It began, for me, on Wednesday, during my weekly Zoom chat with my brother, Martin. He started by remarking on how another week had whizzed past, which I thought slightly strange, since we normally speak on Thursday or Friday, and this was only Wednesday.

During the call, I told him how I had spent the best part of two days during the week in bed with a stomach virus. As I was speaking, I was trying to work out whether that had started on Monday – but I didn’t think it had started that early in the week – or Tuesday – but that made no sense because it would mean that today was the second day, and I was no longer ill. In the end I gave up, and pushed the confusion to the back of my mind, since it didn’t seem to make much difference in the larger scheme of things.

The following morning (Thursday), I woke around 6:30, as usual, and, before going downstairs, opened my bedside table drawer to fish out that day’s tablets to take downstairs. I was surprised to discover that I appeared to have only two days of tablets filled in my daily dispensers. This was odd, since I always refill with a week’s supply on Sunday morning. “Oh well,” I thought, “I must have done it on Shabbat morning last week by mistake.”

Checking my email before going downstairs, I discovered, to my surprise, a notification email with a link to my friend Ron’s weekly blog. My surprise was because Ron always posts on Friday. Following the link, I started to read, curious to discover why he was posting early this week.

Yes, folks, even then the penny didn’t drop. My ingenious brain was perfectly happy reorganizing everyone and everything around me to accommodate the false conclusion it had come to. It was only when I had read the entire blog, and discovered that Ron was not having any truck with my internal calendar, making no reference whatsoever to early publication, that I reviewed all of the evidence of the previous 24 hours objectively, and realized my mistake. Martin and I had Zoomed on Thursday; I had filled my tablet dispenser on Sunday; I had been ill on Tuesday and Wednesday, Ron had posted on Friday as always, and I had better get going because there was challah to bake.

With mounting horror I realised that I had lost a day, which made me not quite as hopeless a case as Ray Milland, who, in 1945, lost an entire weekend. Actually,  he lost five days, which, even by post-Covid four-day working week Western standards, is quite some weekend!) For those unfamiliar with The Lost Weekend, it was the winner of four Oscars (and what a quartet: Best Picture, Best Leading Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay) and perhaps the least likely winner in Oscar history, being almost unrelentingly bleak in its portrayal of a man struggling against alcoholism. It was also one of only two films to win Best Picture at both the Oscars and Cannes.

If you haven’t seen the film, it comes recommended by almost everyone – other than, predictably, the American liquor-producing industry. It afforded Ray Milland what was, at the time, a rare opportunity to show that he was more than a rom-com lead actor. You can get a taste of the film from the official trailer, although, as ever, any nuance and subtlety seem to have been edited out for the trailer, in favour of bludgeoning over the head with a blunt voiceover. Not that the film itself is the most subtle treatment of the theme. Personally, my vote for greatest Hollywood treatment of alcoholism goes to another film that allowed an actor often considered primarily comic the opportunity to give a towering dramatic performance. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are both magnificent in Days of Wine and Roses.

So, there are two bleak, depressing recommendations, which might help to put you into something like my mood when I realised that I had lost a day, which, of course, meant that we were one day closer to leaving Penamacor and returning home.

Friday (as I had now discovered it was called) was followed by Saturday (in Portugal, they organise their days the same way we do in Israel), which was, as it happens, our 50^th wedding anniversary. When, several months ago, we looked on the calendar, and saw that August 6 fell on Tisha b‘Av (the saddest day in the Hebrew calendar), we realised that celebrating on the day was not an option. Of course, when Tisha b’Av falls on Shabbat, the fast, and all of the accompanying mourning practices, are deferred to the following day, which meant that we were unable to celebrate on Saturday night.

Around the same time, we realised that Tslil was due to give birth a month before our anniversary, and so we decided to schedule this current trip. On Shabbat, we raised a glass to ourselves, but little more. Since the Hebrew date of our anniversary falls a few days after we return from Portugal, we have postponed any celebration until later. Bernice and I agreed not to bring out gifts to give each other here (not least because we simply couldn’t spare the weight in our luggage).

I did, however, manage to give Bernice one small gift on Shabbat – my stomach virus, with the result that she spent all of Sunday in bed – most of it, thankfully, peacefully asleep. This morning (Monday) she woke up feeling completely better, which is a great relief. Very early next Monday morning we will be driving back to Madrid airport (assuming that the three changes in flight times that we have so far been updated with are the only changes), so today we have started our last seven days in Penamacor.

The weather has turned a little cooler over the last week, which is a great relief, and is due to stay unchanged this week. We have one errand in Castollo Branco to run for the kids this week, which we will probably combine with one last big supermarket shop and, possibly, lunch out. In addition, there is one site in Penamacor I would like to visit, which I might well tell you about next week, if I manage to get there.

Other than that, both Bernice and I would like to do some cooking and baking for the freezer, to give the kids a little cushion after our departure. Knowing the way time seems to slip through the fingers, even when I’m not mislaying entire days, that’s probably all we will have time for, until our next trip. By then, Ollie will undoubtedly have completely changed. He is already unrecognisable as the newborn we encountered when we arrived. Esther assures us we won’t recognise Raphael when we return to Israel either. Only Tao is changing less dramatically, although even he seems to be maturing before our eyes and ears.

One thing all three have in common is that they love stories, whether (R to L) on video, in books, or following the oral tradition.