I suppose I ought to be feeling spoilt for choice this week. There are no end of earth-shattering stories that I could explore. I could offer my take on whether Trump is well on the way to saving or destroying the world order. I could explore the multiple ways in which it appears that Israel is being dragged, either screaming or not screaming enough, to the very edge of self-destruction. I could even contemplate my own mortality.

However, I don’t feel up to any of that heavy lifting today, so instead I will, with your indulgence, offer two totally unrelated and probably trivial musings.

Muse the First: Marking the Passing of George Foreman.

Fairly high up on the list of sports that I don’t understand is boxing. I don’t understand how the deliberate inflicting of, often permanent, physical damage by one person on another qualifies as a sport. I don’t understand why anyone would choose to watch such inflicting. I don’t understand why the fact that so many youngsters view boxing as their only way out of a lifetime of poverty, crime and abuse should be seen as something to celebrate.

I did not watch the Rumble in the Jungle (Ali’s comeback fight in which he knocked out Foreman in Zaire) live or at any time since. Nor have I watched When We Were Kings, the acclaimed documentary about the fight. I haven’t even read Norman Mailer’s celebrated account of it. I did not follow Foreman’s career at all. I never even bought a George Foreman grill.

All of which means that I came to his obituary in The Times with an unprejudiced eye. (I apologise if the link is blocked for you by a paywall.) It was, unusually for The Times, a lacklustre obit, a pedestrian read about an unprepossessing and fairly directionless life. Like all Times obituaries, it carried no byline. I then read, in today’s Jerusalem Post, a tribute written by Alex Winston, the JP’s.English-born news editor specialising in real estate. This piece presented a coherent view of a life that followed a clear arc, a life informed by purpose, the life of a man who had elements of the hero in him. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting read.

I have no way of knowing which of these retrospectives is accurate, if indeed either is. Perhaps my only takeaway can be that you shouldn’t believe anything you read in the paper. Yet I find myself very strongly wanting to believe Alex Winston’s account. Partly this is because I take comfort, and perhaps even inspiration, from reading about a life of purpose. (It seems that, willingly or not, I may be, at some level, contemplating my own mortality.)

However, another part of the attraction is that this is a coherent story. Most days, at least one and often several of The Times obituaries are really good reads, not always, indeed not even nearly always, because they celebrate a life of virtue, but, rather, because they celebrate a life lived to the full, however outrageous or villainous that fulness is.

The readers’ comments that regularly accompany obituaries in The Times confirm that I am far from alone in finding that page of the paper a consistently enjoyable and meaningful read.

Muse the Second: What?! Why?!!

If you have any interest in film, you will already know that a new gangster film – The Alto Knights – has recently been released, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert de Niro. It’s fair to say that, in itself, this is not earth-shattering news. Indeed, I might well have written, in the previous sentence, “yet another new gangster film….Levinson…de Niro”. However, what distinguishes this film is that it sctus;;y strs Roberts de Niro: both of the mafiosi whose true-life rivalry the film depicts are played by Robert de Niro. At the risk of repeating myself: What?! Why?!!

It is fair to say that one actor playing two parts has a long and sometimes distinguished history in cinema (and indeed on stage). It is a device that can serve any of a number of purposes.

Let’s start by considering Peter Pan. The tradition is that the roles of Mr Darling and Captaion Hook are doubled. Although this is not specified in the script, it is a tradition that began with the very first production 121 years ago, when Gerald du Maurier played both roles. This doubling invites speculation that Mr Darling is only ‘tamed’ by his wife; when she is absent, his ‘piratical’ side shows through, in the same way as the lost boys, lacking the restraining and civilising influence of a mother, revert to misbehaving.

Interestingly, in the fabulous 2016 National Theatre production of Peter Pan, which originated at the Bristol Old Vic in 2012, director Sally Cookson had an actress play Mrs Darling and Captain Hook. Sophie Thompson was gloriously, moustache-twirlingly villainous as Hook, but I personally felt some dramatic resonance was lost in this casting decision.

