I was about to comment on how rare it is for me to reference contemporary music. Then I decided that, before I did so, I should just check the publication date of the song I nod at in the title of this week’s post. I hope you’re sitting down: July 1968, which, however you count it, is over 54 years ago. As if I needed depressing even more, Revolution is as far back in history now as Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser was in July 1968. (Incidentally, it’s worth reading the lyrics of this 1914 patriotic war song, to wonder at its light-hearted optimism at the start of World War I, a mood that was so far out of step with both reality and, I believe, the British public at large.)

But I digress…and we find ourselves this week at the exact point in this season in the Jewish year when digression is the one thing we don’t want. As we approach the end of the seven days that carry us from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, from the New Year to the Day of Atonement, what we want is to focus on the matters at hand.

At a Q&A session that we held after morning services in our synagogue last Shabbat, the moderator invited us all to share what resolutions we had made for the New Year. My initial reaction was to reflect that New Year resolutions are surely a non-Jewish phenomenon. (Ed. Note: Actually, that’s not true; my initial reaction was: ‘In your dreams! I’m not sharing my resolutions with anyone!’ – and judging by the number of people who passed, I’m guessing I wasn’t the only person who reacted in that way.)

However, as I listened to the ten or twelve people who were happy to share their resolutions, I started wondering about the whole phenomenon, and I have come to the conclusion that, far from it being a non-Jewish thing, there is something in the whole experience of making and striving to keep resolutions that is quintessentially Jewish.

By way of introduction, let me present some of the resolutions that were voiced on Shabbat. There were several that were specifically related to raising the resolver’s level of Jewish observance: to take on more religious learning; to strive to pray more often in a minyan and not alone. Some were more broadly concerned with general behaviour (although these were also very much in harmony with ideas central to Judaism): to perform more acts of simple charity; to be a better neighbour. Still others were even more general: to find a husband who embodies the qualities I am seeking; to lose 10 kilo.

This was the moment at which I started wondering generally about the whole point of resolutions. When that last resolution was shared, half of those present nodded or grunted acknowledgement, and you could almost hear a general murmur of: ‘Been there! Done that! Repeatedly!’ Discussing this with Bernice afterwards, I was not surprised to hear her reject, for herself, the whole concept of resolutions: either you decide to do something and do it, or you don’t…and don’t. Resolving to do something sets up an entire extra unnecessary layer, that adds nothing.

There is a level at which I agree with Bernice. I certainly remember vividly a decade or more of resolving to give up smoking, and either never getting any further than the resolution, or making a half-hearted attempt, which fizzled out within a day or two. Then, one day, with no specific trigger, I woke up and decided not that I was going to stop smoking but that I had stopped smoking, and, lo and behold, I had. Since then, I have always maintained that stopping smoking is the easiest thing in the world; you just have to want to.

And yet…At another level, I believe that there is a genuine significance in making resolutions. A resolution is a declaration that we make to ourselves (and, if we choose to, to others, but that is not the important part) that we are going to change. The act of making that declaration is an affirmation that we have the power and ability to change. That is a profound affirmation.

There is a famous Victorian Christian hymn – All Things Bright and Beautiful – written by the Anglo-Irish Cecil Frances Alexander. She was tireless in her charitable work for the deaf and dumb, the poor and the sick. There is a verse in the hymn that was subsequently rejected by the Church, and omitted from standard hymnbooks. The verse reads:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

This explicit endorsement of the class system, elevating it to the level of Divine will, is certainly alien to Judaism. Blind acceptance of one’s fate is not the Jewish way. The resounding message of this period of the year is that every person’s fate is in his own hands. If we genuinely repent our sins, then God will gladly accept our repentance. Repentance, prayer and charity, we declare in the High Holyday liturgy, avert the evil decree.

On Yom Kippur itself, most people that I know, whether they are traditionally religious or not, to a greater or a lesser degree, step back from their everyday life and make for themselves a space where they can reflect on the place that they are in. Speaking personally, in a ‘good’ year, where I feel I have been able to make that space and experience that reflection, I find myself, at the end of Yom Kippur, feeling that I can indeed work to become a better person in this new year.

For those of us who lack the strength of character of Bernice, or at least for myself, the act of making a resolution can help to sustain that feeling over the coming days, as the pressures of everyday life rush back in, and I feel the spiritual force that I experienced on Yom Kippur dissipating. A resolution translates the general feeling of ‘wanting to do better’ into a specific action item to be carried out. It also, as I stated above, affirms my belief that I can change.

I could make the argument that making a resolution only to fail to carry it out is a waste of time, and is merely an opportunity to make myself aware of my inadequacies. As the congregant said last shabbat: ‘My resolution is the same resolution I make every year – to lose 10 kilo.’ You could see that as just a repeated failure, and even as satisfying what was apparently not Einstein’s definition: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.’

However, I would argue that if, every year, we reach the point after Yom Kippur where our faith in our ability to change is renewed, where we have shed our cynicism and our despair, and where we genuinely believe that this year we can indeed become a better person, then that is something to be celebrated rather than mocked. Regardless of whether we succeed in converting the resolution into life-changing action, the mere act of faith contained in the resolution is a thing of value. I say we want a resolution!

Raphael, meanwhile, seems untroubled by the awesomeness of the period we are currently going through.

Housekeeping: Because of Rosh Hashana, this post has winged its way to you on Wednesday, not Tuesday. Please adjust your minds accordingly. Thank you.

By the time you read this, Roger Federer will have retired from the world of professional tennis. That marks the official end of two separate eras. The first is, obviously, his own career, which began over 24 years ago on July 6, 1998. The second, equally obviously, and perhaps more momentously, is the era of rivalry between Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, which had its origins in 2004, when Rafa first played Roger, but became a three-way contest in 2006, when Novak first played both Roger and Rafa.

Now that we are finally here, the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) discussions over dinner, in the media, or in the pub, have been revived with a vengeance. What characterises these discussions is that they are never resolved to everyone’s satisfaction; indeed, nobody is ever persuaded to change their mind. And I think I know the reason why.

But before we get to that, I need to clarify my position. For a very long time (too long, I now admit), I remained loyal to Rod Laver, who got my vote for several reasons. Here are three of my favourites. One: he changed the game, with his aggression in situations where previous players had chosen defence. For example, he ‘invented’ the backhand top-spin passing shot from a running backwards position, where everyone else threw up a lob. Two: he developed an extraordinary physique – his left wrist was measured at 7 inches in circumference, an inch more than his right, and his left forearm at 12 inches, 1½ inches more than his right. Three: when he was playing his worst, he was still incredibly difficult to beat.

More significantly, he dominated the game, winning 198 singles titles over his career (the Open Era record is held by John McEnroe, with 158), winning 10 or more titles every year for 7 consecutive years, and 11 Grand Slam titles (in a career that saw him ineligible for 20 consecutive Grand Slams in the 5 years after he turned pro and before the Open era). He also won the calendar Grand Slam twice, including being the only man to do so in the Open era.

The one fly in this ointment is that for much of his amateur career he was not competing against the best players in the game, because they had already turned pro. When he first turned pro, he had a season where he was outclassed. It is, of course, impossible to know how many of his amateur titles he would have won if he had been competing against Hoad and Rosewall.

The other immense difficulty in deciding GOAT is, of course, the challenge of comparing men who did not compete in the same era. Racket, ball and shoe technologies, surface developments, advances in sport-science-driven training, monitoring and dietary techniques, all make the task impossible.

And yet: when Andy Murray tried to pressure Djokovic into a GOAT discussion, and Djokovic argued that inter-era comparisons were impossible, Murray’s response was that all three contenders for GOAT played, indeed were still playing, in the same era. If Andy Murray says that, who am I to argue with him, even if I do have one more metal hip than he does.

So, there it is. Which of these three is the greatest player of all time? Let me try to shed some light on the discussion. I am sure that when people debate this, and disagree, they are not usually disagreeing about how they rate the individual players, but rather they are disagreeing about what they mean by ‘the greatest of all time’. I believe that there are three basic, very different interpretations of GOAT.

