Let’s start with the good news. We arrived safely in Penamacor after a very long day last Tuesday. I had woken at 4AM on Tuesday and been unable to get back to sleep. It appears that, as I get older, I worry more about travel arrangements not working out. We didn’t reach the house in Penamacor until 1:45AM. after a very easy drive: easy, but still almost three hours. Lua, taking her duties as guard dog very seriously, chose to bark warningly as I fumbled with the front-door key. (The door has always been temperamental. Sometimes I manage to catch it just right, and the key actually works, but Tuesday night was not, it is fair to say, one of those times.) This meant that we disturbed Micha’el’s sleep, which was not an entirely bad thing from our point of view since he took care of shlepping in the heavier luggage.

Everyone very kindly allowed us a lie-in on Wednesday morning…until 6:30. Bernice, of course, went straight into Nana mode, entering into all of Tao’s games, and offering a shoulder to Ollie which she was delighted that he took to almost immediately. It is no longer a surprise that Tao is very comfortable with us, but it was a delight to rediscover what a friendly, sunny and trusting soul Ollie is. We really are made to feel very very welcome by everybody (even Lua, once she had established that we weren’t breaking and entering),

Late morning we went to the excellent supermarket 30-minutes’ drive away. The boys had taken it in turns to come down with colds in the week before we arrived, and so Micha’el and Tslil hadn’t managed to do a big shop. We actually broke our Portuguese supermarket bill record this time, ably assisted by Tao. I am by now used to the fact that cashiers ask me whether I need a tax bill, because they assume we are buying for a modest hotel. Small-town Portuguese tend, so Micha’el tells us, to shop daily, buying small amounts each time. We seem to buy enormous quantities, and still seem to need to shop almost every day.

I just about managed the drive back from the supermarket before crashing for a three-hour nap, which made up for my twenty-two-and-a-half-hour Tuesday. Bernice, on the other hand, didn’t manage to catch up with herself until Shabbat, when she actually slept until 9AM. I think we are now both recovered from the exertions and stress of the journey, and are into Portugal mode.

The non-stop thunderstorms that Micha’el had warned us of disappeared just before we landed, and our weather has been hot (mid-high 30s) and sunny ever since. Fortunately, the house seems to enjoy its own mini ecosystem: the narrow street at the front is shaded by the houses on both sides, and is therefore significantly cooler than the backyard. The result is that, with the front windows, the glazed double doors between the living room and the kitchen, and the back doors all wide open, there is a cooling breeze blowing through the house for most of the day. This suits us.

The open windows and doors, unfortunately, also suit the house flies, but we choose to regard them as a necessary evil. It is remarkable what one can adjust to when there is no alternative. Lua devotes quite a lot of time to attempting to catch them in her mouth, but has yet to succeed.

Returning to the “exertions and stress of the journey”, I never fail to be surprised by the creative ingenuity of the unappeasable god of air travel. He always seems to be coming up with new ideas for things that can go wrong. This time he excelled himself in the stress stakes, with two original ideas.

When we come out to Portugal, we take an ‘overseas package’ of data and local calls and SMSs through our mobile provider. This is a very straightforward arrangement, in theory. (My more sensitive readers may have picked up on the fact that behind that casual phrase (“in theory”) lies a whole world of possibilities of practice deviating from theory.

To repeat: this is a very straightforward arrangement, in theory. I simply go online, log in to our account, select the package (available in a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer, so that Bernice can take the offer as well) and click Approve. So, on the Thursday before we flew (over four days before our departure) I went online. (My more sensitive readers may have picked up on the fact that behind that casual parenthetic phrase (“over four days before our departure”) lies an entire animated discussion with Bernice about the appropriate amount of time in advance that I should have arranged the overseas package.)

To repeat: I went online, then I logged in to our account, selected the package (available in a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer, so that Bernice could take the offer as well), and clicked Approve. At which point, up popped a message saying how excited out provider was that we were buying this package, explaining that we needed to speak to them directly to complete the process, and inviting me to WhatsApp them. I naturally retrieved my heart from the bottom of whatever hearts sink into when they sink, and WhatsApped a short message explaining the situation.

It is true that the more modern AI chatbots are uncanny in their impersonation of a human being. It is, sadly, equally true that the kind of automated messages that most service providers use gives themselves away as soon as they don’t open their non-mouths. This one responded to my message, in the cheery tone they all effect:

Hi! Thanks for contacting us on WhatsApp (smiley face icon)
We’re doing everything to respond just as quickly as possible. Meanwhile you can carry on with what you’re doing and we’ll be in touch soon. (smug smiley face icon)
You can also go into your personal zone on our webite and carry out all sorts of activities easily, quickly, and without waiting for a rep.

Pausing only to explain icily to the phone that “Actually, no, I can’t, because you won’t let me”, I carried on with what I had been doing (which was, you will remember, discussing ever more animatedly with Bernice what the ideal time would have been to order the package).

Astonishingly, not another minute had passed before a living, breathing rep WhatsApped me. It took just a little longer to explain the situation to him than I was prepared to allow him without wondering about his general intelligence, but, once we were on the same wavelength, he was soon able to clarify that the problem was that my current SIM card did not support the overseas package (although it had supported it three months previously, when it was in my old phone). All I needed to do (he informed me, employing even more smiling and heart-eyed icons than his bot colleague) was to collect a SIM card, free of charge, from any branch of a national chain of electrical retailers or an alternative chain of mobile shops, and then contact the provider to associate the new SIM to my mobile number.

I pointed out that we were flying on the following Tuesday and asked whether the whole process could be postponed until our return, but he regretted that that was not possible. He assured me there were several branches in Jerusalem, but I had already established that there was one only six kilometres from us, in Mishor Adumim. He was delighted to hear this, and we parted in very good humour.

On the morrow, I made my way to Mishor Adumim, and was given a new SIM with very little fuss. When I returned home, I phoned the provider, and spoke to a delightful rep who established, in just a couple of minutes, that I had been given a 4G SIM, whereas I needed a 5G one. I pointed out that it would have been useful to have had that explained to me in the first place. To her credit, she agreed. She asked where I had obtained it from, and, when I told her, she explained that that particular branch did not stock 5G SIMs, I mentioned, almost as an aside, how useful it would have been if her colleague of the previous afternoon had known that. To her credit, she agreed.

More than that. She seemed genuinely mortified, and assured me that she would instruct her Jerusalem office to courier the SIM to my house. Since this was now Friday noon, she explained that the office wouldn’t be able to process the request until Sunday, and the SIM would arrive only on Monday. She told me that if it had not arrived by 3PM on Monday, I should contact her again, so that there would still be time to deliver it.

In the event, the courier company made contact early on Monday, the SIM was delivered in the early afternoon, and it was associated to my mobile number in a matter of minutes. To our great surprise, our package worked as soon as we arrived in Portugal, both on my phone and on Bernice’s, even though she had not been told that she needed a new SIM. She had, indeed, been told (and I clarified this several times, believe me) that she did not need a new SIM, and this proved to be true.

So this first instance of exertion and stress was all in the days leading up to our departure…unlike the second instance, which, my word count tells me, I will have to leave for next week.

Just time for a reminder of what we come to Portugal for, and what we leave behind.