In a similar vein to Peter Pan, Chaplin’s doubling of roles in The Great Dictator was obviously a clear exploitation of the opportunity to mock Adolf Hitler. If he bore such a close physical resemblance to ‘the little tramp’, there was patently no substance behind his bluster.

Another reason for doubling is that the plot directly calls for it. In most cases, this is because the film centres on identical twins, typically one as pure as the driven snow, the other decidedly slushy. Indeed, Bette David played such identical twins not once but twice: in 1946 in A Stolen Life – ‘Kate is self-effacing and gentle, while Pat is bold and ostentatious, getting any man she pleases. Jealous of Kate’s new beau, Bill (Glenn Ford), Pat steals him away, marrying him. But when tragedy strikes, Kate takes an opportunity to get the love she’s always longed for’ – and then in 1964 in Dead Ringer – Davis plays the wealthy Margaret, estranged from her twin, Edith (also Davis), for nearly 20 years. Edith can’t pay her bills, and with an eviction notice hanging over her head, she enacts revenge upon her sister, killing her, and assuming her identity. 

In other cases, the playing of multiple roles is a vehicle for a versatile character actor to demonstrate his talent. Since in such cases the purpose of the exercise is to keep the audience aware that the characters are being portrayed by actors, this lends itself to comedies rather than dramas. Two such films come immediately to my mind. In the first, Alec Guiness struts his stuff as no fewer than eight members of the D’Ascoyne family, being serially murdered by a fiendish Dennis Price so that he can inherit the family’s title and wealth. While Guiness displays virtuosity, his characters clearly share a physical family likeness.

In the second film, arguably in a class of its own, Peter Sellers played three very disparate parts in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove: German-US ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove, US President Merkin Muffley and RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. As you can see, Sellers created three visually distinct characters. The illogic of him playing all three parts seemed perfectly natural in a film that was gloriously surrealistic – while simultaneously being chillingly realistic.

Which brings us, finally, and puzzlingly, back to The Alto Knights. The burning question here is: What is the motivation for casting de Niro in the two leading roles? I ought to say here that I have not seen the film, although I have read several reviews and back-stories. From de Niro’s own comments, it seems that the producer suddenly came up with the idea and de Niro thought it sounded cute, and might hold his interest sufficiently to render making yet another gangster film a more interesting experience for him.

No great attempt seems to have been made to disguise the fact that both roles are played by de Niro. I find myself wondering why nobody in the film remarks on the uncanny resemblance between the rivals.

In addition, reviews that I have read suggest that there is little chemistry between the two de Niros, which is not exactly surprising. Considering the electricity that de Niro and Al Pacino created on screen in such films as Heat, this feels like very much a missed opportunity.

I end, as I started: What?! Why?!! Is this a case of de Niro being too huge a name in cinema for any objective measure of judgement to be applied.

I apologise for pontificating without seeing the film, but I’m not sure I want to witness what I am sure, from all I have read, is little more than a piece of self-indulgence.

Blogger’s Note 1: The first half of today’s offering is arcane. If it isn’t your kind of arcane, you might want to know, before you give up on me, that the second half of today’s offering updates you on the kids in Portugal. Look for a paragraph beginning “If your memory…” If neither arcane nor Portugal interests you, perhaps you need to find another blog.

Blogger’s Note 2: There is a where that we’re heading for today, but it’s some distance away, and it’s a lovely day out here in the foothills of my mind, so I intend to take my time and follow a couple of interesting side paths. If you’ve nothing better to do, you’re more than welcome to come along for the walk. Stout shoes not required: this is a gentle ramble.

From 1923 until 1973, if you had happened to drop by the British Library (then known as the British Museum Library) and walked up to Desk K1, the odds are that most days you would have found Eric Honeywood Partridge there, surrounded by and absorbed in etymological and other reference works. Born in New Zealand, schooled in Australia and then wounded in action in the First World War, Partridge returned home to complete his BA in classics, French and English. He then became Queensland Travelling Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, where he worked on an MA on romantic poetry and a B Litt in comparative literature. He then taught briefly in a grammar (high) school before lecturing in Manchester and London universities. He married, founded a small press and wrote fiction.

