As many of you will already know, Bernice and I doubled out grandparentitude this past week, when Esther gave birth at Laniado Hospital in Netanaya to a baby boy whose beauty is indescribable. It is a mystery to me how he can look so much like a Brownstein and simultaneously be so heart-stoppingly beautiful, but he manages it effortlessly.

If ever there was a week for arguing that some of the best things in life come in small packages, then this week, for me, is it. Which is just as well, because, for a couple of reasons that needn’t concern us here, this week’s post is a very small package. It was originally much longer, but my most important reader, Bernice, in a first for her, rejected my first two attempts. She was, of course, quite right to do so. Neither of them worked.

So, let’s cut right to the chase. We’ve spent most of the last three days in Netanya marvelling at the miracle that is a new life. At how, within the space of a day or two, this small, slight bundle can make such huge strides towards becoming an autonomous human being. Simply to see the changes from one visit to another, a mere 15 hours later, is remarkable. To watch the first stirrings of a personality: to see frustration, tenacity, contentment. To watch expressions drift across an already fully animated face, and wonder what he can be dreaming of. To see him bunch one fist under his cheek, for all the world like his late great-grandfather.

It is at times like this that I am struck by the mirror-image of the cliché scientist’s astonishment at the act of faith involved in believing in a deity whose existence is not scientifically provable. I am always amazed that there are people who can look at a newborn baby over his first few days and have such faith that this miracle could be achieved other than by an all-powerful shaping hand.

One more fact which the whole family thinks is fairly remarkable. On Thursday, not only did our newcomer turn 0, but his big cousin, Tao, turned 3 – on the very same day. What an act of kindness to a grandpa who still has only one birthdate to remember!

That’s just under 400 words, rather than the 1500 that is my norm. If a picture is worth 1000 words, then here’s an easy way to boost the word-count.

…and when you spot a navel, what do you do? Why, contemplate it, of course, especially if it’s yours.

Bernice and I are now just entering the home stretch of Shuggie Bain, which I know I have referred to previously here. We are 372 pages into the book (over 85% of the way through) and, let me tell you, up to this point, the comment of the reviewer in the Telegraph (India) suggests to us that she was reading and reviewing a different book entirely. She writes of ‘…the exhilarating experience of reading this…novel’.

It is certainly a beautifully written book, but the rawness of the emotion and the ‘grind of poverty and the suck and drag of addiction’ make it a very tough read. Very far from exhilarating. Indeed, inhilarating, one might say. I’m hanging in there, but I suspect if Bernice were reading this by herself she would have given it up 100 pages ago, and asked me to finish it and tell her what happens.

I remarked a couple of days ago to Bernice that I could not imagine sharing with an agent, then a publisher’s readers, let alone a broad reading public, a manuscript that so clearly draws on, and so honestly examines, this particular lived experience of the author. I have always been a fairly private person, with Bernice my only confidante for the last half-century…and there are things I don’t even tell her. (But don’t tell her that!)

It then struck me that this blog business has, using some mysterious alchemy, seduced me into revealing far more of myself than would ever have been the case otherwise. This manifests itself in various ways.

David 1.0 would have sworn Bernice and Micha’el to secrecy over the fiasco of getting our rental car stuck in the ditch – What happens in Penamacor stays in Penamacor, as we swingers say! David 2.0, on the other hand, can even laugh when a niece leaves outside our house, as an eloquent tribute, a copy of Duck in the Truck, a children’s book that centres on efforts to free duck’s truck after it gets stuck, one day, in the muck.

David 1.0, on the rare occasion when he had anything medical to talk about, never shared it beyond closest family. David 2.0 – and this may partly be because familiarity has bred contempt, or at least blaséness (blaseur? blasitude?) – has no such inhibitions, and will, metaphorically, show you his scars at the drop of a hat – or, indeed, a trouser.

So what is it about the medium that encourages this openness, this sharing of concerns and passions, this readiness to expose myself (there’s that flasher again) in ways that, a few years ago, I would have found it hard to imagine?

One answer, I suppose, is that, when I am blogging, I am performing the act of revelation in isolation. I am not sitting in the same room as the people to whom I am baring my soul. I cannot even hear them breathing at the other end of the telephone. Instead, I am simply facing a blank screen that is incapable of doing anything more than reflecting back to me my own words. At the time of composition, the confession is simply thought made manifest to me.

Add to that the fact that changing that screen from a mirror to a conduit requires nothing more than one mouse click on the Publish button. Such ease of transition is seductive, and gives no hint of what the consequences will actually be.

Finally, I am not present (even at the other end of a phone) at the moment when those to whom I am baring my soul actually see my bare soul. If I ever learn of their reaction, it is mediated through time, and, more often than not, through the computer again, reaching me in the form of comments. The entire exchange is distanced, sterilised.

I am also very fortunate in that my entire readership is made up of people who are pre-disposed to me. (If I’m wrong there, please don’t feel a duty to disabuse me. As a precocious schoolboy debater, I once spoke passionately in favour of the motion that ‘This house believes it is better to know that one lives in the darkness than to believe falsely that one lives in the light’. I’m not sure I’d pick the same side now; there’s a lot to be said for the warm comfort of illusion,)

Bloggers with a wider public readership face a potentially more antagonistic readership; mainstream as well as social media commentators run the risk of being humiliated or even cancelled. In two years, the worst that has happened to me is that I have had my knuckles rapped for buying fruit at Rami Levy. My shoulders are narrow, but broad enough to bear that.

I have a friend who writes occasional opinion pieces for the Jerusalem Post, and whose personal blog has been taken up by another online platform. He asked me some time ago whether I fancied trying to follow the same route, to attract a wider readership. It did not take me long to decide that I actually didn’t. I’m not sure my skin is thick enough to hold up under a lashing from people I don’t know. It’s also true that I find the prospect of writing for an anonymous audience daunting.

Whenever I write, I always have one or other of my readers in mind, readers whom I know well and whose reactions I flatter myself that I can imagine fairly accurately. I am not sure how one goes about writing for an unknown readership.

But, if I’m going to be completely honest, I suppose that primarily I write for myself. Writing in general is, I am sure, a very egotistical activity. Writing explicitly about oneself is even more so. When I started this blog, I told myself that I was performing a service for friends and family who wanted to hear about the kids’ and our experiences in Portugal. Fairly soon, some of the output was unconnected to Portugal. Now, probably a good 50% of the pieces are my musings about life in general.

If I stop to think about it, I am astonished that you all find this worth reading. When I discover that a particular one of my friends or family is a regular reader, that is usually even more astonishing. Naturally, I consider myself a witty and erudite commentator, but I find it remarkable that such a broad cross-section of my circle agree at least sufficiently to read the blog regularly.

Reading back over what I have written, I discover that it is even more self-centred than usual. If I get away with this, then I will be even more surprised than usual. In return for your conspiratorial silence if I don’t actually get away with this, I promise to look for a more objective and concrete subject next week. Meanwhile, if you have been, thank you for reading. (There’s a 10-point bonus if you can name the BBC radio presenter I misquoted there.*)

On a different note, Thursday this week (Purim) will be Tao’s third birthday. Here he is planted his almond tree on his first birthday and all dressed up his second birthday. For his third birthday, his other grandparents – his savta and saba – are coming to visit him.

*10 points if you identified John Ebdon. (I dredged up the John, but had to google the Ebdon.)

On Shabbat morning, I was invited by one of the gabbaim to lead the shacharit service in synagogue. This is something that I have been doing, off and on, since my days in the children’s service in Beehive Lane shul 60+ years ago, so any hesitation I may have had before agreeing was only along the lines of: ‘I wish more people arrived earlier on shabbat morning, so that there was a bigger pool to choose from.’

When I lead the tefilla, I am always careful to read from the large-print siddur on the lectern, to reduce the chance of making any mistakes, even though by this point I know a lot of the service by heart. However, when it came to the end of shacharit, and I went up to stand in front of the ark and take the sefer torah before carrying it around the shul, I was in a position where I could not quite see the siddur. There are two verses which the leader recites and the congregation repeats, the first of which, Sh’ma Yisrael, must be the best known verse in the whole of the liturgy. The second verse is only a little less familiar. I must have recited it several thousand times in my life.

