Well, I don’t know about you, but I have had an earth-shattering week: little short of momentous. When I tell you about it, you almost certainly won’t agree; indeed, you’ll probably wonder what all the fuss is about. But trust me: weeks don’t come much bigger than this. (Indeed, it has been so action-packed that I am going to have leave one entire topic over until next week.)

First of all, I tackled some jobs. Life is too short to list even a small percentage of my character flaws, but, in the pantheon of David’s greatest failings, right up there jostling for pole position is procrastination. I have spent most of my life bent almost double under the weight of jobs I keep putting off that could, almost always, be handled, done, dusted and filed away with considerably less effort than I expend not handling them.

It was probably the mid-1970s when I read The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian. I am fairly sure that was the book that featured the Head of Western Intelligence, or some such, who worked from a desk that was just large enough to hold one opened folder, so that he always had to complete one task before going on to the next. I thought that was a brilliant, enviable, and, for me, totally unattainable, level of efficiency. Apart from anything else, where do you put your cup of tea, your tissues, your other pair of glasses?

Incidentally, in the first of two astounding author revelations this week, I have just discovered, while carrying out the online research that most weeks fools at least some of you into thinking that I am erudite, that I have been labouring under a delusion for the last 50+ years. I always believed – nay, I always knew – that ‘Trevanian’ was the pseudonym of a publicity-shunning duo who wrote novels together, and whose names were – obviously – Trevor Somebody and Ian Somebody-Else. I now discover that it was simply the nom de plume of Rodney William Whittaker, an American film scholar who just happened to write a string of best-selling thrillers in the 1970s.

As I was saying. Last week I tackled some long-standing jobs. In my defence, some of these jobs were dependent on Bernice and I making a decision that we would travel to Portugal this summer as usual. This decision hinged on our assessment of my health prospects, so booking flights, as I did last week, was either a very positive sign, or else a reflection on our foolhardiness. Time, no doubt, will tell which. (Joking aside, apart from my feeling about 350% better than I did when we returned from Portugal in March, medical experts have told me we have no reason not to plan a trip.)

Once we had dates for Portugal, and a final decision not to cancel plans to go to England in mid-May for a great-nephew’s barmitzvah, I was able to start slotting in all the medical appointments I had been due to arrange. Since many of these appointments can’t be made automatically online, they almost all involved a callback from the relevant office. There is something faintly depressing about getting a call from a secretary who says “I’m calling from Shaarei Tzedek, returning your call. How can I help you?”, and having to say: “Can you tell me which department you’re calling from? I’m waiting for three calls from Shaarei Zedek.”

However, one bonus of this burst of activity is that I have actually been able to arrange two different appointments at the hospital for the same day next week. I’m wondering how many appointments I need to make to qualify for a free surgery of my choice, or at least a reserved parking spot.

I also got several other administrative monkeys off my back, in a flurry of activity that left me feeling uncharacteristically energised and positive

Once Pesach ended, I knew I had to start harvesting the shesek (loquat) from what we used to call our little tree, but now need to call our medium-sized tree. In terms of ripeness, they would probably have benefitted from another week on the tree, but I stopped netting the tree when, a few years ago, Robert Shaw growled in my ear: “We’re gonna need a bigger net,” and, I realised, a taller ladder and a much younger person to set the whole thing up. It was at that point that I cut a deal with the birds, offering them all they could eat from the top half of the tree, as long as they left me the bottom half.

This year, much to my surprise, they have been much more reasonable about this than in the past, and, in the two harvests last week and this, I was able to pick over 13 kilo of shesek.

This is probably the best point to stop for a moment and marvel at the miracle that every humble fruit tree is. When the family bought it for my birthday, probably 25 years ago, our tree was not as tall as me. Rooted in the very thin soil that constitutes our front garden, watered by a drip system, but otherwise benignly left to its own devices, it offers us shade in mid-summer, more dried leaves than anyone could possibly want in the late autumn, and, most years, between 10 and 20 kilo of the juiciest, tastiest loquats you have ever eaten.

In my cynical youth, I used to laugh at what I considered the cheap sentimentality of Joyce Kilmer’s poem Trees.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

I can still take or leave its relentless metre and end-stopped lines, its hammering monosyllabic rhymes, its insufficiently realised metaphors. (If you are looking up at God, how can your mouth be prest against the earth’s breast?) However, I have more sympathy with its sentiment these days. When you pick fruit from your own tree, and take offerings and tithes required on fruit and vegetables grown in Eretz Yisrael, and taste the first shesek of the season, and lay down provisions to keep this moment alive through the whole year, you feel a connectedness and a sense of continuity, and you are made aware of God’s beneficence. I am told that there are people who do not believe in a Higher Force, but I don’t understand what goes through their minds when they see the first shesek flowers appearing each year and reflect on the miracle that every single tree is.

Incidentally, in the second of two astounding author revelations this week, I have just discovered, while carrying out the online research I mentioned above, that I have been labouring under a delusion for the last 60+ years. I have always assumed that Joyce Kilmer was a woman, and a pretty soft, soppy woman at that. I now discover that he was very much a man; indeed, a war hero posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerres for his bravery on the battlefields of the First World War. I hang my head in sexist shame.

Loquat, like the rest of us, has its strengths and weaknesses. Our particular tree, for example, produces fruit that, no matter how healthily and vibrantly yellow-orange-apricot it glows on the tree, a few hours after it is picked develops grey patches and starts to soften. It is true that the fruit continues to taste really good for a day or two after this, but, fond as we are of shesek, Bernice and I cannot eat 13 kilo in a week ourselves.

Our neighbours on one side, and our good friends down the road, both have their own trees, so our neighbour on the other side always gets a generous bagful. We also take up to Zichron, where Raphael can be relied on to eat them, as, indeed, any fruit, in whatever quantity his parents will allow.

If the loquat’s weakness is its shelf life, then its strengths, apart from its juiciness and flavour, are its versatility and its high pectin content. So, having picked the last almost 6 kilo first thing this morning, I made shesek jam and shesek chutney (reminiscent of Branston pickle), stoned and stemmed another 4 cupfuls, to join the five cupfuls already in the freezer, promising to keep us in shesek ice-cream throughout the year. This left enough to take to Esther tomorrow and enough for Bernice and I to enjoy in our breakfast fruit salad for the next week. Bernice is also planning to make cinnamon loquat cake. Our kitchen windowsill looks like The Little House on the Prairie at the moment.

When you have stemmed and stoned 9 kilo of loquats (I keep the skin on for the ice cream and the jam), you are left with a large quantity of stones. In a normal year, I would make my shisky (shesek liqueur) from these stones. It is very reminiscent of amaretto (which is, after all, made, similarly, from the stones of the almond fruit). However, this year we will be in England at exactly the time the stones would need to be bathing in alcohol and sitting in the heat of the sun for a month, being shaken every four or five days. Fortunately, we still have 2 unopened bottles of 2023 and two of 2024 vintage, so we can get by while skipping a year.

However, Esther, I am delighted to say, is planning on stepping in. So, tomorrow we will be taking up to Zichron a pot of shesek jam, a pot of shesek chutney, a litre and a half of shesek stones, a recipe for shesek liqueur, and a kilo or two of actual shesek.

If we compost the stems and (few) skins, we will have wasted nothing of this astonishing fruit.

I wonder if the Loquat Marketing Board has a vacancy. I feel I may have a calling.