In the four years before his press closed, he managed to publish some 60 books, one of which was his own Song and Slang of the British Soldier 1914-1918. This book marked his first venture into an arcane field of language study that, it is no exaggeration to say, he made his own. To illustrate his range within and, sometimes, beyond, this field, here is his bibliography:

RIGINS: An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English
A DICTIONARY OF THE UNDERWORLD
A DICTIONARY OF SLANG AND UNCONVENTIONAL ENGLISH
A DICTIONARY OF HISTORICAL SLANG
A SMALLER SLANG DICTIONARY
SLANG TODAY AND YESTERDAY
SHAKESPEARE’S BAWDY An Essay and a Glossary
A DICTIONARY OF CLICHÉS
A DICTIONARY OF CATCH PHRASES: British and American, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day
COMIC ALPHABETS: A Light-hearted History
SWIFT’S POLITE CONVERSATION: A Commentary Edition
CHAMBER OF HORRORS: Officialese, British and American
USAGE AND ABUSAGE: A Guide to Good English
NAME THIS CHILD: A Dictionary of Christian or Given Names
Francis Grose’s A CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE, a commentary edn
NAME INTO WORD dictionary of proper names become common property
ENGLISH: A COURSE FOR HUMAN BEINGS
THE LONG TRAIL, being songs and slang of the British soldier in WW1
(with Will Granville and Frank Roberts) A DICTIONARY OF FORCES SLANG, of all three services in WW2
A TESTAMENT WORD-BOOK
LEXICOGRAPHY: A PERSONAL MEMOIR
Seven volumes of essays on language (general) and words (particular)

Also some books literary rather than linguistic, e.g.:
GLIMPSES (short stories)
JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF MORNING (autobiographical essays)
THE FRENCH ROMANTICS KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETRY

I was going to say that he carved out a niche for himself, but, to be honest, from my forays into his world, I can vouch that it is more a network of rabbit warrens than a niche.

Partridge’s Dictionary of Historical Slang is, without a doubt, the filthiest book I know. I would estimate that some 60% of the entries, from a-cockbill on page 1 to zig-zig on page 1053, are not to be repeated in polite company.

The other of his works that I could not imagine living without is A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, to which I turn to quote in full the following entry that explains in part, for the benefit of those of you who are not simultaneously my contemporaries and my landesmen, the title of this week’s poat:

I’m worried about Jim. In the Daily Telegraph, 23 Feb. 1977, Gillian Reynolds (‘Radio Review’) writes, ‘It says a lot for the potency of radio that comedians can still raise the occasional laugh with a harp glissando and the words, “I’m worried about Jim…”, the catchphrase which came to represent “Mrs Dale’s Diary” in much the same way as “Play it again, Sam” [q.v.] did the film “Casablanca”.” VIBS amplifies: ‘Ellis Powell as the eponymous heroine of radio’s Mrs Dale’s Diary (referring to her doctor husband). Although she may not have uttered the phrase very often, it was essential in parodies of the programme’. This very British, middle-class soap opera was first broadcast in Jan. 1948-and ran for 21 years.

I invite you to admire that paragraph. Packed with information delivered with efficient, but never terse, brevity, it includes an apposite citation, a cultural reference that will capture this catchphrase’s place in British popular culture very accurately for a much wider audience, a telling detail to trigger a delightful sound-memory for any reader already familiar with the phrase. Is it any wonder that, when I ask myself these days what professional path I would like to take if I could have my life over, being Eric Partridge comes pretty close to the top? Of course, I would need to have been born with a much sharper memory and a keener intellect than I have, and – perhaps most significantly – a work ethic that could see me occupying Desk K1 in the British Library almost every day for 30 years.

So, moving swiftly on. Many thanks and appreciation to those of you who inquired after my health after last week’s post. Let me say that I have no intention of turning this blog into Mrs Dale’s Diary. I’m currently in the middle of tests which will doubtless, in the fullness of time, allow my doctor to come to a conclusion. Meanwhile, my infection is responding nicely to the antibiotic.

