-campus.

All in all, 2025 looks like being a big year in the saga of the family’s life in Portugal. There will undoubtedly be several big decisions to make, and life in Penamacor may look significantly different when I am writing my blog a year from now. It’s fair to say that, with the advancing years, I have lost some of my own enthusiasm for embarking on new adventures, but I still enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching the next generation build its family’s life.

In the last few weeks, I seem to have been taking an additive with my normal diet. This additive is marketed under the brand name ‘My Words’, and here I am eating them again this week. You may remember that last week I cavalierly wrote (not having learnt my lesson from two weeks previously) “Incidentally, all being well, I plan to share with you next week details of one of [Micha’el and Tslil’s] projects”.

Well, I’m afraid that you’re going to have to take a rain check on that. Something much more urgent has come up. Not urgent as a topic for this week’s post; rather, a task for me to complete today. This week’s post will have to be a brief explanation of why you are being short-changed.

I mentioned last week that Ollie does not find our departure from Penamacor easy. In the couple of weeks after we left in the summer, every time he sensed an injustice being visited on him by his parents, he would call for his Nana to rescue him. Being a younger child, injustices were, he felt, being visited on him at fairly frequent intervals. (I can sense all the younger siblings among my readers nodding sympathetically, and all the older siblings wondering what I am talking about.)

This time it is my turn to feel guilty for having deserted him. I received a voice message from Tslil and Ollie yesterday, in which he initially would only say “Grandpa”, and left it to Tslil to explain his request, which was for me to record and send to them a rendition of all the songs that I regularly sang to Ollie over the month we were there this time. After Tslil had finished, Ollie burst in, with cries of “Grandpa. Sing songs with Ollie”, almost breaking down. It was a heart-rending message, and it took me some time to recover from hearing it, I can tell you.

As I mentioned last week, Bernice and I had fully intended to record such a recital, and, to that end, I photographed the contents pages of the nursery rhyme book Ollie insists on us singing from. However, since our return, life has rather intervened, and we haven’t yet got round to recording.

Looking through the list of songs after receiving the message yesterday, I realised there were several that I did not know by heart. (Do you know all four two-line verses of Mary Had a Little Lamb? I always thought it ended with ‘to see a lamb at school’.) I began to wish that I had focussed more on learning my lines and less on dramatizing my rendition over the month.

So, I shall have to devote considerable time today to locating and printing out the lyrics of sundry nursery rhymes. Bernice and I had never heard of the following, for example, before we encountered it in the book. I find it charming, with ample opportunity for varied characterisation, and a suitably violent, though unbloody, conclusion:

Mrs. Mason bought a basin,
Mrs. Tyson said, What a nice ’un,
What did it cost? said Mrs. Frost,
Half a crown, said Mrs. Brown,
Did it indeed, said Mrs. Reed,
It did for certain, said Mrs. Burton.
Then Mrs. Nix up to her tricks
Threw the basin on the bricks.

Then, Bernice and I will hope that we are able to live up to our reputation as ‘one-take’ recorders, and not repeat our performance while recording a video message for Esther’s birthday, when we managed to break down in uncontrollable laughter three times before finally managing to get all the way through ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

All of which is a long-winded way of explaining why you are being significantly short-changed this week. I truly value your interest and loyalty, dear readers, but I’m afraid you can’t compete with a two-year-old’s tearful request for his Grandpa. Normal service will, we hope, be resumed next week.