First, imagine that you are James Bond, and you have been captured by an evil mastermind who tells you that he plans to kill you. (Bear with me.) However, he is prepared to give you a fighting chance. He shows you a pack of cards: on each card is written a year, from 2006 to 2021. He shows you another pack, with only 4 cards: one representing each of the four grand slams. He shows you his time machine (keep bearing), which will transport the two of you back in time. He explains that you will draw from the two packs, while blindfolded, a year card and a venue card, and the two of you will travel back to the year you drew, where he will pay a huge amount of money to hire the grand slam venue you drew. On that surface, the player you choose – Roger, Rafa or Novak – will play a five-set match against the highest ranked other player that year.

The catch is that you have to choose your player before you draw, blind, a year and a venue. If the player you chose wins, you live; if he loses, you die. This definition of GOAT boils down to: Who would you choose to play for you if your life depended on it? The only point of my elaboration is that it prevents you saying: ‘Well, Rafa on clay, obviously, and Novak in Australia.’

To help you decide which one of the three is this GOAT, it might be useful to know the Big Three’s head-to-head records against each other, which are as follows:
Djokovic-Nadal 30-29
Nadal-Federer 24-16
Djokovic-Federer 27-23

In grand slams, the stats are:
Nadal-Djokovic 11-7
Nadal-Federer 10-4
Djokovic-Federer 11-6

By this measure, it looks as though Nadal has the strongest claim. However, Nadal’s domination in Paris (8-2 against Djokovic, 6-0 against Federer) skews the stats, and, in addition, there is a strong case to be made for Djokovic’s grand slam stats having been weakened by his ‘forced’ absence from some grand slams in these last COVID years. It is perhaps Djokovic who may just edge out Nadal overall, but Federer doesn’t seem to have a claim.

This ‘If my life depended on it’ definition is the one some people clearly have in mind when they debate the issue. However, for others, the question is completely different. In this scenario, the evil mastermind is a more subtle torturer. He appears to you in 2006 and tells you that he will provide you with front-row seats to watch every match played between then and 2021 by whichever of the three you choose. He also assures you that all three players will be playing well for the entire period. The only snag is that you will not be allowed to watch any other matches at all. Here, clearly, the question is: ‘Which player would I rather watch than any other?’

And here, of course, is where Roger gathers most, if not all, of his votes. His easy grace, his gazelle-like athleticism, his playful delight in the game, his extraordinary hand-eye coordination, his elegant footwork: it is a cliché to call him the Mozart of tennis, but we should always remember that clichés become clichés because they are so obviously and thoroughly accurate. Watching Federer play was never less than utter joy. It is a remarkable fact that Roger, throughout his career, never retired from a match. I think that must be because his natural grace meant that he put far less strain on his body than either of the other two. Tennis, for him, never seemed to be a titanic struggle. My delight at watching him play, and my feeling of being privileged to watch a genius performing, seemed always independent of whether he won or lost. I believe there are people who prefer to watch Nadal or Djokovic, but I cannot understand that preference.

I feel there is also a third definition of greatness, which is in a sense the antithesis of what I have just described. How much sweat is a player prepared to exude, how much blood to lose, how much agony to endure, how much damage to self-inflict, in order to stay in a match? Which of the three would you back if they were all having their worst day? I think that in the last few years, we have seen just how much heart and sheer grit Nadal brings to the game.

So, as you can see, I offer you three GOATs. It all depends, in CEM Joad’s immortal phrase, on what you mean by GOAT. My conclusion is that we are all immeasurably fortunate to have lived in an age, in the age, when there were three contenders – the three contenders – for the title of GOAT playing contemporaneously, and that we really do not have to decide between them.

For me personally, ultimately, what matters most is the enjoyment of watching a great match full of beautiful tennis, regardless of the result, which makes me, I confess, a member of the Roger camp – a fact which will, if nothing else, endear me to my brother- and sister-in-law in England, for whom tennis has just lost most of its meaning, with Federer’s retirement.

Whoever gets your vote, what we all might be able to agree on is that we have been privileged, over the last decade and a half, to enjoy the sporting rivalry GOAT – the greatest sporting rivalry of all time, in any sport, where each of the three contenders raised the game of the other two time and again. Unless, of course, you can think of another as finely balanced, as nuanced in its twists and turns, and as extended. Let the pub debates begin!

Meanwhile, in Penamacor, two brothers sit quietly waiting for the next great sporting rivalry to come along. Sorry, boys, but you really have missed the GOAT!

Housekeeping: Rosh Hashana falls on Monday and Tuesday next week. With regard to the blog, Tuesday will fall on Wednesday, as it were. I know this will confuse some of my readers, and indeed me. I also know that telling you (and me) now is no guarantee that you (or I) will remember when we receive (or indeed send out) the post next Wednesday. However, lacking a qualification in psychology or neurosurgery, there’s a very limited amount I can do to help. I’ll try to remember to remind you next blog-day that Shabbat is one day less far away than you probably think. Now that we’ve clarified that…

I’ve spent most of the last week feeling like Prince Philip. (I thought of making this an interactive post, and asking you to submit guesses as to exactly in what way I felt an affinity with a Greek naval officer who married a foreigner and may occasionally have played away from home. However, time constraints make that impractical, so let me explain.)

Last Tuesday, as Bernice and I were about to go upstairs and shower and change into our glad rags to set off for a wedding that we were actually both very much looking forward to, we decided that, since I felt a bit fluey, it would only be prudent to take an antigen test for COVID. Bernice tested negative, but I passed with flying colours. (I was always better at exams than Bernice.) As a consequence, we missed the wedding, and I have spent the last seven days in isolation.

What this meant in practical terms is that Bernice moved out of our bedroom and started sleeping in the bedroom down the hall. Since then, she has been using the kid’s bathroom and I have been using our en suite. This is a fact whose greater significance we shall return to later. But, for now, you’re still waiting for the Duke of Edinburgh connection.

Well, if you watched the first couple of series of The Crown (and, yes, I do know it’s a work of fiction, thank you, and that, likewise, Richard III never offered his kingdom for a horse, and, if it comes to that, no post mortem revealed ‘Calais’ engraved on Queen Mary I’s heart)…if, as I say, you watched the first season of The Crown, you may remember all of those end-of-a-long-day scenes in which the Queen and Prince Philip were preparing for bed in their separate bedrooms at opposite ends of a corridor and engaging in private conversations over a distance of about 15 meters (or yards, as they still were in those halcyon imperial days).

Well, that, mutatis mutandis, was Bernice and myself. (Incidentally, in our case, the mutandes were the absence of a maiden of the bedchamber in one case and a valet in the other to help with disrobing, and the number of robes that we each needed to dis.)

For the next few days, we more or less avoided each other. I spent a day mostly in bed, then a day mostly on a chair in the bedroom, then a couple of days in our backyard, enjoying the thankfully more temperate weather in the morning and again from the late afternoon. By this time, I was feeling more or less back to normal, except for a stuffy nose. I was very lucky that, even at their worst, my symptoms were very mild, and responded to paracetamol.

During this time, Bernice only came near me at various times throughout the night, when she needed to check that I was still breathing. (This led her, incidentally, to reflect on how small the periods of respite have been when she has been able to enjoy an uninterrupted and full night’s sleep. First, she spent years lying awake at night checking that the kids were breathing when they were young. She then graduated to lying awake at night listening for the sound of one or other of them arriving back home after an evening out as teenagers or young adults. Unreasonably soon after they left home, she had to start lying awake at night again, worrying about whether I was breathing, during one or other of my medical adventures.)

Those of you who know me (or indeed knew my father, z”l, or my brother, or his sons, or my son) will not need to be told that I, on the other hand, am the man whose wife was unable to wake him up when she went into labour with our firstborn. While my nights are no longer completely unbroken, when I am asleep, then I am a-s-l-e-e-p.