However, when it came to this second verse, I found that I simply had no idea what the penultimate word – ‘Kadosh’ – was. I stood there, struck dumb, unable to focus on the siddur behind me and to my side, and feeling devastated. Some prompting from around me put me back on track, but the experience was shattering.

Reflecting afterwards, a number of things struck me. The first was that nobody made any reference to my temporary freeze. This was, I assume, out of consideration for my feelings, but also, I suspect, because the thought passing through other people’s minds was: Is this incipient Alzheimer’s?

The second thing that struck me was that I suspected this was passing through their minds because it was certainly what was passing through mine.

The third thing was that I was over-reacting, and momentary memory lapses, while they do come with the years, are not necessarily Alzheimer’s. A reassuring rule of thumb I read recently was that if you go upstairs to your bedroom for something, and when you get there you can’t remember what it was you wanted, that’s ‘just’ a sign of age. If, on the other hand, you go upstairs and can’t remember which room is your bedroom, that’s a sign of Alzheimer’s.

Knowing this (at a cognitive level), why is it, then, that when I have a memory lapse my immediate thought is that it might be Alzheimer’s? I don’t believe this is just my Eeyorism. The answer, it seems to me, is that Alzheimer’s is so front and centre in modern consciousness. On the radio, in podcasts, at the cinema, in literature, and, of course, in the presentation of medical science in the media: Alzheimer’s is everywhere. Because we are kept aware of it, we are on the lookout for it. It is far from unimaginable.

Which brings me to the geo-political elephant in the room – an elephant that has reached such a size that, if I want to continue to ignore it, then, to paraphrase Roy Scheider in Jaws, ‘You’re gonna need a bigger room’. I’ve never been one to follow current affairs with the enthusiasm or assiduousness with which I follow some of the arts, Wimbledon, or The Times crossword, but even I feel there is something a bit bizarre in a blog that doesn’t mention what is going on in Ukraine. So here’s a partial take.

I would suggest that the reason why the world finds itself in this crisis is precisely because, for much of the Western world, it is unimaginable (or at least it was until two weeks ago). When I was growing up the world was very different. 1950s American schoolchildren practised ‘duck and cover’ drills where they sheltered under their desks. However practical a protection that would have been against a nuclear attack, one significant effect was to foster, in the public at large, the belief that America was facing an enemy that might conceivably attack, using even nuclear weapons.

Then, in 1962, the Cuban missile crisis greatly strengthened that belief. Then, in Britain, the BBC produced a chilling pseudo-documentary – The War Game – depicting a nuclear war and its aftermath. Although it was made in 1965, it was judged by the BBC and the government to be too horrifying to be screened. It was shown in some cinemas and at film festivals in 1966, but was not shown on television until 1985.

The early 60s also saw the release of both Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Sidney Lumet’s very different but equally powerful Fail-Safe. These were only two of the many, many Hollywood films dealing with the prospect of nuclear war.

In this climate, the public in the West, and their leaders, were sustained in their belief that the Soviets would contemplate nuclear war. Any decisions about what action to take in the face of threatened aggression were shaped by that belief.

In the last couple of decades, on the other hand, and until a couple of weeks ago, the public in the West, and their leaders, appeared to believe that any confrontational belligerence on the part of Russia was unimaginable. We no longer lived in a world like that. Certainly Russia no longer represented an ideology opposed to that of the West. We now lived in a world of globalisation and post-modernism.

So, when Putin stated in an article last summer his position regarding Ukraine, and restated it in the months since, the West chose to believe that the situation could be rescued through diplomacy. The Guardian quoted a US intelligence official in mid-February likening the West’s tactics in handling Putin to “dealing with a kidnapper holding hostages in a booby-trapped building. The first aim is to keep the kidnapper talking.” The hope was that a professional negotiator, or a sympathetic family member, perhaps a member of the Russian army, could talk the highly strung kidnapper round and make him realise that whatever his grievances, this is not going to work out well for him in the long term.

It seems clear to me that this was not the situation. The argument that Putin is irrational reflects a failure to grasp reality not on the part of Putin, but on the part of the West. Putin is not highly strung or unbalanced; his was a cool and calm calculation. and the West lost an opportunity to make him realise that he had miscalculated the naivete of the West. (Except, of course, he hadn’t; he had calculated it pretty accurately.)

It does, at least, seem that the leaders of the free world (as I guess we need to start calling it again) have been fairly quick to recalibrate their assessments of the situation, and it may even be that a resolution will come through a combination of painful actions. The Ukrainians will need to continue their resistance, sustained by whatever aid the free world is able to give without risking escalation. At the same time, the West will need to impose and maintain far-reaching sanctions that will need to hurt the West if they are to cripple Russia. In time, these sanctions that may also create a reality in Russia that somehow weakens Putin’s hold on power, or even makes him realise that there is no way he can emerge victorious from this endeavour.

If that looks to you like wishful thinking, then the alternatives seem to me too bleak even for Eeyore to contemplate.

Meanwhile, as the man said, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t buy any green bananas.’

No! I can’t end there. Here’s a reminder of more innocent days, last July.

First, some context for those to whom the title doesn’t speak volumes. In 1932, Harold Arlen wrote the music and Yip Harburg and Billy Rose the lyrics for a song that was to be the only song in an unsuccessful Broadway play. That song was entitled: If You Believed in Me. The following year, the song was recycled in a film, having been retitled: It’s Only a Paper Moon, and Paul Whiteman recorded a version later that year became a hit. During the later years of the Second World War, many artists recorded versions, including Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman.

Speaking of changing names, my second sentence could have spoken, not of Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg and Billy Rose, but of Hyman Arluck, Isidore Hochberg and William Rosenberg, but that’s a whole other story.

Let’s have a listen to Ella’s version. She is backed, incidentally, by the incomparable vocal group The Ink Spots. Now, I know many of you don’t follow these links (which are, I admit, often simply pleasant diversions, and nothing more than the musical equivalent of serving suggestions). However, in this particular case, I’m trying to build an argument of which Ella’s version is, I believe, a significant part. So go on, click the link; it won’t bite.

OK. Now imagine for a moment… (Listen, you spent last week’s blog laughing at my travails in Portugal; it’s time you did some work yourselves.)…Just imagine for a moment that you speak no English. If you heard that song, how, just judging from the tune, the arrangement and Ella and the Ink Spots’ delivery, would you describe the mood of the song? To me, it sounds far more cheerful than wistful. If you listen to Nat King Cole, or Sinatra, they are, if anything, even chirpier.

Now let’s look at the lyrics (including the 8-line intro that I haven’t been able to find in any recorded version)   

I never feel a thing is real
When I’m away from you
Out of your embrace
The world’s a temporary parking place

Mmm, mm, mm, mm
A bubble for a minute
Mmm, mm, mm, mm
You smile, the bubble has a rainbow in it

Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it’s only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It’s a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It’s a melody played in a penny arcade

It’s a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me

This seems to be a tale of unrequited love, a bittersweet reflection on how empty life’s pleasures seem because the object of the singer’s love does not return that love. Yes, they are in a relationship – the singer speaks of ‘your embrace’ and says that ‘you smile’. However, the other person is not truly invested in the relationship, and it is that lack of investment that makes everything phony. For the singer, the default state is that the moon and sky, and love, are real.

What makes it even more interesting is that, in the Broadway play for which it was written, the song was sung by a character who was a barker for the Coney Island theatre; in other words, he walked the boardwalk trying to persuade passers-by to buy tickets for the theatre vaudeville performances. He knew that this (honky-tonk, Barnum and Bailey) vaudeville that he was selling had no intrinsic value, but his job was to persuade the punters that it did. The song argues that if you believe it has value, then it actually does.

The first word of the chorus – ‘Say, it’s only a paper moon’ – is seldom heard on recordings, but it seems to me to subtly change the balance of the song. It can be understood to mean: Yes, it’s only a paper moon, but I believe it also hints at: You may say it’s only a paper moon; however, if you believed in me, it would be real.

