So the election results are well and truly in, and now we in Israel wait with bated breath to discover what Macchiavellian schemes Bibi is planning to ensure that he ends up with a workable majority coalition in which none of his coalition partners have any real power and he is able to advance his own private agenda unimpeded. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, Bernice and I wait with bated breath to discover whether Micha’el and family will arrive in Israel safe and sound this week. Watch another bit of this space.

All of which means that I am free this week to write about something of no consequence whatsoever. The only trouble is that my head is full of speculation about the makeup of the coalition and the allocation of the various government ministries. At the same time, it is full of wondering and worrying about the myriad things that could go wrong in Portugal and prevent the family arriving. All of that leaves me with very little mental capacity for thinking about a light and trivial topic for this week’s post. Those of you who have seen me over the last few days may have found me unusually preoccupied, The fact is that in four days of hard thinking I have drawn a complete blank.

Well, not exactly a complete blank: I did toy briefly with the idea of writing about coincidence, which I believe I have touched on before. The fact is that I have encountered two coincidences in the last two days – which you must admit is a bit of a coincidence. Did you know that Richard Owen coined the word ‘dinosaur’ in 1841? It means ‘terrible lizard’, which is a pity, becaue dinosaurs, we now know, were not related to lizards, but there you go. I learnt about Owen in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I was reading over Shabbat.

A couple of hours later, I was reading the latest edition of the Jewish Review of Books.(Technically, this is not the latest edition, but, in fact, the Spring 2022 edition; however, since the magazine takes time to reach my mailbox from the States by snail mail, and since I am habitually one edition behind in my reading, it’s my latest edition.) Anyway, in this, of all unlikely periodicals, I read a reference to the fact that Richard Owen coined the term ‘dinosaur’, which, as you are aware, I knew already.

Then, this afternoon, I was due to call my brother for our weekly chat. So as not to disturtb Bernice, Esther and the sleeping Raphael, and since the weather was a delightful 25^o, I went out into Esther and Maayan’s garden. Finding a hammock in the shade of their treehouse, I eased myself onto it, displaying an agility I was not at all sure I still possessed, and settled down for a relaxing chat. (Unfortunately, when it came to dismounting from the hammock 30 minutes later, much of that agility seemed to have deserted me – but that’s a different story.) Life, at this point, felt pretty good. When I got through to Martin, he told me that his flowerbeds were starting to form pools of water after a night and day of ceaseless rain. At that point, I decided it would be kindest not to mention my precise, almost idyllic, location.

Now, I reckon I lie in a hammock, on average, once every, oooh, seventy years. So I was more than a little surprised when Martin, whose younger son’s birthday it was that day, described the card they had sent him; it apparently featured a man relaxing in a hammock. Not exactly The Twilight Zone, I know, but nevertheless….

However, in the end I decided that I had no idea what to make of these coincidences: what lessons to draw from them; what light they shed on the nature of human existence. So, I’ll leave them to one side and talk instead about nuts naked and dressed.

It seems to me that over the years it has become more difficult to find nuts (both tree-nuts and peanuts) sold in their shells. Before we go any further, let me clarify my terms. I will use the adjective ‘shelled’ to mean ‘having been shelled’, in other words ‘with their shells removed’. I will, similarly (by which of course I mean ‘oppositely’) use the term ‘unshelled’ to mean ‘having not been shelled’ in other words ‘still in their shells’. I do realise that one could make a strong case for the opposite meaning: ‘shelled’ could be used to mean ‘having a shell’ (as in ‘a shelled crab’) and ‘unshelled’ to mean ‘not having a shell’. It has long struck me as one of the minor delights of English that it boasts a number of such terms that lend themselves so delightfully to ambiguity.

As I was saying, it has become more difficult to find unshelled nuts. I suspect this is a question of catering to the perceived preference of the consumer. Well, let me tell you, the producers and retailers have misperceived the preference of this particular consumer. As far as I am concerned, shelling nuts is not only one of life’s hitherto unsung pleasures; it also has health and economic benefits. Anyone who has to crack a walnut, hazelnut or brazil before eating it is guaranteed to end up eating fewer nuts, which both saves money and, since nuts are criminally moreish, guards against over-indulgence.

On paper, this device ticks lots of boxes. It is a simple, basic technology, elegantly packaged in natural material, Unfortunately, in too short a time, it proved to be not a device for cracking nuts, but a device to be cracked by nuts. Eventually, the cracker met a nut tougher than itself, and it was the side of the bowl that cracked under the pressure, and not the nut.

Even before then, this nutcracker proved unsatsfactory. The mechanism placed too much machinery beween the operator’s hand and the nutshell. I found that all sensitivity was lost and it was extremely difficult to move beyond the point of the first crack in the shell without reaching the point of rupturing the shell and crushing the nut.

Such is my love of the pursuit of the perfect shelling that I am happy to spend a couple of hours shelling nuts for the whole family. If you share my enthusiasm for eating nuts, but get no pleasure from shelling them, I am available for small intimate gatherings as a service to friends. (Oranges, pomelos and mangoes also peeled.)

Meanwhile, as of the time of writing, the kids in Portugal have reached Lisbon, where they are staying overnight prior to their flight.

P.S. The kids took off a bit late, and landed a bit early, and arrived at our doorstep, weary but well. The parents, who haven’t slept since Heaven knows when, have both crashed, which means Bernice and I have full unmonitored access. Excuse me while I just turn a cartwheel or two in relief and joy.

P.P.S. Bibi’s machinations have begun, but not ended. Wiser heads than mine have counselled waiting and seeing, and accepting that, part of the social contract when you live in a democracy is that you have to accept that the people decide. I may reflect more on this later…or I may not, if something more urgent comes up, such as a revolutionary new method of shelling nuts, for example.