This brought us to shabbat, by which time I was feeling considerably better. We agreed that we could risk eating our shabbat meals together. On Friday night, we ate in the backyard, but instead of eating opposite each other across the table, as usual, we sat one at each end of our long garden table, and, it is fair to say, felt the absence of liveried footmen to convey the serving dishes from one end of the table to the other.

By the time shabbat lunch came around, Bernice had been to shul services and discovered that most of our friends were amazed that I was even bothering to isolate. We therefore decided that we could repeat the previous evening’s seating arrangement, but this time in the relative cool of inside, at either end of our long dining table. Still no liveried footmen; but then, good help is so hard to find these days.

Returning to the bathroom arrangements. I have always harboured a low-level rankle about toilet seats. I know that I risk exposing how little like Prince Philip I really am in my lack of chivalry, but it has always seemed to me a little unfair that men are always expected to lower the seat after use, out of consideration for the ladies. What seems to me, in a liberated and feminist world, far more equitable, would be for men to lower the seat after use out of consideration for women, and for women to raise the seat after use out of consideration for men.

I’ve not made an issue of this, and, barring the odd occasion when it slips my mind, I always lower the seat after use. This can niggle a bit through the night, when I end up lowering the seat after use and then, thanks to my prostate, raising it again a short while later, in a pattern that can repeat itself several times through the night, while Bernice sleeps peacefully on (providing I am between periods of medical alert), blissfully unaware of my, ultimately pointless, chivalry.

I really don’t mind this arrangement (you could tell, couldn’t you?), but it has felt wonderfully liberating to be able to leave the seat up for the entirety of the last week with a completely clear conscience.

By the time you read these words, I should be out of isolation and Bernice and I should be reunited, just in time to watch the funeral (sorry, The Funeral) together. Speaking of which, and its ramifications, I found this article by Melanie Phillips about the nature of British constitutional monarchy very interesting. (Author’s Note: If you read the article, please note that while the text of Zadok the Priest has indeed been used at every English coronation since 973 CE, Handel’s setting of the words has only been used since George II’s coronation in 1727.)

And now for someone who’s been around for considerably less time, but who certainly seems to have come a long way in six months. Raphael recently discovered real food – although he has been eyeing his mothers’ plates with fascination and longing for some time – and it’s a resounding hit. This is, I believe, batata, spinach and tehina.

I would like, this week, to invite you to join me in celebrating 120 years of partnership….well, technically, I suppose it’s 120 years of partnerships – two, to be exact. The first accounts for 50 of the years and the second for the other 70.

Last week, Bernice and I finally got around to celebrating with family and friends our golden wedding. We felt the absence of Micha’el, Tslil and the boys, but we hope they will be able to come over later in the year. We hope our guests enjoyed themselves, but we’re not especially bothered if they didn’t, because we both had a wonderful time, and even those of us (no names, no pack drill), who had resisted long and hard the calls to have a public celebration admitted, after the fact, that it had been the right decision.

While not recognising ourselves in all of the lovely things that were said by others at the celebration (but certainly recognising each other), Bernice and I reckon that we do make a pretty good partnership, largely because we complement each other (even if we occasionally omit to compliment each other). For example: one of us ensures that there is a healthy meal on the table every evening, and the other one ensures that The Times crossword is completed every day; one of us never fails to do the laundry every week, and the other one never fails to generate enough dirty clothes to justify the weekly wash. You get the picture, I’m sure. Anyway, as I said at the celebration, when Bernice said ‘Yes’ 51 years ago, she made me the happiest man alive…and nothing in the last 50 years has changed that situation.

What is, from my point of view, most remarkable, is how little I have to do to maintain my side of the bargain. Bernice has always said to me that the day I fail to make her laugh is the day she will leave me. So far, so good, although we have had a couple of close-run things, when I’ve lain awake for hours until finally, at 11:50 at night, I think of a joke, and then I have to wake Bernice up to tell her quickly before the clock strikes midnight.

Now that the celebrations are over, we both feel we can relax a little, and stop tiptoeing around each other, offering to take out the rubbish or cook a favourite meal, in the hope of getting a better review in the other’s speech. The pressure is definitely off, and an air of normality has descended on the Brownstein household.

The other partnership I want to celebrate this week is that between Her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, and the story of the world over the years of her reign. Like most of us, I cannot remember a time before Elizabeth acceded to the throne; her reign seems to have been a fact of life throughout my entire lifetime.

And now, suddenly, even if entirely expectedly, it is no longer, and she is no longer. The shock of a different version of the royal anthem is palpable. Banknotes and coins portraying King Charles seem unimaginable.

Even the rewording of the prayer for the Royal Family recited in synagogues every shabbat and chag will take some adjusting to, despite the fact that, over my lifetime, there seem to have been tweaks every few years, of which, latterly, we became aware only when we travelled back to England for a family simcha or holiday: after Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales, after his marriage to Diana, after Diana’s death, after the Queen Mother’s death, after Prince Philip’s death. Throughout all these adjustments, the one constant in this prayer has been: ‘Our sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth’. And now it is not there.

In the aftermath of the news breaking on Thursday, I have been surprised by the strength of the reaction, not so much at the personal level as at the official level, throughout the world. President Biden ordered that the American flag, on all US public buildings, military bases, warships and embassies, be flown at half-mast until after the Queen’s internment, in a demonstration of good judgement that his forebears showed a sad lack of 250 years ago. Although I suppose that, if the Queen bore no grudge over the slighting of her great-great-great-grandfather George III, I should also try to get over it.  

Nepal and Brazil both declared three days of national mourning. In the case of Nepal this is almost understandable, given the association of the Gurkhas with Britain, and particularly with the British army. But Brazil!  I have trawled the internet in vain for an explanation of this. It is true that Portugal and England enjoy the world’s oldest still-active alliance (dating back to the 14 Century), but it is equally true that last Wednesday marked the 200^th anniversary of Brazil’s independence from Portugal.

Even Cuba announced a period of national mourning (although from 6AM to 12 noon on Friday sounds to me less like a period of national mourning and more like a timeslot for the delivery of a new fridge).

I’m not quite sure how to explain this official expression of identification with what is, quintessentially, a loss that is owned by the British nation and the nations of the Commonwealth. I suspect that it reflects the fact that Elizabeth, more completely than any other individual, encapsulated the ways the world developed throughout her 96 years.

There cannot be any other person who has held meetings with so many prime ministers, presidents and other world leaders: from Churchill to Truss and from Eisenhower to Biden, from Khrushchev to Putin and from Coty to Macron. Past British prime ministers seem unanimous in their appreciation of her wise counsel.  Elizabeth travelled around the world and presided over an era that saw the vestiges of Empire replaced by a growing Commonwealth. During her reign, 48 countries joined the Commonwealth, which was an institution that she always passionately believed in.

She was also, by the time of her death, one of the dwindling number who had served in the Second World War. That service, as a vehicle mechanic in the ATS, both anchored her in the event that more than any other helped shape the second half of the twentieth century and also represented a move by the royal family into a world that promised to be (whether that promise was fulfilled or not) less privileged and less sexist.

While Elizabeth’s passions were more traditional – horses and corgis and country life – Prince Philip was keenly interested in science and technology. With his encouragement, the Queen embraced advances in modern media as new ways of reaching out to and communicating with her people.

Although it was unplanned, Elizabeth’s reign also reflected changes in family life throughout Britain. She grew up in a warm and close family. However, her own marriage, which began as a fairy-tale romance, apparently went through some rocky patches before mellowing into a close relationship of love and mutual respect. When it comes to her children, it seems that they have managed, in their personal lives, to encapsulate many of the malaises of modern society, from infidelity and divorce to sexual offences. In the next generation, we have seen accusations of racism and tension between fathers and their sons, siblings and their partners.

Some of this, particularly the relationship between Princess Diana and the royal family, threatened the monarchy’s standing in Britain. However, curiously, and partly as a result of the Queen’s ‘opening up’ about her annus horribilis, her horrible year, she seemed to emerge from these events ultimately more firmly rooted in the country’s affections.