But what, I hear those of you have not got some anonymous AI bot who sounds nothing like me reading this post out loud to you, of the ‘Gym’ in the title of this week’s post. Not ‘Jim’, but ‘Gym’. I thought you’d never ask.

If your memory bears a closer resemblance to Partridge’s than to mine, you may remember that Micha’el and Tslil are currently preparing to embark on a new and exciting business venture – launching a bodyweight gym in Penamacor. Launch date is now only a month away and things are starting to come to a head. I thought I would bring you up to speed on what, exactly, I mean by ‘things’.

Among the occupations with which our auto-didact son has been filling his evenings this last couple of years is teaching himself Python, a programming language. (Here I find myself attempting to tread the painfully thin path between those of you who imbibed Python with your mother’s milk, and those whom I lost at ‘teaching himself…’. I know that I shall, from here on, be simultaneously patronising and befuddling. I apologise. I am, myself, very unsure of my footing here, but we’ll see whether I can avoid falling flat on my face too embarrassingly.)

As well as developing his programming skills, Micha’el has been immersing himself in online courses in marketing, and small business management generally. Bernice and I arrived in Portugal at quite an exciting moment. Having downloaded the freeware part of a CRM (customer relationship management) software product, Micha’el had been coding all the bits he and Tslil lacked the resources and the inclination to pay for. Our presence gave Micha’el the time to troubleshoot this coding and integration, and, by the time we left, he had a fully integrated CRM program that, two days later, actually worked in real time.

Simultaneously, Tslil and he have been working on promotional materials for a marketing campaign. By the time we left Penamacor, they had temporarily set up their temporary gym premises and held a successful photo and video shoot and their website was up and running with bilingual English and Portuguese text. I reviewed the English text, but Micha’el’s briefing of the AI that wrote it was so fine-tuned that I hardly had any suggested amendments to make. As I remarked to Micha’el: if I were still working, I reckon I would be out of a job.

In addition, their flyers and tee shirts were printed. They managed, while we stayed home with the boys, to pound the streets for a couple of evenings and weekend afternoons, gathering feedback to their market research questionnaire and getting the word out on the street.

A couple of days after our return, Micha’el was able to report that they already had a client very interested in private lessons, and a prospect who, in response to their online campaign, had proposed an appointment. The CRM program had fired back to her all of the appropriate SMS and email messages, captured her data and uploaded it to the database, and pinged Micha’el about the appointment.

As if that were not enough, the online interest had, within a couple of days, stimulated several hundred hits on the website. You can imagine how welcome this news is for Tslil and Micha’el, whose very significant commitment to their plan seems to be starting to pay off. Of course, a visit is not a firm prospect, and a prospect is not a customer, but the word-of-mouth feedback they have received on the street has been very encouraging. Undoubtedly, they are partly helped by the fact that this kind of 21^st-century marketing is not something often seen running through the optic fibre of Penamacor.

This is where you come in. If you could pass on this link to the website to all of your friends and family who live in the Penamacor….Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Well, then, if you follow the link yourself, you’ll at least have a better idea what I’ve been talking about.

For those of my readers of a certain provenance and age, the name Les Dawson will need no introduction. For the rest of you, I need to explain that he rose from a working-class Manchester background to become a very popular comedian and entertainer on British TV in the 1970s and 80s. He had several strings to his bow, but the one relevant to this week’s post is that a regular feature of his weekly show was a sketch consisting of a conversation between two Northern working-class women in their sixties, played in drag by Dawson and his male sidekick. Their conversation often turned to what Dawson referred to as ‘woman’s trouble…down below’.

Spoiler Alert: The next paragraph contains a trigger warning. If you don’t want to discover where we’re heading today until the perfect dramatic moment, don’t read the next paragraph. [It occurs to me that most trigger warnings should probably carry a spoiler alert.]

Trigger Warning: Our theme this week is ‘man’s trouble…down below’. While I promise to spare you explicit detail and, indeed, illustrative diagrams (other than in a link you are free not to follow), if this is not a topic you wish to read about, however obliquely worded, I’ll see you, God willing, next week, in what will probably be the last update that I can squeeze from our Portugal trip, from which we returned in the small hours of this (Monday) morning.

