My goodness, we have a lot of ground to cover this week, so we had better get started.
It may come as a surprise to some of you to learn that this week’s is the first of four planned posts from Portugal. I know that I normally give some warning of any impending trip, but the fact is that things were very uncertain in the weeks immediately preceding our planned departure of July 1, what with the Iranian campaign and all. Bernice and I postponed our preparation until virtually the last moment, not wishing to tempt providence. Not that we are superstitious, of course. I used to be, but then someone told me that being superstitious is unlucky, so of course I stopped immediately.
Anyway, in the event, and despite Eeyore’s worst fears, Piglet won the day, and our entire journey day was almost as smooth as possible. Five days before we were due to leave, Bernice reminded me that we still needed to book a taxi to the airport. This is a mild bone of contention between us. Bernice feels that we are now too decrepit to face the walk from where a taxi would drop us close to the railway station in Jerusalem, to a seat (if we’re lucky) on the train. This involves lifting our luggage onto a security conveyor belt, negotiating three separate lifts or escalators, steering through the ticket gate, lifting the luggage onto the train, finding places to store the cases out of the way on the train, then, at the airport, retrieving our luggage, lifting it off the train, negotiating the ticket barrier and walking into the airport, which is on the same level. The alternative, a comfortable taxi ride with a friendly driver from outside our house to the airport entrance, has only one downside: the 350-shekel fare. I find it difficult to admit that we are so old and frail as to justify the fare, even though I know in my heart that Bernice is right.
However, when Bernice raised the question of booking a taxi, I was blessed with one of those rare inspirational moments of clear thinking that serve to reassure me that I have not yet completely lost it. I suggested that, rather than missing seeing Raphael (and his parents) on the Tuesday we return, we should pack and leave home on the Monday, drive to Zichron, pick up Raphael from gan and stay overnight with Esther and family, leave the girls our car for the month, take a taxi to Binyamina railway station (for only 40 shekels!), take the train to the airport, and then return to Binyamina, sleep for a couple of hours in the girls’ flat, pick up Raphael from gan, and then go home in the evening. Since the platform at Binyamina is at street level, this journey is much easier.
This meant that, for the first time, we were able to take Raphael to gan, rather than just pick him up. He is now approaching the end of his second year in this gan, and it is lovely to see how he has matured there and how he relishes his role as one of the big boys. Interestingly, he chose to play by himself on one of the swings, rather than playing with any of his friends. Normally, when we take him to the park, he always has half an eye looking for one of his friends from gan, and he always enjoys himself much more if he can run around and climb and kick a ball with friends, rather than having to rely on the inconsistent agility and limited stamina of his grandparents.
After a few minutes, we said our goodbyes to Raphael and returned to the flat, to pack our overnight things and prepare to leave. Esther had arranged to time her journey into work so that she could drive us to the station in our car (no need to transfer our cases), help us get the luggage on the train, and travel with us most of the journey. (She was working in Tel Aviv that day.) Although the day was, as always, very long, the journey was uneventful, although we experienced a couple of delays, and arrived in Penamacor an hour and a half later than we had hoped. We even managed a not unreasonable night’s sleep, and were ready for the boys when they came into our room in the morning.
Since then, our days have been as full, and as fun, as they always are here. We arrived to be greeted by a heatwave. Having left Israel in the high 30s, we were greeted by temperatures reaching 40o for the first couple of days. Since the house is now equipped with an upright fan in each room, and the air conditioner in the kitchen is effective, conditions were less intolerable than we had initially feared. An added bonus is that it appears that 40o is too hot even for flies, and there were far fewer in the house that we remember from last summer.
Over the last couple of days, the heatwave has broken (if that is the right word for temperatures around 35o), and the flies have returned, at least in the cooler morning and evening hours. Even 35o is a bit much for Lua, the family dog, who has so far refused to go into the forest when I take her for a morning walk. She doesn’t really ant to go out at all, but after I drag her up the road, we reach a point where she accepts the fact of the walk. However, there is a further point, beyond which she has, until now, refused to go. I have, I must admit, a certain amount of sympathy for her position.
Last Thursday, Tslil and I took the boys swimming in the local open-air pool. Although it is only a seven-minute walk from the house, it is located at the very top of the hill that our street climbs, and it is a challenging walk at 37o with two children whose combined age is 9. I was therefore very pleased when Tslil suggested we drive. When we arrived, at about 4PM on a cloudless July afternoon, there were just two couples sunbathing on the grass slopes that surround the pool, and both the children’s pool and the main pool were completely empty. By the time we left, two and a half hours later, there were perhaps 15 people in the pool. The boys had free admission, and Tslil and I, as ‘residents’, were charged EUR 2.70 each. So, that is the equivalent of ILS 21,00 for the four of us to have a full-size pool virtually to ourselves.!
Since we were last here, Tao has become much more comfortable in the water. The kids have an inflatable toy dinghy that Ollie was happy to sit in almost the whole time, squirting water to put out imaginary fires. Having been given a couple of hours’ warning, I had time to buy a very fetching pair of bathing shorts from the China shop, and I was happy to spend a couple of hours cooling off in the pool with the boys.
Other than that, and the usual multiple supermarket shopping expeditions, there is not a lot to report. We have already given the boys two of the books we brought out, and they appear to be the only books Ollie wants to have read to him. He is, it must be said, rather an obsessive listener. Once he attaches to a book, he doesn’t want to let go. Fortunately, one of the two books is The Cat in the Hat, which, as far as I am concerned, stands up to being read multiple times every day. The only problem is, of course, that any mistake in reading is immediately pounced on by Ollie, who quickly committed the entire book to memory.
On Shabbat afternoon, Tao and I built a Lego robot, and I have found it fascinating how Tao has interacted with the robot since. We were both pretty pleased with the end result, but I did not expect the robot to prove as popular as it has. Since Shabbat afternoon (about 53 hours at time of writing), the robot has barely left Tao’s hand. It has featured in all of his imaginative play, and has had a starring role in all of the interactive puppet shows that Bernice and the boys improvise several times a day. When we played a board game this morning, the robot played for Tao.
I used to think of Lego as a construction toy, but Tao has demonstrated since Shabbat that it is, of course, a construction, destruction and reconstruction toy. Literally tens of times every day, Tao breaks the robot up and then effortlessly builds it again. The breaking-up is often a side-effect of the robot wrecking a magnetile tower-block, However, sometimes Tao just disassembles and reassembles the robot, treating it almost as a six-year-old’s equivalent of a set of worry beads.
This is, of course, also a large part of the appeal of magnetiles, which are even easier than Lego to take apart and put together. Tao has been a dedicated magnetiler from a very young age, and Ollie has learnt from sitting alongside him. Tslil mentioned the other day that, although she rotates many of the boys’ toys, she never ‘rests’ the magentiles, because they are played with every day.
The other day, we were able to observe the extent of Tao’s construction skills. In the past, Tao has helped Micha’el assemble a number of standing fans. This time, with no guidance, Tao assembled the fan we had just bought. When Micha’el checked the fan afterwards, he only had to make one minor adjustment. We can only hope that, finally, someone in the family will have a marketable skill that pays well. It should also improve Tao’s chances of being taken in by a closed community in the event of the apocalypse. My reading of the geopolitics suggests these are not trivial considerations.
There! Even in deepest rural Portugal, I can’t quite clear my mind of what is happening elsewhere. Perhaps by next week I will have managed to detox more effectively.