In more recent years, she allowed her keen sense of humour to emerge a little more, and clearly enjoyed her limited acting career. However, the quality that most clearly characterised her is of course her sense of duty and her dedication to service. These may not seem particularly fashionable qualities, but when they are demonstrated with such clarity and unswerving faithfulness for an entire lifetime, they draw admiration from all who are aware of them.

There are, I believe, some republican rumblings in Britain, although all surveys indicate that this is very much a minority view. When we see the high regard in which Elizabeth was held, it seems to me bizarre for Britain to choose to throw out those centuries of tradition.

Clearly, Charles is not yet held in such universal esteem, but, from all I have seen and read in the last days and weeks, it seems clear to me that he is more than aware of the nature of the task and challenges that face him, and that he is eminently ready – after a 70-year apprenticeship – for his new role. I also have no doubt that his redoubtable queen consort is the perfect partner to support him in all that lies ahead, and all the signs are that William and Kate will, in the fullness of time, be ideally suited to carry this extraordinary institution into another new era.

All of this, on rereading, sounds rather fulsome, and I have no doubt that some of my readers will be scornful of what they will see as sycophancy. However, it really does seem to me that Britain’s constitutional monarchy represents a standing in the world, and a continuity that can ride the storm of any individual aberration, that no other system can match. I therefore have no difficulty declaring: God Save the King!

Meanwhile, our own dynasty, in Portugal, continues to thrive.

Seven weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that Bernice and I spent a week in Madrid before driving to Penamacor, and blithely wrote: ‘I may tell you more about that next week’. Well, ‘next week’ has stretched into ‘next month but one’; nevertheless, let me try to remember how we spent that week.

First impressions: Madrid airport is vast, efficient and very stylish. The terminal buildings boast beautiful slatted ceilings, with the slats, in a very pleasing light wood, forming huge flowing birds’ wings spanning the space. An efficient shuttle train carries you from the arrivals terminal to the main concourse.

Our aparthotel booking through booking.com qualified us for a free transfer to the hotel, which was very smooth, from the SMS on arrival with a link to track our driver’s progress to the airport, via the smooth and fast drive along the motorway that brought us almost to the heart of the city, all the way to the driver unloading our luggage at the hotel. In fifteen years of travelling on business, I grew very familiar with taxi rides from airports through some of the seedier parts of capital cities – be it Athens, Sofia or London – and this was a pleasant contrast, more reminiscent of the drive from Singapore airport.

Our check in was fairly quick and efficient, and we were soon settling into a room that looked even better than the online photos. Knowing that we would be catering our own breakfast in the room, and anticipating that we would be spending most if not all of shabbat trapped inside, I had chosen a room that included a salon area with sofa and armchair, and what turned out to be an extraordinarily well-equipped kitchen, almost all of which was off-limits to us because of kashrut issues. The kitchen featured an oven with integral microwave (which we didn’t use – to be honest, we didn’t realise it contained a microwave until I mentioned at checkout that our only disappointment with the hotel was not having a microwave), a dishwasher (which we didn’t use), a washing machine (which we didn’t use – no kashrut issues, but we really didn’t feel laundry qualifies as a holiday activity), an induction hob (which we didn’t use – we really were on holiday), plus an excellent range of crockery, cutlery, pots and pans (which we didn’t use).

What we did use were the worksurface, peninsula and stools, nespresso machine (one of us), kettle (both of us) and family-size fridge-freezer.

Having unpacked and showered, we fell into bed and slept the sleep of, if not the innocent, then at least the exhausted but relieved to have arrived without incident.

The following day (Monday) was dedicated to shopping for essential supplies. We were delighted to discover that, as promised online, our hotel was right in the bustling heart of the city, which meant that we could embark on our expedition on foot. This started with a short foray to the mini-Carrefour round the corner from the hotel, for salad and fruits, and other essential food supplies.

Having returned to the hotel to drop off the shopping and eat the last of our rolls and some fruit for breakfast, we ventured half a kilometre further afield, easily locating Primark. This was, to be honest, a huge disappointment. I don’t know whether the selection in the store (which ranged over 5 vast floors) reflected Madrid’s youthful character, or a global rebranding decision by the retailer, or simply the season, but we could find very little for pensioners, or, indeed, for anyone who didn’t want to look like a Hawaiian surfer.

Rather disappointed, we then went in search of the kosher choomus and felafel café-restaurant that we had found online, and that friends, who passed through Madrid a couple of weeks before us, warmly recommended. We were certainly not disappointed and, suitably refreshed, we finished off by walking to a downtown mini-IKEA, where we just about managed to find all of our kitchen and dining requirements for a week of breakfasts and snacks: two modest table settings, chopping board and knives, and so forth.

Thus laden, and in 43 degrees of heat, we felt justified in taking a cab back to the hotel to dump that stuff and to attempt (successfully, in the end) to sort out by WhatsApp with our mobile provider why my roaming package had not yet been activated. A quiet evening in our hotel room was certainly livened up by the news that Tslil had gone into labour, and then, much later, by the news that she had given birth. Bernice and I celebrated quietly in our air-conditioned room.

Having got most of the serious stuff out of the way in one day, we felt ready to start our holiday properly on Tuesday. We began with a two-hour free guided walking tour of the city, which was excellent, taking us to places we would never have found on our own, and giving us an opportunity to properly orientate ourselves. There is a particular quality of tasteful solidity to European cities that once governed a wealthy empire, and Madrid is no exception. Add to that the city’s emphasis on wide-open green spaces, and the prevalence of underground parking, and you have an expansive and comfortable urban environment that is a pleasure to walk around, even when the temperature is 43 degrees, as it was again that day, and, indeed, every day of our stay.

On the way back to the hotel, we popped into El Corte Inglés, a big department store that boasts a rooftop bar with an excellent (and free) panoramic view of the city. The store also boasted a fine selection of genuine Bialetti macchinettas. I have been humming and hawing over buying one of these coffee makers for months. Esther and Maayan won’t leave the house without their macchinetta, and I must admit that it makes a gloriously flavourful brew. However, the coffee comes at a price: it requires the ritual of grinding the beans, then filling, assembling and heating the macchinetta, pouring the coffee, then waiting for the macchinetta to cool before disassembling, rinsing and drying it. It is also, of course, yet another piece of equipment to store away in the kitchen.

Those of you who know me well will realise that the whole rigmarole of the ritual is not only a tremendous drawback but also, simultaneously, and paradoxically, a large part of the attraction. In the end, of course, I couldn’t resist, and I bought a three-cup model that I couldn’t wait to try out in Portugal. (Update: The macchinetta makes great coffee, although I can’t wait to finish the beans I already have at home and order from Esther some of their special blend. To be honest, I can’t always face the rigmarole of the ritual, but when the moon and Venus are correctly aligned, both the ritual and the flavour are well worth savouring.)

Back in the hotel, Bernice received a lovely voice message from Tslil, sounding very good, and saying how much they were all looking forward to seeing us: all of which meant that we were able to enjoy another very good night’s sleep.

We were up early on Wednesday for a coach trip to, guided tour of, and free time in, Toledo. The journey was fine, although I was a little disappointed that our route took us through the long tunnel under the southern part of Madrid, so that we did not see anything of that part of the city or the river. It’s also fair to say that the plains of La Mancha do not make for the most striking scenery. Having said that, sitting down on a comfortable, air-conditioned coach can be a pleasure in itself.

In Toledo, we were first taken to a workshop that specialises in damascene work (ornamental engraving with gold and silver work on black enamel).

T

This stop had, of course, not been mentioned in the online description of the trip, but I recognise that it is part of the price that one always pays on such trips. I filed it away with the Ice Wine outlet near Niagara Falls, the pearl workshop in Majorca and the filigree workshop in Cyprus. Looking around the damascene workshop, which included a lot of the knives and swords that Toledo is renowned for, I kept recalling from my youth, somewhat sacrilegiously, the Airfix kit of the Black Knight of Nurnberg.

However, the workshop did have one wonderful feature: clean toilets, which fact alone made it ‘worth the detour’. This allowed me to enjoy without distractions the next stop, which was the view over the river to the old city of Toledo perched on, and cascading down, the opposite side of the valley.