What started me thinking about the song was a couple of stage plays that Bernice and I have seen recently. We have a subscription to ntathome, the British National Theatre’s streaming service that makes available a rolling selection of several of their productions filmed during live performance. Now, watching a live theatre performance captured on camera is not the same as seeing it in the theatre, and some of the productions we have seen have survived the transition less successfully than others.

Broadly speaking, intimate theatre fares less well, because the emotional projection that is necessary for an actor to reach the back row of a theatre often looks ‘stagey’ and exaggerated when viewed in close-up. However, farce, spectacle and ‘dramatic’ narrative usually come across well. Adaptations of Frankenstein and Jane Eyre, or, to take something completely different, One Man, Two Guvnors,for example, all ‘transferred’ very successfully. Antony and Cleopatra, on the other hand, lost, in translation, all of the languid sexuality of the Egyptian scenes in what had been a highly-praised production.

The two productions we have seen recently are WarHorse and Peter Pan. The first is a very simple story of a youth and a horse who form a close bond until the horse is drafted into the cavalry during World War I, but who (spoiler alert) are ultimately reunited in France. What is remarkable about the stage adaptation of the original novel is the puppetry. I won’t attempt to describe it, but rather ask you to watch a short trailer illustrating how the horses (and a very characterful farmyard goose) were created on stage. You will have to take my word for it that, when we were watching the play, we ceased to notice the puppeteers, and this despite the fact that, as you can see for yourselves, there is no attempt to conceal them. The fact is that, if you believe the horses are real, they become real…which is, I would argue, the way all theatre works.

Anyone who has performed on stage knows that, from the back, the most elaborate stage set is revealed as just a paper moon. However, viewed from the front, it can poersuade us that it is real, if only we are prepared to believe. Whether using a hyper-realistic set, with all of the trickery of modern lighting effects and other techniques, or a minimalist set, leaving almost everything to the audience’s imagination, every play asks for, and requires, the audience’s willingness to be deceived…and then it becomes real.

I don’t pretend to know how this works. How is it that we can sit in Row 25 of a theatre, part of an audience of several hundred, and watch what is ostensibly happening in the drawing room of a house, whose fourth wall has been removed so that we can see in, and believe that what we are seeing is real? Believe it so completely that it can make our pulse race or move us to tears of despair or joy? It remains, for me, one of the most blissful mysteries of art.

And so to Peter Pan. I find myself mildly surprised that I have been writing this blog for over two years and haven’t yet mentioned Peter Pan. The fact is that I have long felt that the story of the boy who never grew up is one of those remarkable tales that resonates. Like all the greatest fairy tales, it touches upon profound truths about the human condition, and, also like them, it has attracted to itself several variations on the story that drink from the same well of humanity. I am especially fond of Spielberg’s Hook and Mark Forester’s Finding Neverland adapted from Alan  Knee’s play The Man Who Was Peter Pan. Both celebrate the creative genius of J M Barrie and find new regions to explore in Neverland.

The production of Peter Pan that we recently saw was devised by the company, and included several interesting deviations from the standard Peter Pan conventions. It is traditional for the actor playing Mr Darling to double as Captain Hook. If Peter Pan represents the child in all of us, then this double-casting naturally invites the exploration of the tension between children and their fathers. In the National Theatre production, Mrs Darling doubled as Hook (and a chillingly bloodthirsty job she made of it, too). This introduced even more fascinating Oedipal elements into the story.

However,the main reason why I mention the production here is because of the way it handled the flying that is an essential part, and a technical challenge, for anyone staging Peter Pan. In this production, the flying wires were far thicker than they often are, and the technique used was not the standard one of flying technicians in the wings letting out and pulling in the wires, but rather of counter-balancers being harnessed to the other end of the wire and racing up and down scaffolding that was set onstage, so that the mechanism was completely visible.

The same transparency was true throughout the production, with pirates in small rowing boats that ran on castors across the stage, and were propelled by the actors scooting with their paddles. The crocodile was a minimalist, unrealistic pair of jaws that emerged through the stage trapdoor; the pirate ship was a barely disguised rubbish skip. And it all worked absolutely perfectly, because, if you believe in fairies, and clap loudly enough, then Tinkerbell won’t die. (Spoiler alert: ‘she’ doesn’t die…and this is a Tinkerbell like no other you’ve ever seen: Julia Roberts he ain’t.)

It’s only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea.

But if you believe in it, it isn’t make-believe; it’s great theatre; and it’s one of the most exhilarating and life-affirming experiences I know. Seeing it onscreen is definitely second best, but second best can still be pretty wonderful.

Of course, some people don’t even have to go to a screen to believe.

One of the commenters on last week blog explained that “every time my life seems beset with problems I read one of your blogs and recognise someone somewhere has it worse.” I can’t tell you how much better that made me feel. So, it is in a spirit of public-mindedness that I offer you, this week, an account of yet another of the mishaps that seem, these days, to make up most of life’s rich tapestry for me.

Blogger’s Note: But just before I do, I have to make it very clear that I am in no doubt about how fortunate and privileged my life is. Everywhere I look – my wife, our children, their wives, our grandson, our wider family, friends and community – believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by that I do not thank God for showering these gifts on me. However, nobody wants to read that kind of gush, so on with the story.

On our last visit to the kids, and just a few days before our return  to Israel, I had the opportunity to take part in what I am assured is an old rural Portuguese custom. I believe the locals call it: ficar preso na lama, or, sometimes, ficar preso na vala, which certainly sounds suitably intriguing and exotic, until you discover that it translates roughly as: getting stuck in the mud, or in the ditch. Of course, it may be that Tslil, tender and considerate soul that she is, was simply trying to make me feel less a totally incompetent idiot when she assured me that everybody did it, and that she herself had indeed done it, when she was with Tao but not with Micha’el, and had no mobile reception. I choose to believe her, and to embrace the orthodoxy that this is just another hazard of life in the Portuguese countryside.

What happened was this. One afternoon, when Micha’el was away from home with their truck, visiting clients in connection with his water management consultancy, I drove Tslil and Tao to a birthday party. An English couple have bought land 10 minutes outside Penamacor, and are living in a tent there while they work towards building a house. Their son was celebrating his 4^th birthday. So, Bernice, Tslil, Tao and I set off. The plan was to drop Bernice at the supermarket, drop Tslil and Tao at the party, and come back to meet Bernice at the checkout, pay and go back to the house with the shopping. The track to this couple’s land led off the main road; we found it easily, since they had thoughtfully hung balloons on the post. A hundred metres or so up the track, I steered slightly to the right to avoid a pothole, and instantly felt the car veer right, out of my control. I was unable to correct this, and very soon came to a halt with almost the entire front passenger wheel submerged in a ditch that carried a ridiculous depth of water, considering that there had been no rain for the entire previous month.

The party hosts, having observed this from their encampment 50 metres further up the path, came to meet us and assess the situation. Fortunately, no other guests had yet arrived, so my humiliation was less than it might have been. The father, Harrison, immediately ran back to the camp to bring a couple of stout planks, and started wedging these under the wheels with the help of rocks. However, it soon became clear that it was going to be impossible for me to get sufficient purchase to negotiate the steep bank of the ditch.

I kept apologising to Harrison for putting him to all this trouble when he had been expecting to host a quiet birthday celebration. However, it was perfectly clear that he was relishing the logistic and physical challenge, and regarded the whole exercise as a useful learning experience, which made me feel a little less awkward.

I suddenly realised I should alert Bernice to the situation. However, she had only taken her Portuguese phone with her, and, as luck would have it, this pay-as-you-go phone needed a top-up, so I couldn’t reach her. (How did we ever manage in a pre-mobile age? I genuinely can’t remember.) I knew that, being Bernice, she wouldn’t panic; she is not a panicker. She would simply and calmly come to the conclusion that I, indeed all three of us, were lying unconscious in a ditch somewhere. It was, of course, essential, to reassure her that it was only the rental car that was in the ditch, and not any or all of us.