Right. Now we’ve whittled you down to the strong of stomach and the (frankly) slightly perverted, and before I get cold feet, let’s press on.

Just over two weeks ago, I awoke to a dull ache down below. Since this was not accompanied by any other symptoms, and since pursuing this further was bound to be a complicated and time-consuming process that would take us away from the boys for precious hours, Bernice and I made a joint decision to monitor the situation, in the hope of limping through until, two weeks later, I could nestle in the comfortable surroundings of our own family doctor’s surgery.

This was, as it turned out, a less than wise policy. However, hindsight is one of those things that you never seem to be able to benefit from until it’s too late.

From Sunday to Wednesday night, there were ne developments, other than the fact that I rather lost my appetite. However, when I woke on Thursday morning, I discovered considerable swelling and hardness, and we both agreed that we could postpone no longer. Tslil and Micha’el are not particularly impressed by their family doctor, and so Micha’el agreed to accompany us to a walk-in and out-patient clinic in a small city – Covilha – a 45-minute drive away. We were very grateful to have him with us.

After Micha’el explained the situation to the receptionist, and requested a doctor who spoke English, we had a not unreasonably long wait before a charming young doctor saw us. In a fashion typical of educated Portuguese of his age, he claimed that he spoke only a very little English, but, in fact, the entire consultation was conducted in English, and his only hesitation came when he couldn’t recall which of the words ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ was which.

After a brief examination, he diagnosed a bacterial infection – epididymitis. (Just now, my own doctor corrected this diagnosis to something that sounds even more like one of the lesser dinosaurs – epididymo-orchitis – follow the link or don’t!) The Portuguese doctor referred me to a urologist, who would be holding surgery the next day, and who would be able to give me an ultrasound to confirm the diagnosis. Meanwhile, the GP was confident enough in his diagnosis to start me on a two-week course of antibiotics, rather than waiting another day.

Before setting off for the clinic, I had called our medical insurers’ emergency number to explain the situation, and the agent I spoke to had unlocked the credit card they had issued to us in Israel. I was therefore able to pay for the consultation using this card, which was certainly convenient.

The following day, Micha’el and I went back to see the specialist. Curiously, despite having made an appointment, we had to wait far longer than we had the previous day. The urologist was less the gentle provincial Portuguese and more the cosmopolitan Coimbrian, hailing from Portugal’s distinguished university city, famed throughout medieval Europe. Finer featured, silver-haired and refined, when asked whether he spoke English he declared scornfully: “Of course!”…and indeed his English was excellent. He swiftly and efficiently confirmed the diagnosis.

I then asked him for a written summary of the consultation, a request he absolutely refused to comply with. I explained that my insurer required it. He arrogantly dismissed the very idea, claiming that he had treated many French and German tourists who required no documentation other than a receipt. He patiently explained that the information he had entered into the computer was not in the form of a file, and it was not possible to extract it in any file format.

He further explained that Portuguese patient confidentiality laws prohibit extracting or printing any patient information. When I protested that I needed to be able to present this information not only to the insurer but also to my own family doctor, he questioned what they would do with a document in Portuguese, for all the world as if AI were a figment of some sci-fi author’s imagination,

I then asked him whether he could give me a handwritten summary. This he was prepared to do (Where had the law disappeared to? I wondered, though not out loud), but that this would be considered an additional consultation, and so there would be a second fee of 90 euros. This was clearly his final offer.

Despite all of Micha’el’s persuasive powers, the administrative staff were no more help, and so I left the clinic armed only with two receipts for the two consultations. To further complicate matters, I discovered that the initial activation of the insurer’s credit card had been for 24 hours only (a fact that the agent had not thought to mention to me at the time) and so I had to pay with my own card. Obviously, I will be claiming this back from the insurer.

For the last eight days of our stay, I was certainly not firing on all cylinders. The antibiotics did not kick in quickly, as I had hoped, and my energy level was well below par. On reflection, I probably tried to do more than I should have. In addition, I also started developing (possibly as a side-effect of the antibiotics) some acid reflux, which kept me awake for half the night last Saturday night.

