One of the commenters on last week blog explained that “every time my life seems beset with problems I read one of your blogs and recognise someone somewhere has it worse.” I can’t tell you how much better that made me feel. So, it is in a spirit of public-mindedness that I offer you, this week, an account of yet another of the mishaps that seem, these days, to make up most of life’s rich tapestry for me.

Blogger’s Note: But just before I do, I have to make it very clear that I am in no doubt about how fortunate and privileged my life is. Everywhere I look – my wife, our children, their wives, our grandson, our wider family, friends and community – believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by that I do not thank God for showering these gifts on me. However, nobody wants to read that kind of gush, so on with the story.

On our last visit to the kids, and just a few days before our return  to Israel, I had the opportunity to take part in what I am assured is an old rural Portuguese custom. I believe the locals call it: ficar preso na lama, or, sometimes, ficar preso na vala, which certainly sounds suitably intriguing and exotic, until you discover that it translates roughly as: getting stuck in the mud, or in the ditch. Of course, it may be that Tslil, tender and considerate soul that she is, was simply trying to make me feel less a totally incompetent idiot when she assured me that everybody did it, and that she herself had indeed done it, when she was with Tao but not with Micha’el, and had no mobile reception. I choose to believe her, and to embrace the orthodoxy that this is just another hazard of life in the Portuguese countryside.

What happened was this. One afternoon, when Micha’el was away from home with their truck, visiting clients in connection with his water management consultancy, I drove Tslil and Tao to a birthday party. An English couple have bought land 10 minutes outside Penamacor, and are living in a tent there while they work towards building a house. Their son was celebrating his 4^th birthday. So, Bernice, Tslil, Tao and I set off. The plan was to drop Bernice at the supermarket, drop Tslil and Tao at the party, and come back to meet Bernice at the checkout, pay and go back to the house with the shopping. The track to this couple’s land led off the main road; we found it easily, since they had thoughtfully hung balloons on the post. A hundred metres or so up the track, I steered slightly to the right to avoid a pothole, and instantly felt the car veer right, out of my control. I was unable to correct this, and very soon came to a halt with almost the entire front passenger wheel submerged in a ditch that carried a ridiculous depth of water, considering that there had been no rain for the entire previous month.

The party hosts, having observed this from their encampment 50 metres further up the path, came to meet us and assess the situation. Fortunately, no other guests had yet arrived, so my humiliation was less than it might have been. The father, Harrison, immediately ran back to the camp to bring a couple of stout planks, and started wedging these under the wheels with the help of rocks. However, it soon became clear that it was going to be impossible for me to get sufficient purchase to negotiate the steep bank of the ditch.

I kept apologising to Harrison for putting him to all this trouble when he had been expecting to host a quiet birthday celebration. However, it was perfectly clear that he was relishing the logistic and physical challenge, and regarded the whole exercise as a useful learning experience, which made me feel a little less awkward.

I suddenly realised I should alert Bernice to the situation. However, she had only taken her Portuguese phone with her, and, as luck would have it, this pay-as-you-go phone needed a top-up, so I couldn’t reach her. (How did we ever manage in a pre-mobile age? I genuinely can’t remember.) I knew that, being Bernice, she wouldn’t panic; she is not a panicker. She would simply and calmly come to the conclusion that I, indeed all three of us, were lying unconscious in a ditch somewhere. It was, of course, essential, to reassure her that it was only the rental car that was in the ditch, and not any or all of us.

At this point, I realised that, painful as it would be to extend the circle of people that knew what a hopeless case I was, we simply had to tell Micha’el. So, Tslil phoned him, to discover that he had finished early and was at home. She asked him to drive over, with the truck and its towing webbing, and, on the way, to stop at the supermarket, pay our bill and pick up Bernice.

By the time they arrived, Harrison had got himself seriously muddy attempting to dig a trench out of the ditch. However, that also proved fruitless. Micha’el parked behind me and started looking for a secure point on the rental car to attach the towrope to. Of course, being a modern car, our Clio had flimsy plastic bodywork reaching almost to the ground all round. Eventually, Micha’el settled for the axle and managed to attach the webbing. He ratcheted up the slack in the strap.

I still sometimes wonder how we produced a son who has a truck, towing webbing and a ratchet strap and knows how to use them all!

Micha’el and Harrison then repositioned the wooden planks for me to attempt to drive free in reverse. It was, I think, around this time that Harrison asked me whether the car was front-wheel drive. Clearly, he didn’t know me very well. Not only had I no idea, but I also had no idea how one would have an idea. (Googling later, I learnt that the Renault Clio is, indeed, front-wheel drive, a fact I shall file away in the, sadly not sufficiently unlikely, event that we hire another Clio and I drive it into another ditch.)

At this point, Harrison moved round to the front of the car, Micha’el got into his truck and took up the slack, and then I had an excellent opportunity to spatter Harrison with mud as I gently eased my foot off the clutch while touching the accelerator as lightly as possible. Eventually, we made enough progress to lead the two people who appeared, at least to me, to know what they were doing, to believe that, if they uncoupled the towstrap and pushed from behind, I would probably be able to drive forward out of the ditch.

Which is, more or less, what happened, after our two heroes hammered the planks under the front wheels, then went round to the rear of the car. This, of course, gave me an opportunity to spatter Micha’el with mud as well as Harrison. We didn’t seem to be getting very far, until Bernice leaned in, and her Pilates-honed efforts seemed to make all the difference, as I gracefully, and gratefully, crawled out of the ditch and drove forward to a turning point nearer the camp. (I would, of course, have gallantly offered Bernice to drive while I pushed, except that she wasn’t insured to drive the car, exercises more regularly than me, and doesn’t have my heart condition.)

I have to say that Harrison was still behaving as if this was the most fun he had had for ages.

Micha’el then left the truck for Tslil to drive home in and Bernice and I took him back home. Later, he decided he would join the party, and so I drove him back…but dropped him on the main road at the start of the track. Better part of valour and all that. Of course, all I wanted to do was behave as if the entire afternoon had never happened. However, I had reckoned without Tao. The very same day, ‘Grandpa getting stuck in the ditch’ replaced ‘Nana and Grandpa’s puncture’ (from our previous trip) as both Tao’s favourite role-playing game and his favourite story to be told, so that, for the rest of our stay, my humiliation was played out repeatedly before my eyes and rang in my ears. I hope that, by the time of our next visit, he will have forgotten it, but I’m not optimistic. I think Tao, like his grandfather, might get stuck in a rut.