At this point, I realised that, painful as it would be to extend the circle of people that knew what a hopeless case I was, we simply had to tell Micha’el. So, Tslil phoned him, to discover that he had finished early and was at home. She asked him to drive over, with the truck and its towing webbing, and, on the way, to stop at the supermarket, pay our bill and pick up Bernice.

By the time they arrived, Harrison had got himself seriously muddy attempting to dig a trench out of the ditch. However, that also proved fruitless. Micha’el parked behind me and started looking for a secure point on the rental car to attach the towrope to. Of course, being a modern car, our Clio had flimsy plastic bodywork reaching almost to the ground all round. Eventually, Micha’el settled for the axle and managed to attach the webbing. He ratcheted up the slack in the strap.

I still sometimes wonder how we produced a son who has a truck, towing webbing and a ratchet strap and knows how to use them all!

Micha’el and Harrison then repositioned the wooden planks for me to attempt to drive free in reverse. It was, I think, around this time that Harrison asked me whether the car was front-wheel drive. Clearly, he didn’t know me very well. Not only had I no idea, but I also had no idea how one would have an idea. (Googling later, I learnt that the Renault Clio is, indeed, front-wheel drive, a fact I shall file away in the, sadly not sufficiently unlikely, event that we hire another Clio and I drive it into another ditch.)

At this point, Harrison moved round to the front of the car, Micha’el got into his truck and took up the slack, and then I had an excellent opportunity to spatter Harrison with mud as I gently eased my foot off the clutch while touching the accelerator as lightly as possible. Eventually, we made enough progress to lead the two people who appeared, at least to me, to know what they were doing, to believe that, if they uncoupled the towstrap and pushed from behind, I would probably be able to drive forward out of the ditch.

Which is, more or less, what happened, after our two heroes hammered the planks under the front wheels, then went round to the rear of the car. This, of course, gave me an opportunity to spatter Micha’el with mud as well as Harrison. We didn’t seem to be getting very far, until Bernice leaned in, and her Pilates-honed efforts seemed to make all the difference, as I gracefully, and gratefully, crawled out of the ditch and drove forward to a turning point nearer the camp. (I would, of course, have gallantly offered Bernice to drive while I pushed, except that she wasn’t insured to drive the car, exercises more regularly than me, and doesn’t have my heart condition.)

I have to say that Harrison was still behaving as if this was the most fun he had had for ages.

Micha’el then left the truck for Tslil to drive home in and Bernice and I took him back home. Later, he decided he would join the party, and so I drove him back…but dropped him on the main road at the start of the track. Better part of valour and all that. Of course, all I wanted to do was behave as if the entire afternoon had never happened. However, I had reckoned without Tao. The very same day, ‘Grandpa getting stuck in the ditch’ replaced ‘Nana and Grandpa’s puncture’ (from our previous trip) as both Tao’s favourite role-playing game and his favourite story to be told, so that, for the rest of our stay, my humiliation was played out repeatedly before my eyes and rang in my ears. I hope that, by the time of our next visit, he will have forgotten it, but I’m not optimistic. I think Tao, like his grandfather, might get stuck in a rut.

Blogger’s Note: Don’t be fooled by the title. Although it is almost identical to last week’s, this is an entirely new post. Apologies for late posting, but we only got to bed at 5AM.

I’m writing this on Sunday evening as we cruise from West to East over Portugal, having driven from East to West through Portugal what was in fact just eight hours ago, but seems more like eight years.

I had a topic all lined up to regale you with this week, but the events of the last three-and-a-half hours have, perforce, swept aside all thoughts of a light amusing divertissement. Instead, prepare for a full-scale horror continuation of last week’s episode. See a grown man reduced to a gibbering idiot and a grown woman break down and cry. But be sure to always keep in mind that I am writing this from an El Al plane inexorably winging its way to Tel Aviv, so rest assured that you are guaranteed a happy ending.

The story so far. After a small fortune in international calls and several hours of assorted mindless call-queuing jingles, someone I hastily described last week as a ‘very helpful Opodo agent’ emailed us our etickets for today’s flight.

Now read on.

When El Al sent me an SMS with a link to check in online, I tried last night. Unfortunately, the link they gave me threw up a booking code which, when I tried to check in, elicited a response in red: We have identified a fault with this ticket, Please call customer service at this number.’

I waited until after 9PM (when, as we discovered last week, the kids’ landline cheap international rate kicks in) and called the number in Israel. This is, I would remind the members of the jury, a number explicitly for dealing with problems of passengers with flights within the next 72 hours. A recorded message informed me that this (basically emergency) number was only manned during normal working hours, 8–5, Sunday to Thursday, and a half-day on Friday.

Deciding to try my luck online again, this time I overrode the booking code and entered the number of our eticket. Wonder of wonders, it was accepted, and, within two minutes, Bernice and I were checked in, with seats across the aisle from each other,

I then set my alarm for 6AM (8 in Israel) to try to remove any niggling doubts about that ‘fault with the ticket’. After an understandably rather fitful night, I woke to the alarm, slipped downstairs, made myself a cup of tea, dialled El Al, and settled down for a long wait while I chopped up the fruit for today’s breakfast.

At this stage of the game I could only tolerate `18 minutes of El Al’s jingle assuring me that it was: ‘the most at home in the world’. Sadly, it may conceivably be the case that parents ignoring complaining children for hours on end may well be the most typical domestic experience in the Western world today, but, even so, it seems a poor choice of slogan. As I say, after 18 minutes, I hung up, put the diced fruit in a bag in the fridge, finished my tea and convinced myself that, after all, I had actually managed to check in, so what could go wrong?

When I presented that reasoning to Bernice an hour or so later, she was so much less than persuaded. Truth to tell, my sympathies were with her position, but almost 50 years have taught me at least one secret of a successful marriage: If the Eeyore position has already been taken by Partner A, then it is incumbent upon Partner B to play Piglet, however little his heart may be in it. And so I did, arguing that check-in was the irreversible step in securing a seat on a plane.

This was a position I maintained throughout the rest of the morning, and, after our last goodbyes to Micha’el, Tslil and Tao, also throughout the three-hour drive to Lisbon, during which we encountered the first proper threatening clouds of our entire month in Portugal, and even a little, light rain.

We made good time to the airport, returned our rental car without incident, and our pre-booked antigen test at the airport went smoothly, so that we arrived at the El Al check-in desks about half-an-hour before they opened. This gave us time to exchange stories with other travellers who had originally been on the Thursday or Wednesday flights that were cancelled. During this time, our negative results came to our phones! All seemed to be going smoothly, which should have aroused our suspicions.

A pleasant check-in clerk took our passports, weighed our luggage, and then began the elaborate and heart-sinking sequence of actions that always spell disaster. First he looked in puzzlement at the screen, then he rechecked our tickets, then he struck some more keys and looked more puzzled.

Act 2 began with him standing up, and going over to his colleague on the next desk, bringing her back to show her the screen, then engaging in low, slightly stressed-sounding conversation. Of course, since it was in Portuguese, which I don’t speak, and since they were both wearing masks, which muffled their speech and concealed their expressions, and since there was a lot of background noise from other desks and boisterous child passengers, and since my hearing is no longer able to distinguish an ant chewing a leaf 20 yards away,  I had no idea what the problem was…but I was in no doubt that what it was was a problem, and, by the look of it, not a small one.

In Act 3, the colleague, a TAP employee (this was a code-share flight and we were, indeed, booked on it as TAP passengers) phoned her TAP superiors. At this point, while Bernice expressed the conviction that we were condemned to spend the rest of our lives in Portugal, I grew increasingly, and counter-balancedly, calm, and politely asked the original clerk whether there was a problem. He explained that we had been booked onto the flight twice, and our agent (which, as far as I was concerned, was Opodo – only reachable at a British number; but which was, in fact, eDreams – only reachable at a French number that experience had taught me was unobtainable, and, I now discovered in the body of the eticket, also a German number) anyway, our agent, as I say, had failed to cancel the first booking before making the second booking. We had checked in on the second booking, but in the computer system the Print button for printing a boarding card for the second booking was disabled, since there was an open first booking.