Then, on Sunday morning, on 3 hours’ sleep, I had to face a 15-hour door-to-door journey, starting with a three-hour drive, through intermittent rain, followed by the route march that is navigating a major airport, followed by a five-and-a-half hour overnight flight in an economy seat in which I could find no comfortable position for my down-belows, and consequently I did not sleep at all. This was followed by a second major airport route march. As I remarked to Bernice when we boarded, I should have requested wheelchair assistance. There’s that damned tardy hindsight again.

I did catch half-an-hour’s sleep in the back of the taxi from the airport, and another five hours from 5:00 to 10:00 this morning. However, now that we are back home, I rather think it has all caught up with me, and I have spent most of today sitting on the sofa with my feet up feeling sorry for myself, and fretting over not having written this post.

Which I have now done! And, cleverly, I have the bulk of the insurance story to delight you with at some point in the future when it is all resolved, one way or another. Until then, and if you have made it this far, I admire your tenacity.

I must stop here, since I have to leave for an appointment with my own doctor, who has, I know, the stomach for a considerably more detailed account.

Quick update. My doctor feels the antibiotics are doing a good job, but, since he is extremely cautious, and since there is no emergency urologist, he referred me to A&E, so that they can run a bank of tests and another ultrasound and just confirm that everything is on track. No need to rush in tonight, but he wants me to go tomorrow. So, instead of going to see Raphael, I shall be sitting in a hospital waiting area…waiting, for most of the day, no doubt.

At least now, if you bump into me in the next couple of days, I hope you will understand why I don’t exactly look like I am just back from a luxury winter holiday in Portugal.

One can’t help feeling sorry for civil rights campaigner, human and animal rights activist and feminist writer Rita Mae Brown. In her 1983 book Sudden Death, she attributed to a fictional ‘Jane Fulton’ a very memorable saying that has become something of a cliché and has been immortalised on countless mugs and posters. “Insanity,” she wrote, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

How galling it must be for her to see this memorable pensée misattributed, almost universally, to Albert Einstein, who, let’s face it, doesn’t really need the publicity. His reputation, after all, rests on rather more substantial foundations.

Speaking personally, I feel rather more comfortable going head-to-head with Rita Mae Brown than I would with Einstein. For my intention today is to demonstrate that, contrary to what Einstein didn’t say, doing the same thing twice and expecting different results may be eminently sensible.

Some months ago, Micha’el, Tslil, Tao and Ollie embarked on an expedition to Lisbon with two objectives. The first was to obtain an apostille of the translation from Portuguese to Hebrew of all of their relevant documentation. I should explain, for the benefit of those of my readers whose nationality issues are rather more straightforward, that an apostille is a document used in international law that is issued by a government in accordance with the Hague Convention and that certifies that another document has been signed by a notary public.

Armed with the apostille, which sported a suitably impressive embossed stamp on the last page, they then made the short journey to the Israeli embassy, in the hope of registering Ollie’s birth and establishing his Israeli citizenship.

Their experience at the embassy was horrendous. Security was understandably strict; however, it seemed excessive for the strictness to stretch to refusing to allow them to take in any personal items whatsoever, including any equipment for their then infant son, and any book or game for their older son. Having been assured that the waiting-room was equipped with items to occupy a child, they found it boasted a couple of sheets of plain paper and some dried-up felt-tip pens.

When they finally saw an official, they were told that the apostille should have been stamped and signed on every page, and could not be accepted, and, at the end of a long, fraught, unpleasant and wasted couple of hours, they left. Bear in mind that this entire waste of energy required a stay of two nights in Lisbon.

Having taken a considerable time to recover from this experience, they finally felt ready to try once again, and so we included a city break in Lisbon for the whole family in our visit this time. We arrived in Lisbon on Monday. On Tuesday morning, Bernice and I took the boys back to the experiential science museum that we had visited on our previous break, while Micha’el and Tslil attempted to obtain an apostille stamped and signed on every page. The museum was even more fun than last time, both because Ollie was now old enough to enjoy a lot of the hands-on exhibits, and because of a temporary exhibit demonstrating and explaining the various animation techniques employed by Pixar studios in making Toy Story, Wall-E and other films. The entire museum is hands-on, and both boys had a wonderful time.

