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my impersonation of someone tech-savvy (a term that is probably, as someone will doubtless point out, forty years out of date).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.