Hands up if you knew that it was going to turn out to be an act of human error that had painted the computer into a corner. And feet up if you have also guessed that, when I suggested the clerk override the system, or hand-write a boarding card, he explained that there was, simply, nothing that he could do. All he could suggest was that I phone my agent and instruct him to cancel the first booking; this would, he assured me, resolve everything.

This was the point at which I explained that neither my Portuguese nor my Israeli phone could make international calls, and maybe they might allow me to use their phone to try to contact my agent. I also pointed out that, going by past experience, I would fail to get through to either Opodo or eDreams (whom I now thought of as Opodon’t and eNightmares) before the plane took off.

The clerk, whose calm  and pleasant nature was proving less and less of a satisfying counterbalance to his complete ineffectualism, explained that their telephones were all airport internal only, with no outside lines. This was, if my memory serves me, the straw that broke Bernice’s back. She seldom cries, and even less frequently in public, but there in the airport she simply broke down. The second clerk solicitously brought her a chair, and, as I attempted, with increasing lack of conviction, to assure her that it would all be sorted, a kind passenger came over and suggested that I find a public phone.

I honestly didn’t think this would help, and I was reluctant to leave Bernice, but it at least seemed like a plan, so off I went, having been less than reassured by Bernice that she would be OK. As it turned out, my leaving was a masterstroke, albeit unintentionally so.

The next 15 minutes were, for me, pure farce, and seemingly interminable. First, no staff that I stopped could tell me where there was a public phone. Then I was directed to a phone that, after a couple of minutes of trial and error, I established was for internal airport and emergency services only. Then, another member of staff  told me where there was a bank of public phones, although she could not guarantee that they were in service.

I eventually found them, two floors down, next to bathrooms that were being noisily cleaned. I was relieved to see that the phones had a slot for cards, so I inserted my Portuguese debit card, and decided to call the eDreams German number. Unfortunately, the eticket did not include the Germany country code, so I quickly googled that, only to discover that the free airport wifi does not reach the basement. So, I grabbed my debit card, ran up the stairs, googled the code, ran downstairs chanting ‘0049, 0049’, inserted my debit card and dialled. The number did not connect. Indeed, I still had the dialling tone.

I eventually realised that my debit card would, of course, not work, and so I inserted my Israeli credit card. When that produced the same result, I removed that card and decided to try to read the Portuguese instructions above the phone. I’m fairly sure they stated that the phone takes coins and phonecards (which, of course, I didn’t have). I quickly fed in the 6.90 euros-worth of coins I had, and prayed that would be enough, but the phone still would not connect me. So, I retrieved my coins, and retraced my steps as far as the Vodafone shop, where I intended to ask the clerk to open my phone for international calls, and, failing that, to throw myself on his mercy and offer to pay him to use his phone.

At this point, Bernice WhatsApp called me, to say that an El Al security man was trying to sort out the problem, and wanted to see the etickets (which, of course, I was holding). I raced back to the check-in desk, where Assaf (who we plan to nominate for the El Al employee of the year award) greeted me calmly. He took the etickets, sent a photo of them to a colleague, and said she would see what she could do. Meanwhile, he explained that he is not technically allowed to intervene in matters of check-in procedure, but he couldn’t stand by and watch our distress. Bernice later told me that an Israeli couple in the queue, seeing the state she was in, had gone over to Assaf and pointed out to him the situation.

Three minutes later, Assaf returned with the news that his colleague expected to have the problem sorted in five minutes, and that the clerk should try to print boarding cards again then. And, sure enough, five minutes later, we had boarding cards and all was resolved, after what we subsequently calculated was 75 minutes of hell.

All that remained was to thank the two clerks warmly, and to thank Assaf very, very warmly, to check in our luggage, and to resolve only ever to fly El Al in future, with a real-life human travel agent. Both the clerks and Assaf assured us that they had endless stories of passengers being let down by eDreams clerks’ incompetence.

This has been a public service announcement, brought to you by the Israel Association of Travel Agents and El Al.

And this is what we have wrenched ourselves away from, and what makes all that trauma bearable.

(You see, I can do American popular cultural references as well.)

I really tried to resist writing this post. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to inflict the same sad story on you a second time. But, what can I do? When I look back over the last week, it has been dominated by one thing above all else – trying to make contact with someone who has the authority to rebook us on a different return flight.

Our story begins in early January, when Bernice and I decided that things seemed settled enough to finalise our booking for this trip. We originally wanted to fly from January 16 to February 13 – 4 weeks, Sunday to Sunday. Bernice then cleverly pointed out that, if Israel continued its new policy of allowing returning travellers to enter Israel on a rapid antigen test only, rather than a PCR test, it would cost us only 10 euros each, a saving of 180 euros (or 660 shekels) on our two tests!

However, since the nearest centre for testing is in Castelo Branco, we would have to travel to the airport via Castelo, and risk having to wait for our test (as we did last time). Alternatively, we could take a full PCR test earlier (there goes another 660 shekels). However, since this has to be within 72 hours of travelling, and since Castelo Branco is only visited by the itinerant PCR-testing lab for an hour in the morning, this would mean going on Friday morning, and hoping that our delay did not drag on too close to shabbat. This would also limit our baking and cooking on Friday for shabbat.

At this point, we both agreed that Sunday was a stupid day to fly back, and so I changed our booking (for only a small additional cost) to the previous Thursday. Shalom al Yisrael (Peace over Israel), as they say.

Except that, of course, over Israel, peace tends to be a short-lived state. And indeed, on the Thursday before we flew to Portugal, I received an email from eDreams, informing me that the Thursday TAP flight back to Israel had been cancelled. This email was a surprise for several reasons. First, because this was the first I had ever heard of eDreams; as far as I knew, I had booked through Opodo. Second, the email was in French, representing neither the language of the either of the two countries we were flying between, nor of the agent (Opodo) I had booked through. Fortunately, with my failed A-level French, I was able to understand that they provided a phone number in France to contact. Unfortunately, this phone number was unobtaionable. However, once we arrived in Portugal, I was able, with relatively little effort, to reschedule our flight to the previous day,  through TAP customer service in Portugal.

And then, last Monday, when I woke up, I saw that I had received, at 4AM Portugal time, an email from El Al, who, it transpired, actually ‘owned’ the Wednesday flight that was being code-shared with TAP – the flight TAP had moved us to from the Thursday flight. This email informed me that that Wednesday flight had also been cancelled, and, if I wished to rebook, I should contact El Al vis WhatsApp. After publishing my blog and having breakfast, I sent a WhatsApp message at 11:12. Five minutes of wrestling with a chatbot convinced me to try my luck on the El Al website. I logged on using my Frequent Flyer number, to be told that there were no reservations in my name. After an hour of attempting to find my reservation online, I gave up.

I next tried to call El Al Customer Service in Israel, where a message informed me that they were only handling calls for flights within the next 72 hours, and referring me to the same WhatsApp. I then obtained, from the El Al website, the phone number of their office in Madrid (which I knew from previous experience handled flights from Lisbon as well). All I got was the same message.

The following morning, refreshed by a good night’s sleep, I felt ready for a rematch with the chatbot. We started at 5:48 Portugal time, and by 554 I had been able to explain my situation and request to talk to a live agent. The bot assured me that they would get back to me within 24 hours.

I then decided to request assistance in English, and got a bot reply, an hour later, that my message had been transferred to the prioritized line, and would be answered by the first available agent.

A little over two hours later, an agent joined the WhatsApp chat. Once I had explained that I wished to rebook, the agent sold me the line: ‘Our digital service allows you to continue your daily routine.’ As I was to discover, their digital service would actually allow me to binge-watch an entire series of The Wire. (Not that I did, you understand.) ‘The waiting time,’ the agent added, ‘may be longer than usual. I will be with you shortly.’

Two hours later, he returned to thank me for waiting and to tell me: ‘I can look at alternative dates if you’d like.’ I refrained from telling him that I had stupidly imagined that’s what he had been doing for the previous two hours, and instead politely confirmed that I would like that.

‘Our digital service allows you to continue your daily routine.’ Or, indeed, to binge-watch another series of The Wire. (Not that I did, you understand.) ‘The waiting time,’ the agent added, ‘may be longer than usual. I will be with you shortly.’

