Let me start this week by attempting to be as gracious as I was ungracious last week. It is now (or will be now: now as in when I publish this post, rather than now/then as in when I wrote it – writing a text that represents my thoughts at a particular moment while keeping in mind that they will only be read by their intended audience some time, often a day or two, later seems to place me increasingly often in an environment where time takes on a curious fluidity)…anyway, as I was saying, it is now almost exactly a week since Bernice and I landed back from our 10 days in England.

Before we left Israel, we spent some time discussing how we expected this to be our last trip back to the old country. From all that we had read of Britain in the last couple of years, we expected to feel very alien and far from comfortable there. In addition, many of those we go over to see visit Israel from time to time, and we can see them here even more conveniently.

It is also true that whereas, when we first moved to Israel, we had a list of items that we always brought back when we visited Britain, these days, between what no longer interests us and what is easily attainable online, our shopping in the UK is less and less. On this trip, we bought little more than brown socks (why are they unattainable in Israel?), mixed spice (for apple crumble) and children’s books (for you can guess who). Yes, of course you can buy children’s books online, but Amazon is not The Bookshop and Secret Toy Shop in the High Road, Loughton, with staff who know and love every book on their shelves, and such treasures as genuine Waddingtons playing cards (in packaging unchanged from 50 years ago) for the born-again bridge player in your life.

As a measure of how uneasy we felt, I should mention that we spent some time discussing, before we left Israel, and canvassing opinion in England, about whether I should wear my kippa on the street, and whether a baseball cap is now nothing more than a sure indicator of a Jew who is trying to pass. In the end, I wore my plush beige flat cap almost everywhere (Can you honestly picture me in a baseball cap?) and, given the good weather we enjoyed, felt rather self-conscious.

We also discussed, on our El AL flight over, what our policy was going to be if we were asked where we come from. In the end we settled, idiotically, for Greece, a country Bernice has never visited (whereas I was in Athens on business once for almost two days), whose language we speak not a word of, and whose citizens we could never pass for.

In the event, this was more of a private joke between ourselves. When people waiting to board an underground train stood aside to let disembarking passengers get off first, we remarked to each other how differently people behave in Greece. When someone actually asked Bernice where we lived, she of course immediately said: “Israel”, with no unpleasant reaction following.

In Swansea, we saw one Palestinian flag and a banner outside a house.

Having completed our ‘last-ever trip to Britain’, we are now enthusiastically planning the next one. Apart from catching up with the family and friends that we simply couldn’t fit in this time, we also want to enjoy again the amazing hospitality of our oldest (in the sense of longest-standing) friends and our closest relatives, maybe even for just a little longer next time. In all four centres, we were treated right royally, and were free of the pressure to be constantly rushing to see things and do things.

We did, of course do some things: we spent two separate hours shopping;  we visited the newly redesigned and opened municipal museum of the London suburb I grew up in, a museum that includes a display of Jewish life in Ilford that references, among many other familiar scenes, my late father’s grocery shop that was a central part of the community; we visited the cemetery where Bernice father and other relatives, and my parents and other relatives, are buried; we tried to visit the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, but cost-cutting has sadly restricted opening hours; I was able to look around the beautiful renovation of my brother’s shul in Chigwell.

Other than that, we sat, talked, ate, drank tea, reminisced, caught up, and, over the Shabbat, celebrated our great-nephew’s barmitzvah at another vibrant, and considerably younger, London Jewish community, in Borehamwood. After the exertions of the Shabbat and the party (I hope that my brother’s successful attempt to get me to dance Yesh Lanu Tayish with him is captured on video), our trip was rounded off by a day and a half doing absolutely nothing in rural Surrey at the lovely home of Bernice’s brother and sister-in-law. We are both agreed that European woodland is, increasingly, one of things we miss most in Israel, and here was a parcel of it on our doorstep.

Even the heavens shone on us, literally. Determined to travel light, we packed clothes suitable for a disappointing British spring, and enjoyed an almost uninterrupted run of sunny days, with temperatures in the mid-twenties. While the authorities were issuing warnings not to venture out in the midday sun, the weather was, for us, pleasantly comfortable, and the English and Welsh countryside certainly looked its best.

So, let me take this opportunity to thank all of our generous and considerate hosts and hostesses for conspiring to wreck our plans to make this a farewell tour. We love you all.