Our guide for the  walking tour of Toledo was less impressive than our Madrid guide had been, but she warmed up as the tour progressed, and the old city is certainly well worth visiting. After an hour and a half, we were let loose for four hours.

In that time, Bernice and I managed to visit the surviving synagogue (magnificently ornate, as you can see, and with a glorious vaulted ceiling) and adjacent Jewish museum (modest and not particularly noteworthy), to eat our lunch under the shade of an oak tree and then to explore the El Greco Museum.

This smallish but very atmospheric museum is housed in El Greco’s old home and studio, which has been partly restored and furnished to reflect its appearance when he lived there. The collection of paintings, focussing on the years he spent in Toledo, was outstanding; the overview of his entire career and life (in projected slides and a narrated film), in English and Portuguese, was excellent, and the building itself was an oasis of tranquility. It was the perfect way to spend 90 minutes out of the midday sun.

Feeling fairly exhausted, after several hours climbing up and down the streets of Toledo, we retired to a bar and enjoyed a cold beer before climbing back onto the coach for another blissful hour of air-conditioned comfort back to Madrid.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling quite exhausted after all that, so I think I’ll stop there and plan to resume next week.

Esther managed to catch Raphael between teething pains last week. He really is a sunny little boy when he has no good reason not to be.

Let me start by making myself very clear. Unfortunately, I have a couple of friends who have serious health issues, and I know that in comparison with the challenges they face, any health issues I have are trivial. So, I am well aware that what I’m writing here is very subjective, but, hell, this is my blog, and if I can’t indulge in a bit of angst here then what’s it all for?!

We moved to Ma’ale Adumim in 1996, and until around 2000 I had no idea what our family doctor looked like. Now, of course, we are old friends, and I have spent many long and mostly happy hours in his surgery reviewing my many, but, I stress, largely minor, ills.

Last week I made an appointment to see him, because I needed a number of referrals for regular check-ups with specialists, and I also had to review and renew my prescriptions. I hadn’t anticipated an 80-minute session, but that’s what it turned out to be, including a WhatsApp consultation with my cardiologist to discuss a change of medication.

A brief aside to say that we have what may well be the best family doctor in Israel, and I still find it amazing that when he sends an ECG printout by WhatsApp to my cardiologist, he gets a reply within ten minutes and the issue is resolved on the spot.

I was, understandably, feeling a little depressed that covering all of my various complaints and ailments had taken almost an hour and a half. However, it was heartening to hear my doctor jokingly expressing to me his disappointment that I had brought to his table nothing particularly interesting, and then assuring me that he would much rather be bored by my list than confronted by something more stimulating but also much more worrying.

Armed with multiple referrals, I made an appointment for the following day for the pharmacy in our local health fund clinic. Arriving 10 minutes before my appointment, I had enough time to trade in all of my referrals for the corresponding commitment-to-pay forms from the clinic secretary, before collecting my meds.

Depending on which pharmacist is on duty, and what the stock situation is in the pharmacy, I can sometimes persuade them to give me three months’ supply of my meds. This day I was lucky, and the pharmacist was happy to give me three packets of each of my meds. As I was about halfway through packing them into the plastic bag supplied, the pharmacist said: ‘Hold on! I’ll get you a bigger bag’ and returned with a medium size carrier bag.

Yes, folks, I have turned into the person I used to resent as I stood behind him in the queue at the pharmacist. To make matters worse, one of my medications is included in the basket of fully subsidised medications only for patients who score high enough on one of those nightmare-inducing scales to assess your likelihood of suffering a stroke. I am, of course, delighted that my score does not qualify me for full exemption; I have to pay half the cost of the medication, What this meant, on this occasion, was that, when the pharmacist confirmed that I wanted to pay by debiting my account, he wondered whether I wanted to split the payment over two months.

With perfect timing, as I was writing that last paragraph I received a call from a representative of the Health Ministry. It is just over a year since my second hip replacement, and she had a number of questions about the success of the operation and my general health. Having publicly declared that the operation was a total success, I am in no pain, and I am suffering from none of her long catalogue of illnesses, I feel much better, so let’s talk about something a bit more upbeat.

For you, the transition from the last paragraph to this was seamless. I, on the other hand, have spent twenty minutes trying to think what there is upbeat to write about. It’s by no means clear that the acrimonious dispute over teachers’ pay and conditions that is a regular feature of late August in Israel will be resolved in time to save the start of the school year; it appears that the disastrous so-called nuclear deal with Iran, on the other hand, will be signed; no end to the Russia-Ukraine war seems even on the horizon. Thank goodness for the cricket, is all I can say (and even that needs to be cherry-picked)!

I can at least recommend an astonishing novel to you: Claire North’s The Fist Fifteen Lives of Harry August. It is a science fiction novel, but in the same way that John le Carre’s novels are espionage novels: in other words, the author has chosen a science fiction premise as a framework for exploring serious questions about the human condition. Without giving too much away, the premise is that we all live our life over and over; every time we die, we are born again into exactly the same circumstances as exactly the same person, with no memory of our previous lives. However, certain people have perfect memory, and in each life they are able to build on the experience of their previous lives.

North brilliantly explores the possible consequences of that premise, for the individual, for the community of those who remember, and for humanity as a whole. Her novel is an exploration of human nature and character, a philosophical treatise on the nature and meaning of life, a chilling thriller, and an exploration of human relationships. It also features a central narrator in whose company it is a real pleasure to while away several hours. Bernice and I have reached the point where we are reading shorter and shorter sections every day, because we really want to relish every nuance.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going downstairs to administer today’s carefully measured dose of Harry August.

I’ll leave you with two phots from Portugal, taken just before we left a couple of weeks ago. From here on out, I’ll be relying on Micha’el to supply me with up-to-date photos.

On the last Thursday before we returned home from Penamacor, I took myself off for an hour or two and finally made it to a place I had been planning to visit since reading about it in Penamacor’s municipal quarterly magazine, at the end of our previous visit in March.

Two-and-a-half years ago, I devoted a post to Ribeiro Sanches, Penamacor’s most celebrated son, born to a couple of conversos at the very end of the 17^th Century, who went on to become a prominent physician and a genuine son of the Enlightenment. Fairly early in his career he felt uncomfortable in post-expulsion Portugal and subsequently travelled extensively through Europe and wrote on topics ranging from venereal disease to the theory of education and from the climatic effect of  the Lisbon earthquake to jurisprudence.

In a later post, I wrote about looking for the site of his childhood home in Penamacor. “However, when I arrived at the exact spot, I saw, rather than a centuries-old structure, what looked more like an airport warehouse. I walked all the way round it, and found only one door and no windows.

“As I was wondering whether I might have mistaken the location, I took a closer look at the door and noticed the unusual design of the very large doorknob. Clearly, there is an interesting story here, which I hope to find out more about on our next visit (whenever that turns out to be).”

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I revisited the site and started to get to the very bottom of that story.

As I walked up the hill to the site, through the old Jewish quarter, I noticed for the first time, on one of the original stone doorframes, the tell-tale indentation of what was originally a recess for a mezuza. To read about such evidence of a Jewish presence in the past is interesting. To ‘discover’ it for yourself is surprisingly moving.

Next to the ‘warehouse’ was another building, clearly recently renovated, which turned out to be (deep breath, and, ideally, a drumroll) Casa da Memória da Medicina Sefardita António Ribeiro Sanches (The António Ribeiro Sanches House Commemorating Sephardic Medicine). Built on the site of Ribeiro Sanches’ house, this museum, which opened last December, is devoted to both Portugal’s Sephardic medical heritage in general, and Ribeiro Sanches’ life in particular.

My visit to the museum started inauspiciously. I had expected to be the only visitor. However, as I walked through the village, I saw a number of groups of children, all wearing the same baseball caps; I soon realised that they were three different age groups of children attending a municipal summer day-camp program. As my walk progressed, I realised, with a sinking feeling, that they all seemed to be heading in the same direction as me. Sure enough, I arrived at the museum two minutes after 25 fairly well-behaved but still quite noisy children. Fortunately, after hearing a brief lecture and watching a short film, they all left, and I was able to continue my tour in blissful isolation.