This was followed, over two hours later by: ‘Thanks for waiting. Allow me to check.’ Then, 4 minutes later: ‘The earliest is 13 Feb’.

At this point, I should have said: ‘Book it’, and not, as I did: ‘This is ridiculous and completely unacceptable. Please give me a phone number where I can speak to someone in real time and resolve this, and without having to wait three hours on a phone first.’ I ranted on for another couple of messages. This was, as you will have realized, a bad mistake.

Two hours later, the agent replied: ‘Thanks for waiting. You may call us at 800-2234-6700.’ He then immediately left the chat, so that, when I replied a minute later: ‘Is that an Israeli number?’, I found myself back with the bot. ‘Dear customer, glad to have you back. Are you addressing the same issue as the previous one? 1 – Yes. 2 – No.

By the way, my varied attempts suggest that the 800 number was neither Israeli nor Portuguese, nor, indeed, any bloody use.

I heaved a sigh of frustration and started the whole process again, which took about 15 minutes with the bot. If you have been keeping track, you will know that the time was now 4:59PM Portugal, or 6:59PM Israel, which is why the bot’s next message read: ‘Our digital service is currently closed. If your inquiry is still relevant, please contact us during our working hours Sunday–Friday at 08:00–19:00 (TLV LOCAL).’

The following morning (this was now Tuesday), I tried the bot again, with no further success. Meanwhile, I had received another email in French from eDreams, which, I had meanwhile worked out, was the actual company that had arranged the flight, even though in booking I had dealt only with Opodo. A quick phone call confirmed that the French phone number was still unobtainable.

I next tried to rebook online with Opodo. However, their site informed me that I had no booking with them.

At this point, I was left with three options. I could call TAP in Lisbon, or Opodo in London (which would cost me more money, although we thought our landline contract allowed cheap calls throughout Europe, and not just EU), or El Al in Tel Aviv. Although it was true that our flight was not within 72 hours, the fact was that it was getting closer to 72 hours with every passing hour, and, technically, since I did not know what flight we would finally be booked on, it might well be less than 72 hours away.

Instead, I took a few hours off. Bernice is keen to return to Israel to be able to offer any assistance as needed by Esther, whose due date in mid-March is fast approaching. She was starting to get a little anxious, but I simply had no energy for further efforts.

So, on Wednesday morning, I decided to start with El Al. I got through to a very helpful agent, who, after some time searching online, was able to update me that the change from the Thursday flight to the Wednesday flight had been carried out by Opodo, and since neither the agent (Opodo) nor the airline booked with (TAP) was El Al, there was no way that El Al could change my booking from the now cancelled Wednesday flight to another flight (even though both the Wednesday flight and any replacement were bound to be officially El Al flights.

Grateful to El Al for a) answering the phone (finally), and b) clarifying the situation, I hung up and dialed both TAP in Portugal (on my Portuguese mobile phone) and Opodo in London (on our landline) simultaneously. TAP answered first (although Opodo ensured that the bar was set embarrassingly low). A very helpful agent examined the situation online and then expressed doubt that anyone other than Opodo could effect the change. However, she transferred me to TAP Central Booking, in the hope that they might be able to oblige.

While I was waiting for TAP Central Booking to reply, Opodo replied, and a helpful agent heard out my explanation, found my booking, offered me a return flight on Sunday 13 Feb, and explained that, since there was a difference in price, which would be absorbed by the airline (TAP), he could not finalise the rebooking without prior authorization from TAP. He assured me that this was purely procedural, and that I could expect a confirmation email and etickets in my inbox within 24 hours (in other words, by 12:00 noon on Thursday).

On Thursday afternoon, I phoned Opodo and their recorded message requested that anyone waiting for rebooking confirmation allow 48 hours.

When the email did not arrive before Shabbat, nobody was surprised, but Bernice grew visibly more anxious over Shabbat.

What also happened over shabbat was that MEO, our phone and internet provider in Portugal, detected unusual activity over our landline (a phone call to Israel and two more to Britain that together chalked up a bill whose details I am not going to share with you, for fear of upsetting those of a delicate nature). MEO followed standard procedure: they stopped our service and called Micha’el on his mobile to verify whether the activity was legitimate or we had, in fact, been hacked. Despite Micha’el assuring them that the calls were genuine, it took them some time to restore the service.

Thankfully, once the bill was paid, service was restored. However, no email had arrived over Shabbat, and so, on Saturday evening, I called Opodo again (this time making sure to phone during the cheap rate 9PM to 9AM window). My call was answered within a minute, and a very helpful agent confirmed we were booked on the Sunday, 13 Feb flight, and, while I waited on the phone, she emailed me our etickets.

If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed that the flight we are returning on is exactly the same flight as the one I originally booked us on several weeks ago. If there is a lesson here, I cannot for the life of me work out what it is.

However, the experience has given us two takeaways. First, I am now able to recite 6-letter booking codes (we have, so far, had four of these from Opodo), in the NATO alphabet, blindfolded. Second, and of more practical use, Bernice and I are firmly in agreement that, going forward, we will always book through a flesh and blood personal travel agent.

Meanwhile, spending another four days, including a fourth shabbat, has meant a last-minute rethinking of the rationing of the grape juice that we bring with us from Israel as a Shabbat Kiddush treat. Even so, another four days with the family here has its upside as well.

It’s been a week of pleasant surprises, starting with the weather, which has continued to be bright and sunny, with clear blue skies. Indeed, in the two weeks since our arrival, we have still not seen any rain, and, on Wednesday last week, the temperature peaked at an incredible 14^oC. Our house stays naturally cool, which is a blessing in summer but less so in January, particularly since the temperature at night falls to around 0-1 ^oC. At least, during the day, when the sun climbs over the house and shines directly into the back garden, from around 11 o’clock, we have something of a suntrap.

I’ve actually been proving my bread dough outside, very successfully. (When people ask me what aspects of life in Britain I miss in Israel – and even more so in Portugal – “The airing cupboard” is my standard answer. Not only is it perfect for bread dough, it is also the ideal environment for warming pyjamas and drying bath towels between showers.)

We’ve also unexpectedly enjoyed the generosity of neighbours, although I’m not entirely sure that ‘enjoyed’ is the right word. A couple of days after we arrived, a lady who lives round the corner arrived on the doorstep with a gift of a large shopping bag full of tangerines and a few oranges. We feel obliged to include a clutch in our breakfast fruit salad, squeeze several fruits every morning for fresh juice, and grab one every time we walk past the bowl in the kitchen. Nevertheless, we were still only two-thirds of the way through emptying the bowl when I answered a knock on the door a few days later to find the same lady offering another large shopping bag full of citrus. If only I had the Portuguese, I might have plucked up the courage to say the equivalent of “That’s very kind of you but we haven’t actually worked our way through the last lot you gave us”. As it is, my Portuguese only runs to “Obrigado”, which is how we ended up with a second industrial load of citrus.

Tslil assures me that most people in the village refuse to accept these gifts, because everyone has their own citrus tree. This particular lady probably knows that we only have a small and not very prolific satsuma tree in the garden, and also knows that we are now a household of five rather than three, and so she insists on showering us with gifts.

A third large shopping bag arrived on Friday, so I’ve been googling recipes for tangerine fritters and satsuma surprise, but I now basically despair of ever reach the bottom of the bowl.

Added to this, we have our own lemon tree, which grows close enough to the house to allow fruit to be picked from the balcony leading of the kids’ bedroom as well as from the garden itself. It is currently full of fruit, and so, since we arrived, I have made lemon curd and lemon ice-cream, and Tslil and Tao baked a delicious lemon cake for my birthday lunch on Shabbat. (This cake was, as Tao conspiratorially informed me a couple of days before my birthday, a surprise!)

My birthday was actually full of surprises, and not only for me. In the morning, nobody alluded to my birthday, but this was more or less what I had expected. We have developed a tradition in the family, over the decades, of ignoring birthdays until we have the time to celebrate them. So, for example, when we were working, we would wait to wish Happy Birthday and give cards and presents until we sat down to dinner together.