Towards the end of our long morning there, Tslil and Micha’el joined us, with good news and bad news. The bad news was that the apostille required by the embassy could not be obtained. The office had refused to sign and stamp every page of the documentation, stating that several months ago the procedure had changed in Portugal, and now only one signature was required. The good news was that, when, from the office, Micha’el phoned the embassy, the clerk there assured him that, indeed, only one signature was necessary.

When, the following day, all four of them walked from our hotel to the embassy, in bright sunshine, Tslil was optimistic, while Micha’el was resigned to failure. On this occasion, they were attempting to register Ollie’s birth with the Israeli authorities, obtain recognition of their Portuguese civil marriage, renew their own Israeli passports and obtain Israeli passports for the two boys.

Anticipating that their stay at the embassy might be a drawn-out affair, we had agreed that Bernice and I would have a grown-up day of sightseeing in Lisbon, and we would make our separate ways back from Lisbon to Penamacor.

Imagine our shock when, after a ridiculously short time, Micha’el contacted us to say that: the reception at the embassy had been civilised rather than, as previously, surly; that they had been allowed to go back to reception a couple of times to retrieve a couple of items they needed to keep the boys entertained; that, as promised, the single signature was all the embassy required; and, finally, that they were now in possession of a marriage certificate, an identity number for Ollie, and four brand-new passports.

Our best guess is that, at the time of their previous visit, the Portuguese authorities had just changed the law, and the Israeli authorities had not yet caught up with the change. As Einstein might not have said, on the continuum of life’s roller-coaster, they had been in the right space at just the wrong time.

Faced with the delights of Lisbon and an entire day to enjoy them, Bernice and I planned to take a 25-minute tram ride to Belém, site of a tower that offers good views of the city and location of the Monument to the Discoveries, celebrating Portugal’s glory days as a maritime explorational super-power. Having stood waiting for a tram for 15 minutes or so, we discovered a notice posted on the tram shelter explaining that, owing to road subsidence, the service was to be diverted on that day.

At that point, together with a motley crew of French and Japanese tourists, we walked a couple of hundred metres to a bus-stop. A few minutes later, our bus arrived, but we were too far back in the queue to get a seat. For the next 20 minutes, we stood, while the bus edged about 200 metres along the road. At this point, we decided to cut our losses and rejig our day’s plans. Hopping off the bus, we headed away from the river estuary. Moovit showed our walk as about a kilometre, but failed to mention that about 750 metres of that was uphill.

You may well not have paid sufficient heed to the fact that ‘uphill’ is a fairly vague term, covering everything from: “You know, when you’re driving along this road, you don’t actually notice that it’s uphill; it’s only when you walk it that you realise” to “There must be a station where they provide oxygen masks some time soon”. ‘Uphill’ in Lisbon is considerably closer to the second than the first experience. However, having enjoyed a decent hotel and excellent vegan meals for a day and a half, Bernice and I were easily up to the ascent, and, while the view from the top was nothing special, the archaeological museum nearby was fascinating.

Finally, we watched a well-produced audio-visual display, projected onto, and incorporating the features of, an original vaulted wall. This traced the history of the church, including an account of the earthquake and the story of the establishment of the museum.

From there, it was a short walk to a much better vantage point, affording a panoramic view of the city, and then to a vegan restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet that was not only a bargain but also very tasty. We walked off lunch by making our way to a bizarre street-art comic-strip mural of the history of Lisbon, painted on an underpass and boasting, at its centre, a public lavatory that was, by Portuguese standards, less than salubrious. (Public facilities in Portugal are, in our experience, spotlessly clean and well-appointed.)

By the time we boarded the coach back to Castelo Branco, we were very glad to sit down, and by the time we parked outside the house, at 10:30, we were more than ready for bed. However, the whole family agreed that it had been an enjoyable and productive break. Next stop, we all agree, should be Porto, possibly at a sunnier time of year.