The museum is purely expository, and includes no actual relics, other than a copy of Ribeiro Sanches’ most famous book. However, it contains an impressive body of information, displayed fairly drily but visually attractively. Interestingly, all of the texts are displayed in Portuguese and English (in a translation that is mostly fairly good but occasionally poor-to-average).

The ground floor of the museum is devoted to the Sephardi contribution to medicine. One wall lists the names of hundreds of Sephardi doctors. This photograph shows about half of the wall.

You may also notice the boy in a kippa just turning the corner. He is one of the sons of an Israeli family that have bought land outside Penamacor that they plan to farm and on which they are building a family home. Meanwhile, they are renting a house in the village.

Most of the ground floor of the museum consists of 15 or so individual display panels, each devoted to a different prominent Jewish doctor, with the selections ranging through the centuries. To be honest, this feels a little like overkill; it is difficult to sustain interest through all 15 panels, although each of them in isolation tells an interesting story.

This selection is introduced as ‘The Sephardi Diaspora’ and a feature wall offers the quote “To the Portuguese Jews, who had nothing left but the exile.”

A plaque opposite the wall of names that I mentioned earlier draws attention to the large number of “doctors, physicians, surgeons and chemists of Moses Law that soon emerge from a society that is mainly Christian, where discrimination of minorities always existed and where intolerance assumed a growing burden, from segregation to persecution, culminating in prison, torture and death, ordered by the Holy Office.”

Here I found the answer to the question that had been intriguing me. I had been wondering how, if at all, a museum celebrating the Portuguese Jewish contribution to medicine would address the official persecution of Portuguese Jewry, the Inquisition and the Expulsion. Clearly, this would not be the central theme of the museum. At the same time, there is no question that Penamacor’s most famous son would not be as famous as he is were it not for the fact that he felt so unwelcome in his own country that he left it for a more tolerant greater Europe, in which he flourished.

Last week, I found a quotation that I have been unable to locate again. I believe it was attributed to the actor Wendell Pierce, but I am not certain.

Culture [is] that intersection between the events of life itself and how a people deals with it.

Part of the interest of this museum for me is the insight it offers into how the Portuguese are dealing with particular events of Portuguese history. Ana Mendes Godinho, Portugal’s secretary of state for tourism, has stated that: “Our history is completely bonded to Jewish history. Now is the moment to take down walls [of anti-Semitism built by the Inquisition]. Today we say ‘every Portuguese has a Jewish bone in their body’.”

Gabriel Steinhardt, president of Lisbon Jewish Community, has stated that visitors can feel safe wearing a kipa or a magen David in Lisbon, and that it is not uncommon to be approached on the street by a Portuguese citizen who says, for example, that his grandmother still lights candles on Friday nights. Unlike other European capitals, in Portugal, “you can walk in the street as a proud Jew.”

A plaque at the entrance to the museum gives further insight into the possible motivation behind the museum. It states that the museum, funded with the support of a European Economic Association (EEA) grant, is part of the Portuguese Network of Jewish Quarters. According to an official European culture website “Established in 2011, this is the public association gathering places of historic and current Jewish communities in Portugal. It aims to act jointly to defend urban, architectural, environmental, historical and cultural heritage in connection with Jewish heritage, by combining the recovery of history and heritage with the promotion of tourism.”

My observations are, necessarily, very marginal, and it may be dangerous for me to draw any broad conclusions, but it seems to me that at least a significant part of the motivation for this embracing of Portugal’s Jewish history is economic, driven by a desire to boost tourism.

But let’s get back to the museum. The first floor is devoted exclusively to Ribeiro Sanches, and his extraordinary journeys through Europe’s capitals and contacts with so many leading figures of the Enlightenment. An excellent interactive (and again fully bilingual) map charts his route and, at each stop, the user can call up biographies of the prominent people he met. This same information is presented in wall panels. Other panels give insight into Ribeiro Sanches’ philosophy, displaying facsimiles of his letters and works, and offering quotes from his work. Taken together these panels are a striking testimony to his range of interests and intellectual energy.  

Which leaves only one unresolved mystery – the windowless, anonymous, Magen-David doorknobbed ‘warehouse’ next door.

Online research reveals that it is part of the same project and is (very deep breath and a drumroll and cymbal clash) a small synagogue. Yes, dear reader, it’s the story of my life. As always, I find myself living at the other side of town and a steep hill away from the shul.

Ever since reading this fact, I have tried to understand the purpose of the synagogue. Here is what Penamacor’s mayor has to say: “[The] combination [of museum and synagogue] preserves the identity and cultural heritage and should also provide significant ‘added value’ in terms of promotion and tourist attraction. Casa Ribeiro Sanches will be another great piece from the point of view of cultural attractiveness for Penamacor”. He further stresses that anyone who wants to get to know the Network of Jewish Quarters in Portugal can now start their journey through Penamacor.

Exactly who is envisaged as using the synagogue (which is not a reconstruction or replica, as far as I can ascertain), and for what purpose, is not clear to me. Obviously, this is a field for further research on my next trip.

Meanwhile, up in Zichron, Raphael has been catching up on his reading while waiting for us to visit him.

Despite my best intentions to put this post to bed last Friday, I find myself writing it, on Monday, from more or less the same position in which I was writing 36 days ago, with one crucial difference; this time I am facing in the opposite direction. I say more or less, because I can’t be absolutely certain of my precise location then, or, indeed, now. However, in both cases, the Spanish Mediterranean coast is just visible below me; five weeks ago, it was racing towards us; today, it is receding behind us.

This means that it is time for Bernice to leave one worry behind, and embrace another. Having started the day (at 3:30 AM) worrying that offline Google Maps would let us down (it didn’t) and we would drive aimlessly for hours around the Valverde del Fresno (we didn’t, although when we eventually passed a sign to Spain we were both much relieved), she then graduated to concern that however far we progressed through the vast open spaces of Madrid Airport, the signs still seemed to tell us that Area S, and our departure gate, were 17 minutes away. (We did get there eventually.) All of this was, of course, a mere prelude to the big one – the fear, as we gathered speed down the runway,  that we would crash immediately after take-off. (We didn’t.) I’ve decided not to tell her that we are now over the Mediterranean, because her fear of drowning is almost as great as her fear of being destroyed in the impact of a Boeing 737 hitting solid ground at 200mph. (At the time of writing, the plane shows no signs of crahing imminently, but I’ll keep you posted…or not, as the case may be.)*

It seems like an age since we left home, and our week in Madrid is little more than a distant memory. At the same time, the four weeks in Penamacor seem to have flown by. In one sense, the month there did not really contain much in the way of highlights. In another sense, being able to be part of the daily routine of the kids, and especisally of Tao and Ollie, is all the highlights we need. The intensity with which Tao fills every day with purposeful and imaginative play, the way he soaks up and files away every eperience, exercising his constantly enquiring mind and becoming more of a genuine conversationalist even in the four weeks we were there, are all wonderful to see. And if four weeks is a long time in the life of a three-year-old, then our being with Ollie on a daily basis for 28 of his (to date) 35 days has been a miracle. Speaking personally, having Ollie reward my grandfatherly nonsense prattle with a beaming smile, and even, in the last couple of days, a chuckle, is right up there with visiting Niagara Falls, even if, occasionally, it proved almost as damp an experience.

I thought I would share with you this week a couple of reflections on Penamacor culture, of various brow heights. Let me begin with the culture of the street.

At the beginning of last week, an older woman who lives up the street knocked at the door (or, more accurately, shouted through the open window) with a bag containing about two kilo of large tomatoes, freshly picked from her smallholding. There are, apparently, a few neighbours who share their bounty in this way. Tslil reckons that she and Micha’el are favoured because they are newcomers, with two young and adored children, and also because they do not yet harvest their own crops, and therefore are much less likely to refuse to accept the proferred gifts.