This Shabbat, around noon, Tslil came into the salon and said: “I haven’t wished you Happy Birthday yet!” When Bernice heard this, she almost collapsed, because, although she assures me that she had been aware of my birthday all week, she had in fact completely forgotten on the day itself. I’m trying to comfort myself with the fact that her average over the last 50 years is still 98%, which must be a pass mark.

Fortunately, the others hadn’t forgotten, and I received a lovely card, decorated beautifully by Tao, who, Micha’el assured me, had also decided on the exact wording of the heart-warming message inside.

The greatest surprise of the week took place outside the China shop. We were, of course, unable to get through the week without a couple of visits to the China shop. On this occasion, Bernice and I had popped down to pick up a bolt for the front door, some socks for Micha’el, and a connector to attach a hose to the bidet…and thereby hangs a tale.

You may remember that, during our last visit, we arranged for the bathroom to be renovated, and, a couple of weeks after we left, the job was completed…or, to be more precise, not completed. In the time-honoured tradition of British workmen, Mark the plumber and Eric the tiler had finished the job on schedule, other than connecting said hose to the bidet tap. They assured Micha’el that they would, when next at the building supplies store 30-minutes’ drive away, buy the requisite connector, and return to complete the job.

If we had been in Portugal then, I would have paid them the balance owing, less 100 euros, which I would have held back until the job was completed. However, I didn’t feel it was fair to expect Micha’el (who was holding the money) to do my dirty work, and so I told him to pay in full. Hands up all those who are not surprised to learn that Mark the cheery plumber and Eric the jovial tiler have not returned to finish the job…..Yes, I thought so.

Which explains why we were, unsuccessfully as it happens, searching for the right connector/adaptor (3/4” to 5/8” if you’re interested) last Thursday.

When we arrived at the shop, Bernice suddenly realised that, having come out without her handbag, she had no mask with her. (It is still a legal requirement to wear masks in shops in Portugal. In this part of Portugal, a lot of people wear masks in the street as well.) You need to understand that Bernice is rather like the Queen when in Portugal, in that she goes around with no money on her. I handle all that side of things. (On the other hand, she carries the passports and, in transit, the various papers that we need to travel these days.) So, I lent Bernice my mask for her to go into the shop and look for socks. She would then have the task of explaining to the shopowner that she was going to swap with me, so that I could come in to look for the bolt and connector and to pay for everything. (I’m not sure how we thought Bernice was going to explain that, but, since they had no socks in the right size, the question was academic.)

Anyway (and here we reach the point of the story, for the benefit of those of you who were beginning to despair of ever reaching it), while Bernice was inside, I was waiting outside, unmasked, pretending to study the display of artificial flowers outside the shop window, and carefully avoiding coming too close to any other pedestrians. I suddenly heard, from the road behind me, a voice call out: “Kvod Harav!” Before I had time to register how odd it was that someone should call out to me in Hebrew, let alone elevate me to the rabbinate, I turned round to see a couple of Breslov-looking hassidim in their thirties, sitting in an orange Transit van. (This is not, to be honest, a sentence I ever expected to write.) I think they were probably a little surprised to see a kippa-wearing Jew in Penamacor, but their surprise was as nothing compared to my total astonishment at seeing hassidim in Penamacor.

They stopped to chat for a couple of minutes, during which time I discovered that they are part of a community that has just bought a sizable plot of land outside a village about 10 minutes from Penamacor. Since they were stopped in the middle of the road, they didn’t have time to furnish any further details, but I shall certainly be trying to find out a little more about them. There, as they say, goes the neighbourhood.

And that’s about it for this week. As you can see, this trip has no major projects, just a daily portion of fun and games, stories and make-believe, cooking and baking, which is, after all, what we are here for.

It’s a little after eight on Sunday morning. Bernice has just gone downstairs with Tao, who has taken to joining us in bed every morning for a book or two and sometimes a matching game. They have now left me to try to dash off this week’s post before we all have breakfast and drive down to the land for the morning. All, that is, except for Tslil, who is off to a meeting of her women’s group.

Somehow, a week has flashed by since we left Ma’ale Adumim – a week in which not a great deal has happened. We haven’t ventured out of Penamacor, and have visited the local supermarket only three times (which may be a personal record: we have been known to go every day, as we suddenly realise new items we are missing). On our first visit, the day after we arrived, we were armed with half a yard of shopping list. Unfortunately, it being Monday, there was no fresh fish at all and not a huge variety of fruit and veg. However, we were still able to spend over 100 euros.

The next day we returned and Bernice chased down some more items, while I spent my usual ten minutes at the fish counter with google translate, coming away with beautiful, fresh salmon, Nile perch and sea bream. No trout, unfortunately, which will probably have to wait until we get as far as Castelo Branco.

All of this saw us through until Friday, when I popped out to top up the fruit and veg. This time I was able to find delicious strawberries and broccoli, but, astonishingly, no cucumbers, which are clearly not as popular here as they are in Israel, or indeed Britain. Tslil believes that they are a largely regarded as a seasonal veg here, and that locals use a large, dark-green variety of courgette as a winter substitute.

Apart from that, we have paid one visit to the China shop, where the owner greeted us as warmly as ever. We only needed a couple of small items, and, with a mixture of searching and sign language, we were able to track down a plate stand for the havdala dish we brought out this time and clips for kippot. (We had to compromise, and settle for clips decorated with a strawberry pattern, but nevertheless we were, as always, impressed that the shop hadn’t let us down.)

In addition, on Shabbat afternoon, we took a walk down (almost everywhere is down from our house) and then up, to a spur at the northern corner of the village. Up a long flight of stone steps is what looks like a church, which however has only one small window at the side. The large metal doors are always locked, Tslil tells us. I suspect it may be a chapel of rest for a coffin before burial.

The walk was very worthwhile, because the top of the spur commands a view past the edge of the village and over the valley to the east, and, thirty yards away, a view to the west over the valley in which the kids’ land lies. We arrived there just 45 minutes before the end of shabbat, and the pinkish-purple misty evening light over the distant foothills of the Serra da Estrela was a very welcome reminder of the beauty of creation. Nothing like a dose of nature to restore one’s sense of perspective.

Our only other major outing this week was a drive down to the land, with Micha’el, Tao and Lua, the now-hulking still-puppy. We didn’t stay long, but were able to admire the cob floor of the tipee, which constituted our first surprise. When we were last here, the floor was level after the application of the last full layer of cob. There were, however, several cracks, because in the unusually dry and warm weather the cob had dried quicker than the kids had hoped.

In the last two months, they have filled the cracks and fed the cob with several coats of linseed oil. As we walked into the tipee last week…. Correction, as we bent double to duck under the entrance flap, which is more or less ideal for Tao, easily negotiable for his yoga-practising parents, and manageable for his pilates-practising nana, but a humiliating crawl on all fours for his decrepit grandfather (who nevertheless expects, after a few weeks of boot camp, to be able to limbo dance his way through)….As we went into the tipee last week, our eyes, and our feet, were met by a smooth, rock-hard floor, that nevertheless gave the sensation of having a very slight give in it. It seems to be almost as durable as concrete, but considerably warmer, and it makes the tipee feel cosy and much closer to completion.

The next stage in making the tipee completely habitable is the cob stove, which Micha’el is making good progress on. In typically symbiotic fashion, the clay soil for the cob comes from the digging out of the swales, the channels that will carry the rainwater away from around the tipee and down to the area that will need to be irrigated.

The main reason for our trip to the land today is because Tao didn’t get to spend much time there last week, and really wants to go, not least to take us on his special walk through the jungle (which the kids assure us is less terrifying than it sounds). Lua never needs to be asked twice. Spending much of the day lazing around the house (although she gets taken up to the forest for a good walk twice a day), she adores running free on the land, chasing shadows, hunting and dismembering twigs, following rabbit trails.

Micha’el may manage to get some more work done on the land today, and I may even be able to help. In addition to digging the swales, sifting the soil to produce the cob, and building the stove, the kids have been gifted what Tslil feels may be something of a white elephant – a young, but nevertheless fairly substantial, olive tree. It is, at the moment, lying on its side just off the path to the tipee, and the kids plan to plant it fairly close to where it is lying. This, of course, entails clearing a circle of land and digging a dauntingly large hole to sink the tree in. In a moment of weakness last night, I heard myself volunteering to help Micha’el in this effort.

