Now that we have moved the clocks forward, Shabbat afternoon is a much longer thing than it was a month ago. The major impact this has on us is that it means our conversation with our good friends when they drop by on Shabbat afternoon – as they habitually do, I’m delighted to say – can progress beyond catching up with each other’s week, and move on to matters more philosophical.

Which is exactly what it did this week, when Bernice asked: “If you could go back to your 18-year-old self, and make career and life decisions that would mean you were likely now to be much better off materially, what decisions would you change?” (Incidentally, you may be interested to know that most of those present decided that they would not be prepared to make any compromises in terms of a satisfying working life in order to gain materially, and the rest of us admitted that we still had no idea what making a sound financial decision would look like.)

We all agreed, eventually, that we had many, many blessings to count (principally our wonderful respective families – even those members of them who have chosen to take themselves and our grandchildren far away, a choice that would be more incomprehensible if it were not the identical choice that we all made when younger). Nevertheless, I do find myself from time to time musing how wonderful it would be to win the lottery. I would, of course, probably increase my chances of winning if I ever bought a ticket. If I were to buy a ticket, this week would undoubtedly be the week for me to buy one.

Which is as Errol Garnerish an intro as there is (see my blog post from 17 December 2019 if you haven’t been paying close enough attention) to sharing with you what a lucky week I have had these past seven days. Five events have made this a very fortunate week.

First of all, exactly a week ago, I accurately predicted the winner of the competition to find the nation’s favourite song for the 75^th anniversary (see my blog post of 25 April 2023 if you haven’t been paying any attention at all). Not only did this produce a delicious feeling of smugness in itself, but it also meant that, since Thursday morning, every time I have read a story reporting the results and explaining why the winner was such an appropriate choice (four articles so far), I have had an even more delicious feeling of rapturous smugness at having scooped most major Israeli media outlets. I really don’t pay me enough!

Second, on Yom Ha’atzma’ut itself, I watched, as I usually do, the World Bible Quiz for Youth. This is usually a humiliating affair for me, since I manage to get right only a handful of questions, and am left feeling in awe of the book-learning of Jewish teens from around the world. This year, typically, as the original field of 16 (whittled down from hundreds of applicants in non-televised rounds over recent months) narrowed to 8, then 4, then 2, most of the contestants from outside Israel fell by the wayside. Atypically, 6 of the last 8 remaining contestants, and both of the finalists, were girls.

The winner only answered one question incorrectly over the entire quiz. Of the four questions I answered correctly this year, one was the question that she answered incorrectly. (“What was the first recorded occasion on which David cried?” I’ll print the answer below, to give you the opportunity to feel as smug as I.*)

The third incident actually took place two weeks ago, and is a little less dramatic, but it is proving for me to be an ongoing game-changer. One of the biggest advantages of stopping eating meat (for Bernice, at all; for me, at home) is that we now have enough kitchen cupboard space to accommodate our year-round and our Pesach dishes. Changing over requires only some condensing of the everyday, and bringing some of the Pesach stuff down from the less-accessible cupboards to a more convenient level.

We have a fairly deep double cupboard above the fridge, which is difficult to access because the fridge protrudes. We have always used this cupboard to store trays and other items that are too wide for an ordinary cupboard, as well as a number of items that we rarely, if ever, use: a teak meat carving board, knife and fork (a wedding present, and too good to get rid of), a pizza stone, and so on. Our other deeper cupboard, which is a single cupboard above the oven and microwave, houses the wide Pesach items (Seder dish and so on).

As we were packing away after Pesach this year, it suddenly occurred to me that the double cupboard is very under-utilised, since we have, over the years, passed on and otherwise retired several items we never used. On the other hand, all of the Pesach cupboards are jam-packed. I therefore switched the contents of the two deep cupboards, allowing me to relieve the jam in the other Pesach cupboards, and also making more readily accessible such items as the Havdalah mats, which are now no longer above the fridge. I am torn between congratulating myself on my astonishing vision and creativity, and wondering how it can possibly have taken me 10 years to think of this rearrangement.

Fourth, just when I thought I had exhausted ways of using up our shesek (loquats), which will have yielded about 10 kg by the time I harvest the last crop this week, Esther came up with another. In addition to the jam, the chutney, the ice-cream and the liqueur – and, of course, the fresh fruit itself, particularly juicy and sweet and flavourful this year – I am now attempting shesek vinegar.

I’m delighted to report that the bubbles and clouding, which should, according to the recipe, begin after one and two weeks respectively, were already visible after one and two days respectively, and are now very well advanced, which means, I hope, that I should be able to bottle before we take a mid-week break in Budapest in mid-May. As with my sourdough starter, I have been struck by how full of bacteria and microbes our home is. Let me stress that this is a good thing.

Lastly, when I turned to Bernice 90 minutes ago and confessed that, despite thinking of little else for the last two days, I still had absolutely no idea what I was going to write about this week, she said: “Well, whatever it is, after the last couple of weeks it had better be something light!” and hey presto, by a trick of literary alchemy, by the time I got upstairs I knew exactly what I was going to write about.

So, if this week’s effort has left you singularly unimpressed, please blame Bernice.

*When it became clear that Saul’s anger at David was not to be assuaged, Jonathan shot the arrows as a sign for David, and David fled. Before he left, the two embraced and wept. (Samuel 1, 20:41)

Meanwhile, in the tradition of King David, all of our grandsons seem to be music-makers.
(I could segue for Israel, couldn’t I!)