We hadn’t yet managed to finish the tomatoes before another bag appeared in the middle of the week. When a third bag arrived on Friday, Bernice felt compelled to make Micha’el favourite soup – gazpacho – for Shabbat. It was delicious, a reflection of both the full flavour and freshness of the fruit and Bernice’s skill as a cook.

Speaking of open windows (as I was two paragraphs ago) it is interesting that the kids’ house was the only one in the street, and probably the only one in the village, with unshuttered windows. Throughout our stay, with temperatures averaging a daily high of 36, the entire village was shuttered against the sun. We also realised, for the first time, that the small houses immediately opposite ours have no garden. We had realised, of course, that their front doors, like ours, opened onto the street, and that they were terraced (town) houses. We had not realised that they shared a party wall with the houses behind them, the houses aliong the next street parallel to ours. These houses, then, have one window in the front, and are attached on all three remaining sides. I imagine they have one open-plan living room and kitchen downstairs, and just one bedroom upstairs. Unless they have a frosted glass panel in the front door, their hallway (and bathroom) can no natural light at all.

Out for a walk one day last week, Bernice and I took a different route back to the house: one that, while a little more circuitous, has the advantage for us that it can be tackled fairly comfortably without crampons and oxygen masks. This walk unexpectedly took us past the municipal library, which Tslil had mentioned, praising particularly the children’s section. I suggested to Bernice that we look around. What a discovery!

What first struck us was the excellent air-conditioning. The library, like so much of the municipal development in Penamacor, has clearly benefited from EU funding. It is housed in what was probably originally a very grand house (by Penamacor standards) or business premises. Rather than one large open space, it is spread through a number of rooms, each of which is 6–8 metres square. The décor, fixtures and fittings, as well as much of the stock ofbooks and CDs, all seemed very new. We strolled through a well-stocked reference library, an inviting children’s room, and a couple of rooms of general books for borrowing.

We then came to a room of books in languages other than Portuguese, with small sections devoted to French, Spanish, Italian and German, and an entire wall, floor-to-ceiling, of books in English. From the appearance and range of the books, it seems that the library has been stocked with contributions from the private shelves of English readers, with a fine sprinkling of books rescued from the discarded stock of a British Council Library in one of the big cities. As always in such a situation, this made for an eclectic mix, with Stephen King and John le Carré in one corner, Robert Nye’s ‘biography of Falstaff and a collection of Edmund Spenser’s verse in another, and Germaine Greer and Anais Nin in yet another.

Since we made this discovery only a couple of days before our departure, we didn’t borrow any books. However, when we next visit, I plan to enquire whether our status as local householders and payers of municipal taxes makes us eligible for tickets. If not, Tslil has invited us to use her ticket, which entitles her to borrow three books at a time.

This week, in honour of our visit’s imminent end, Tslil suggested a family photo. This seems like the perfect opportunity to make the switch from offering you a photo of all three grandsons every week to rotating between them. This will also take some of the pressure off Micha’el and Tslil who, in addition to adusting to life with two young boys (and a still quite young girl, if you count the dog, Lua, who refused to join the photo) have also had to put up with me nagging them every week for a photo. In addition, for the three months a year that we hope to be in Penamacor, it will likewise take pressure off Esther.

*The promised update. We arrived home, safe and sound and on time, as did both of our suitcases.

It began, for me, on Wednesday, during my weekly Zoom chat with my brother, Martin. He started by remarking on how another week had whizzed past, which I thought slightly strange, since we normally speak on Thursday or Friday, and this was only Wednesday.

During the call, I told him how I had spent the best part of two days during the week in bed with a stomach virus. As I was speaking, I was trying to work out whether that had started on Monday – but I didn’t think it had started that early in the week – or Tuesday – but that made no sense because it would mean that today was the second day, and I was no longer ill. In the end I gave up, and pushed the confusion to the back of my mind, since it didn’t seem to make much difference in the larger scheme of things.

The following morning (Thursday), I woke around 6:30, as usual, and, before going downstairs, opened my bedside table drawer to fish out that day’s tablets to take downstairs. I was surprised to discover that I appeared to have only two days of tablets filled in my daily dispensers. This was odd, since I always refill with a week’s supply on Sunday morning. “Oh well,” I thought, “I must have done it on Shabbat morning last week by mistake.”

Checking my email before going downstairs, I discovered, to my surprise, a notification email with a link to my friend Ron’s weekly blog. My surprise was because Ron always posts on Friday. Following the link, I started to read, curious to discover why he was posting early this week.

Yes, folks, even then the penny didn’t drop. My ingenious brain was perfectly happy reorganizing everyone and everything around me to accommodate the false conclusion it had come to. It was only when I had read the entire blog, and discovered that Ron was not having any truck with my internal calendar, making no reference whatsoever to early publication, that I reviewed all of the evidence of the previous 24 hours objectively, and realized my mistake. Martin and I had Zoomed on Thursday; I had filled my tablet dispenser on Sunday; I had been ill on Tuesday and Wednesday, Ron had posted on Friday as always, and I had better get going because there was challah to bake.

With mounting horror I realised that I had lost a day, which made me not quite as hopeless a case as Ray Milland, who, in 1945, lost an entire weekend. Actually,  he lost five days, which, even by post-Covid four-day working week Western standards, is quite some weekend!) For those unfamiliar with The Lost Weekend, it was the winner of four Oscars (and what a quartet: Best Picture, Best Leading Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay) and perhaps the least likely winner in Oscar history, being almost unrelentingly bleak in its portrayal of a man struggling against alcoholism. It was also one of only two films to win Best Picture at both the Oscars and Cannes.

If you haven’t seen the film, it comes recommended by almost everyone – other than, predictably, the American liquor-producing industry. It afforded Ray Milland what was, at the time, a rare opportunity to show that he was more than a rom-com lead actor. You can get a taste of the film from the official trailer, although, as ever, any nuance and subtlety seem to have been edited out for the trailer, in favour of bludgeoning over the head with a blunt voiceover. Not that the film itself is the most subtle treatment of the theme. Personally, my vote for greatest Hollywood treatment of alcoholism goes to another film that allowed an actor often considered primarily comic the opportunity to give a towering dramatic performance. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are both magnificent in Days of Wine and Roses.

So, there are two bleak, depressing recommendations, which might help to put you into something like my mood when I realised that I had lost a day, which, of course, meant that we were one day closer to leaving Penamacor and returning home.

Friday (as I had now discovered it was called) was followed by Saturday (in Portugal, they organise their days the same way we do in Israel), which was, as it happens, our 50^th wedding anniversary. When, several months ago, we looked on the calendar, and saw that August 6 fell on Tisha b‘Av (the saddest day in the Hebrew calendar), we realised that celebrating on the day was not an option. Of course, when Tisha b’Av falls on Shabbat, the fast, and all of the accompanying mourning practices, are deferred to the following day, which meant that we were unable to celebrate on Saturday night.

Around the same time, we realised that Tslil was due to give birth a month before our anniversary, and so we decided to schedule this current trip. On Shabbat, we raised a glass to ourselves, but little more. Since the Hebrew date of our anniversary falls a few days after we return from Portugal, we have postponed any celebration until later. Bernice and I agreed not to bring out gifts to give each other here (not least because we simply couldn’t spare the weight in our luggage).

I did, however, manage to give Bernice one small gift on Shabbat – my stomach virus, with the result that she spent all of Sunday in bed – most of it, thankfully, peacefully asleep. This morning (Monday) she woke up feeling completely better, which is a great relief. Very early next Monday morning we will be driving back to Madrid airport (assuming that the three changes in flight times that we have so far been updated with are the only changes), so today we have started our last seven days in Penamacor.

The weather has turned a little cooler over the last week, which is a great relief, and is due to stay unchanged this week. We have one errand in Castollo Branco to run for the kids this week, which we will probably combine with one last big supermarket shop and, possibly, lunch out. In addition, there is one site in Penamacor I would like to visit, which I might well tell you about next week, if I manage to get there.