On a walk with Tao on Thursday, we spent some time playing football on the five-a-side open-air pitch and watching the excavator and dumper-truck at the site at the top of our street where a major renovation of the police headquarters is taking place. Tao was also able to go rock-climbing on the piles of excavated gravel, as his grandpa filmed and his nana had her heart in her mouth.

Fortunately, and, again, unexpectedly, the weather this entire past week has been beautiful: sunny every day, with almost entirely clear skies and no rain. It has been cold, particularly the last couple of nights, when the temperature fell to -3^oC. Before my Canadian and Eastern seaboard US readers start sneering, let me emphasise that the significant factor in our house here is not outside temperature, or wind chill, but insulation. The difference between the outside and inside temperature is not always as great as we would like.

Having said that, the new stove we bought when we were last here does a great job of keeping downstairs cosy. (It also has eliminated the unpleasant smoky atmosphere in the salon.) Over shabbat, when we could not feed the stove, the meicham (electric urn) and platta (hotplate) warmed the kitchen, while a three-bar fire warmed the salon. It is only in the five minutes between coming upstairs last thing at night to get undressed, and slipping under the very efficient duvet, that we feel cold.

I usually daven on the glazed-in balcony off our bedroom (the solarium, as the estate agent might term it). It faces NNE, so that the early morning sun streams in through the side window. In winter, it is challengingly cold, but, inspired by our shabbat davening outdoors during the first year and a half of COVID, I donned my coat, cap and gloves, and grew cosy enough to be able to doff the cap, remove the gloves, and even unzip my coat after a while.

For the most part, this first week has slipped by in a whirl of stories, cuddles, games, cooking and baking, playgrounds, catching up, and generally having a good time. Nothing wrong with any of that. And now it’s 9:40, so I really must stop here and get ready for another week full of everyday pleasures.

I’m writing these words while cruising in afternoon sunshine above the clouds in mid-Mediterranean. Yes, we’re on our way to Portugal!

There’s a good story to tell about our negotiation, over the last few days, of the various obstacles placed in our way by a range of commercial and governmental interests. However, as I said to Bernice, I can’t possibly expect you all to sit through another catalogue of bureaucratic woes, not least because, at the end of the day, we actually made it into the air.

So, let’s just say that the last three or four days lasted, for Bernice and myself, about a month, and aged us about a year. Still, no complaints. The actual airport process today was remarkably smooth; ground staff were efficient and helpful; and when we presented the printouts of our Passenger Location cards, the El Al check-in desk clerk held them aloft and announced to the passengers checking in at adjacent desks: ‘You see! This is the document you need.’ I told her that I had never been singled out as the star pupil before, and she promised that after the lesson she would give me a sweet….but did she? Did she heck as like!!

We left Israel at an interesting time, The media today are full of speculation that Bibi Netanyahu is about to strike a deal with Attorney General Mandelblit to avoid serving prison time. Since Mandelblit leaves office at the end of January, this is probably a story that will dominate the Israeli media for the next two weeks, which seems like another good reason to fly to Portugal.

COVID, principally Omicron, is spreading at an alarming rate in Israel…and, indeed, in our own community. Over the last few days we kept hearing about friends and acquaintances who have tested positive. I’m inclined to believe that the wider Omicron spreads the better. Who knows: by the time we return Israel may have achieved close enough to herd immunity for the country to decide that the pandemic is over. Yet another reason to see now as the perfect time to retreat to rural Portugal.

Even the weather decided to encourage us to leave. We had been enjoying an early winter that largely ranged from crisp and clear mild winter weather to warm and sunny, and that featured, at least in our area, only a little, occasional, mostly night-time, rain,

Then, on Friday, winter arrived, even in Ma’ale Adumim. Plummeting temperatures; thick, dark cloud; then heavy driving rain and strong, swirling winds. Staid olive trees, usually the model of sobriety, were tossing their canopies as if they were frisky fillies, and their leaves were chattering like a flock of bickering starlings. My wide-brimmed leather hat, which had spent the previous three years gathering dust on a shelf in the wardrobe, had soon doubled in weight as it drank rainwater. I realise, of course, that I am writing for a worldwide audience, and some of you in North America will be telling me that I don’t know what winter is. However, we all know that there are other factors in determining how wintry it feels. Just as the wind-chill factor can make it seem several degrees colder than it actually is, so a lack of adequate home insulation and suddenly realising that you left your really warm coat in Penamacor can have the same effect.

The end result is that my walk to and from shul on Friday evening was Dickensianly bleak.

If you are reading this on publication day, then you may know that this day is Tu b’Shvat, the 15^th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, which is regarded as the New Year for trees. The reason why trees warrant a New Year is that there are many Jewish laws, of tithing and of enjoying the fruit of trees, that require determining which year of growth the tree is in. Tu b’Shvat marks the beginning of another year in this calculation.

The reason why Tu b’Shvat is chosen for this purpose is because it is taken to mark the transition from winter to spring. Here we come to one of the curious features of the Hebrew calendar. It is largely a lunar calendar; however, it is also a calendar that, in many of its festivals, is agriculturally based, which means that it needs to be a solar calendar.

The way in which these two are reconciled is that, in every cycle of 19 years, there are seven leap years, in which not a single extra day but an entire extra month is added. This creates an irregular pattern in which, typically, for a couple of 12-lunar-month years the Hebrew calendar edges ahead of the Gregorian, so that Pesach, for example, can end up falling in later March and Rosh Hashana in early September. There then follows a leap year, and suddenly Pesach is in mid-April and Rosh Hashana in late September.

It so happens that this year is a leap year. In two weeks’ time a leap-month will be added. This means that, this year, Tu b’Shvat is close to being as early as it can be in the solar year. As I walked to shul on Friday, with the freezing rain driving horizontally into my left ear, I wondered in what sense this could be considered to be two days before the end of winter.

Then, as I walked back from shul, with the freezing rain driving horizontally into my right ear, I started to see that this can serve as a reminder that we cannot take the patterns of the natural world for granted. The uniqueness of the Jewish calendar accentuates this, and makes it clearer for all to see; but we all know, even following the solar calendar, that we can have an Indian summer, that we must ne’er cast a clout till May be out (don’t strip off a layer of clothes before June), and so on.

Perhaps the period in the Jewish year when we feel this most strongly is the period when we throw ourselves on the mercies of Nature most explicitly. In Sukkot, when we move out of our houses and into our booths. I know this doesn’t hold true in Montreal, for example, but in Israel, Sukkot can bring almost any weather. There are years when we have to retreat from the sukka because the sun is relentless. And then there are the years like one of our first Sukkot in Maale Adumim, when the heavens opened halfway through our first night meal, and the storage compartment under the sofa bed became a swimming pool in a matter of minutes.

Experiences like these remind us that we are not the masters of Nature, and that Nature possesses the force to nurture us or destroy us. Such reflections serve to curb any hubris we might otherwise feel, and make us appreciate all the more sweetly the bounty of Nature when we are privileged to enjoy it.

P.S.: It’s now 7:45 here (here being in a very warm bed in a very cold house in Penamacor) or, in other words, 45 minutes past posting time. Since my body, despite its long day yesterday, thinks it’s 9:45, I can no longer attempt to get back to sleep. So I thought I would send the blog out.

We landed on time and were swiftly through the airport rigmarole and driving across Portugal on a very dark but still and dry, though cloudy, Portuguese night. We arrived around 10:15 local time, and, after the warmest of welcomes from the kids’ dog Lua, who clearly remembers us, and a brief catch-up with Micha’el, we collapsed into bed.

However, since Tao has not yet crept into our bedroom this morning, and we haven’t yet had a chance to see him since we arrived, you’re going to have to wait to see him as well. No pictures this week, I’m afraid.

P.P.S.: Just as I was about to post, someone wandered into the bedroom, so you, and we, have struck it lucky.