In addition to all of the expected pleasures, our life in Penamacor sometimes brings completely unexpected satisfactions, one of which I experienced last week.

Olly, in his taste for stories and songs, is very much a creature of habit. Most days, at some point, he asks, or agrees, to sit on my lap for songs. There are six or seven songs that I sing to him, all of them including various actions. However, the decisions as to the choice of songs and their running order are firmly in Olly’s hands. This can be quite challenging, since his vocabulary is still limited, However, he usually finds a way to make himself understood.

“Wheel”, for example is a word Olly only acquired last week but already drops casually into his conversation as if he had mastered it months ago. When he asked for “Wheel’ today, I initially, understandably, but mistakenly, assumed he was asking for “The wheels on the bus”, which is actually more often one of Bernice’s songs than one of mine. However, when I launched into that, and was met by a firm rejection in the form of a dismissive shake of the head, I thought again and eventually realised Olly wanted “Horsey, horsey, don’t you stop”, which includes a particularly extravagant rotating of my knees, on which he is precariously balanced, to accompany the line “And your wheels go round”.

When we are not working through those English songs, Olly often wants to thumb through the Israeli children’s classic “מאה שירים ראשונים” (100 First Songs) a collection of nursery songs and Israeli folk songs that our children’s missed out on in their own (English-language) first years. This is, for Bernice and myself, a doubly evocative book. First, it is illustrated by Dosh, who was, for the first decades of Israel’s existence, the national daily caricaturist, capturing the national spirit very accurately over the years.

For anyone who came of age in a Zionist movement in the 60s, Srulik (Dosh’s Israeli version of Uncle Sam or John Bull) is a very familiar figure.

Equally familiar are many of the songs in the book, because a lot of them are ones we sang and danced to in Hanoar Hatzioni in the 60s. In those halcyon days – now 60 years ago – we sang with considerably more enthusiasm than accuracy. It was in these years that I first developed the technique of fudging the words of songs I did not know the words of. This was a technique that I perfected when I was required, as a resident of Wales and a teacher in a comprehensive school, to join in the singing of the Welsh national anthem. I was fairly confident about the first three words, but from there on I was more or less completely at sea. If I show you the first two lines, you will understand that I was in a scarcely better position on those rare occasions when I had the words in front of me.

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi,
Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri.

Fortunately, in Wales, the national anthem is always sung with tremendous gusto, and so the gibberish of my tuneful rendition always went unnoticed.

The other day, while he was thumbing through the songbook, Olly stopped at Zemer, Zemer Lach: a very familiar song from the movement days. As I sang it to him,. I was amazed to discover that the remembered gibberish of 60 years ago was actually a coherent and fully comprehensible verse. In an instant, the mystery was solved. It is fair to say that this mystery had not kept me awake many nights in the intervening years, but nevertheless I felt a very satisfying sense of closure.

The same experience happened later with Al Sfat Yam Kinneret. I plan to flick through the entire book before we leave. Who knows what other secrets my own personal Rosetta Stone will reveal?

Incidentally, if the early 1970s British cultural reference in this week’s title escapes you, you can listen here. I won’t pretend it’s up there with Schubert lieder; indeed, part of me regards it now (and regarded it then, to be honest) as a waste of Georgie Fame and Alan Price’s not inconsiderable talents, but it does, for some of us, evoke a moment in time.

Back to 2024 and Portugal. On Sunday this week, Bernice and I took the boys out for the day. We went to Castelo Branco, to a gymboree. Tslil had kindly phoned ahead, to ensure that they would be open on Sunday, and established that they were open from 10:00 till 12:30, at which time they had a private block booking. Thanks to Bernice’s magnificent powers of organisation and shepherding, we drove off at 9:17, only two minutes behind schedule, having negotiated the morning preparations with no voice raised (by child or adult), no tear shed (by child or adult), everyone having visited the bathroom and performed successfully (you get the picture). Bernice, I need hardly explain, has no idea where the humour lies in Michael McIntyre’s Leaving the House routine.

It was an uneventful journey, punctuated only by a couple of small savoury treats to keep the boys going, and by Tao’s repeated: “Are we nearly there yet?” It is a mystery to me how this exact wording is passed down from one cohort of children to the next, through the generations. Who teaches them these things?

When we arrived at the industrial estate where the gymboree was located in a huge warehouse, we took a little time to find the place, since it was singularly under-signed, but, once we did, we were very impressed. More accurately, I was very impressed, largely because I had very deliberately tempered my expectations in advance. To achieve that, I had simply imagined what the experience would be like if we were going to a gymboree in Israel.

How did the reality outshine my expectations? Let me count the ways. First, rather than 437 children fighting over the equipment, there were about 15 children, all well behaved and quietly spoken. Then, the equipment looked not only very sturdily built and thoroughly cushioned, but also almost brand new. In addition, three young and very alert staff constantly patrolled the play area, anticipating problems and ensuring safety and order. There was also a complete absence of vending machines offering junk food and drinks for sale. Instead, there was a constantly refilled jug of water and beakers on offer, with the staff suggesting to children that they stop for a drink. Finally, and most welcome of all, the inevitable background music was played at a volume that still allowed conversation in a normal speaking voice.

As for the equipment, it was aimed ideally at children a year or two older than Tao, but he managed to handle almost everything, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time for all of two hours. He repeatedly came down the vertiginous tube-slide that caused Nana almost to pass out when she first saw it; He mastered the climbing walls. He repeatedly ‘swam’ around the foam cube pit and bounced on the trampolines.

After a little while, Olly ventured in and, although he could not be tempted onto any of the equipment, unsurprisingly, he enjoyed running around on the squelchy foam mattresses and having his feel tickled on the artificial grass floor. After expending prodigious amounts of energy, the boys retired together to the playhouse where they cooked up a magnificent meal in the play kitchen.

One more pleasant surprise awaited us. Tslil had been quoted a price of EUR7.50 per child per hour, which we thought was a little expensive. In the event, we were charged nothing for Olly, and for Tao we paid EUR10.00 in total, for just under two hours of unmitigated fun.

Our plan was to drive from there to a vegan café we have eaten in before, that offers simple fare that the boys would enjoy. However, when I checked online I found they were closed on Sunday. Fortunately, belt and braces Bernice had brought enough food for a modest picnic, and so we decided to go to the City Park, which we know well. It offers shade under trees, an excellent adventure playground, and, we also knew, a café, that might offer something for the boys.

In the event, despite considerable language challenges, we were able to procure cheese toasties and strawberry juice for the boys, and a couple of excellent chilled beers for Bernice and myself, and to spend a little time playing in the playground.

On the drive home, both boys, unsurprisingly, fell asleep very quickly, while I, very surprisingly, didn’t. This was as well since I was driving. 45 minutes later, we arrived home, after an action-packed day, throughout which both children and adults behaved impeccably, and a thoroughly good time was had by all.

By the time you read this, we will have, at most, seven more days to enjoy with the family here. Highlights to come include Olly’s birthday celebrations and – if Micha’el, Tslil and Tao can be persuaded to strut their stuff – a home-made pizza evening. I can hardly wait.