Other than that, both Bernice and I would like to do some cooking and baking for the freezer, to give the kids a little cushion after our departure. Knowing the way time seems to slip through the fingers, even when I’m not mislaying entire days, that’s probably all we will have time for, until our next trip. By then, Ollie will undoubtedly have completely changed. He is already unrecognisable as the newborn we encountered when we arrived. Esther assures us we won’t recognise Raphael when we return to Israel either. Only Tao is changing less dramatically, although even he seems to be maturing before our eyes and ears.

One thing all three have in common is that they love stories, whether (R to L) on video, in books, or following the oral tradition.

As I am writing this, we are halfway through our four weeks in Penamacor, and, before you ask, no, we haven’t been anywhere or done anything yet other than dote on two-thirds of our grandsons and perform light household duties. (Can’t wait until Bernice reads that ‘light’.) As we never cease to explain, while Penamacor has its charms, it would not be our first choice of holiday destination, all other things being equal. However, since very few other things are equal, Penamacor is where we are, and, while the waterskiing leaves much to be desired, that’s not really what we’re here for.

Actually, it transpires that Penamacor and environs do offer a variety of attractions, particularly in the festival season, at the peak of which we appear to have arrived. Before we drove over the border from Madrid, a friend (who, clearly, does not know me at all) wrote to ask whether we would be attending the Boom festival. At the time, I had no idea what the Boom festival was. (My guess is that about 4% of you will be thinking: ‘Are you serious?’, 15% of you will be thinking: ‘No surprises there’, and the other 81% will be saying:’ What’s the Boom festival?’)

According to Wikipaedia (although I strongly suspect that anyone interested in the Boom Festival doesn’t look things up on Wikipaedia): it is ‘a transformational, multidisciplinary, psychedelic and sustainable festival that happens every two years in Portugal. Editions are in sync with the full moon. Born in 1997 in Herdade do Zambujal, Águas de Moura, Portugal as a goa trance psychedelic party, it has since then evolved into a global celebration of alternative culture.’ 41,000 people from 177 countries (third among which in number of attendees is, apparently, Israel) came this year to what is, by all accounts, a very well organised festival, with online ticket sales (sold out in 90 minutes), 21 official stages, 544 artists, 181 facilitators, 69 assistants and 100 therapists, and with art exhibitions, children’s activities and many other activities running throughout festival week. In addition, the festival has won several green festival international awards.

You can follow the link to find out more about this year’s festival.

Quite by chance, we almost crossed paths with the festival last week. The supermarket that the kids have started using since we were last here happens to be in the town – Idanha-A-Nova – on the outskirts of which the festival is held. This almost certainly explains the surprisingly large number of customers in the supermarket shopping in the organic food section and sporting a variety of tattoos and rasta hairstyles. It may also explain why this is the only supermarket in my experience whose car park features an open-air laundromat.

As if all of this excitement were not enough, the last few days have seen Penamacor come alive unexpectedly – at least, unexpectedly for us. The last week of July marks the local summer festival, promising all sorts of highlights. We became aware, on Thursday and Friday, that the village was filling up with visitors. People come for the last weekend in July from the coastal cities; some have bought second homes in the village; others have inherited their late parents’ houses, or are visiting their living parents. For the long weekend that they stay, the village takes on a new life.

Suddenly, our neighbours’ house came alive. Whenever we have visited before, it has been deserted. This weekend, two siblings and their families descended on it, in cars laden with equipment and supplies. They spent a few hours taming the back garden, and the next day barbecuing and attending the festival, before loading up their cars again and driving back to the big city this morning.

And what of the festival itself? Until today, our only direct experience of it was thumping music playing way into the small hours on Friday and Saturday night. (Fortunately for us, the open-air concerts are staged in a part of the village that the kids’ bedroom faces; in our bedroom, on the other side of the house, we could hear nothing – not that any concert half a mile away would keep either Bernice or me awake.) I must say, this seemed rather inappropriate for our sleepy corner of the country, but there is, we are beginning to notice, a younger population who, most of the time we are out and about are hidden away at work or school, and who come out just as we are crashing at what for us is the end of the day. Over the last week, we have seen many teenagers going to and from the municipal swimming pool, and playing football.

Today (Sunday) we decided to visit the festival, known as the ‘Lands of the Lynx’ fair, acknowledging that the national park a few kilometres from Penamacor is one of the natural habitats of the Iberian lynx, an endangered species. In 2015, the last known surviving wild lynx in Portugal was run over by a car. Since then, a programme of controlled release has been operating in a number of areas of Portugal, which is proving successful. There are currently over 100 animals that have been identified in the wild, consisting of 43 releases from captivity and 91 known births. Natural death, and some wild migration to Spain, has kept the net number in Portugal at a little over 100.

The fair was held in the small municipal park in the centre of the village – the Jardim da Republica – which boasts the village’s largest café, offering indoor and outdoor seating and liquid refreshment that was very welcome on a day that, when we arrived at 4:30, was nudging 39 centigrade. Around the park were arranged a number of very small marquees, each housing a display of very local produce – honey, cheeses, olive oil, sweets and liqueurs, reflecting the fact that the Portuguese have an incredibly sweet tooth. I was expecting the produce to have a very cottage kitchen home-made appearance, but in fact it was all packaged and labelled very commercially, less like an English village fair than a commercial farmer’s market.

In addition to the produce stalls there were some craft stalls, including one featuring the embroidery work that is traditional to the area (although Bernice detected that some of the items for sale were machine-embroidered, and there were some Disney characters featured there). There was also a medium-size inflatable bouncing castle (for any children who wanted to experience the equivalent of walking on red-hot coals), a face-painting stall, and a stall offering biscuits and craft work made by the children of the local forest school.

Wandering among the small crowd that had gathered were a number of costumed figures from Alice in Wonderland – the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat – and an itinerant gardener accompanied by a ballerina flower. The gardener offered to water the children from his can (a welcome relief from the heat), and encouraged them to then open out their arms and grow.

Musical entertainment was provided by a strolling guitar and vocal quartet. They were dressed inexplicably as a bumblebee, a cow, a dalmatian and a cockerel. (Inexplicably to me, at least; perhaps there is a local fairy tale about four such animals, but I rather suspect those were the costumes left in the dressing-up chest when they arrived. It is just possible that the animals reflect the source of the agricultural produce for sale, but I’d like to think that did not include any dogs.)

Just as I was beginning to feel that this was all a little inauthentic, another musical trio arrived, which proved to be the real deal, even down to the traditional costume. This was a gaita de fole (literally bellows harmonica) trio, comprising bagpipes, snare drum and bass drum, who played traditional folk tunes. Such a trio has, for many centuries (at least since the 1200s) been an indispensable part of village life, playing at weddings, fairs and religious festivals. The tradition is particularly strong in the northern regions of Portugal, bordering Spain.

Apparently, the tradition died out in the second half of the 20th Century, giving way to recorded music, and was consciously revived just before the millennium, in an effort to keep folk customs alive. It is, however, possible, that the tradition never really died out in rural enclaves such as Penamacor.

My research indicates that what we saw was the authentic Portuguese gaita de fole, made from a goatskin, with carved wooden chanters and single drone. Interestingly, the bagpiper performing here did not use the drone (which creates a continuous higher-pitched note to fill out the sound), but only played the melody on a single chanter. You can get a sense of the sound from this clip of a concert.

After we had spent about an hour and a half at the festival, we slipped away just as the sound stage was being equipped with amps for the evening’s main attraction – a performance by Augusto Canário & Amigos. Canário, I hardly need tell you, is a very popular accordionist and singer. Judging by the age of the villagers who were arriving as we left, his appeal is primarily to a more mature audience than had been the case with the previous night’s DJ, but nevertheless we decided to give it a miss. There’s only so much local colour you can soak in at one sitting, particularly when the temperature is close to 40 and you still have 152 steps to climb to get home.

I thought this week you might like to see the mothers who gave birth to our wonderful grandchildren.