In the dark days, and the long, dark evenings, before the internet, folk used to gather round the encampment fire as the chill evening closed in, and either play board games or hold philosophical discussions. Board games probably gave you a better insight into human nature: Warren Buffet, so they say, played, and won at, Monopoly as if his life depended on it, relishing every opponent he bankrupted, while Alexander the Great was more of a Risk man himself. Personally, I enjoyed Buccaneer, with its miniature pirate ships laden with gold bars, rum barrels, rubies and pearls.  Whether that had more to do with the accumulation of riches or the harsh chafe of leather jerkin against bare chest is for me to know and you to guess…

And, as the evening wore on, and the conversation started to droop a little, someone could always be relied on to ask: ‘So, tell us. What/Who do you think is the greatest….’ Depending on the particular slice of the population gathered round the fire, that might be greatest England forward line, or non-German-speaking composer, or Cadbury’s item of confectionery, or whatever.

For our present purposes, dear reader (in case you were wondering where I was going with this) the question is ‘What is (or, as I suddenly realise we now need to say, ‘What was) the greatest human invention or discovery?’ Interestingly, Google seems largely incapable of distinguishing between inventions and discoveries. Many of its lists of the greatest inventions include discoveries.

The Atlantic magazine, in a 2013 article, wrote about the greatest ‘technical breakthroughs’ since the invention of the wheel: ‘technical breakthroughs’ seems to me a neat bracket term for inventions/discoveries. The article is a very interesting read; this is partly because it discusses in detail the methodology used by the magazine to arrive at a top 50, and the variety of ways in which the experts canvassed interpreted the guidelines they were given. It also explores, in interesting ways, some individual breakthroughs that performed better, or worse, than you might have expected.

For instance: “Considering how often the modern era has been called the “television age” and how much time people now spend before a variety of screens, it is notable that television comes in only at No. 45. Many years from now, perhaps people will regard the second half of the 20th century as the brief moment when broadcast TV could seem a dominant technology. With its obvious-in-retrospect limitations, like one-way information flow rather than interactivity, and dependence on heavy hardware for best display, maybe TV was bound to be a transition to some other system more tailored to individual tastes.”

Optical lenses, on the other hand, made it to #5 on the list. I must admit they would not have been something I considered, probably because there is a sense in which they do not seem very dramatic, especially these days. However, the author argues that “the adoption of corrective lenses amounted to the largest one-time IQ boost in human history, by expanding the pool of potentially literate people”. That seems an argument that is hard to dismiss, even if John Milton managed to cope with late-onset blindness by dictating Paradise Lost to his daughter without writing any of it down himself. There are people the inside of whose heads is a land impossible to imagine.

One more interesting aside from this list (since my spyware tells me that hardly any of you click on my links). Having only fairly recently wielded a wheelbarrow in Portugal, I can attest to both its almost-elegant simplicity of design and its tremendous labour-saving potential. Why, then, was it invented only thousands of years after the wheel?

Turning to the pointed end of the list, my attention is drawn to #3. Since I’m sure you’re dying to know, #1 is the printing press – although I suspect that future digital generations may find it as limited and transient as the television. #2 is electricity.

And #3? Bernice reminded me this week that the answer is probably the one always given by our dear friend and family doctor in Wales, Louis Saville z”l. Louis grew up in the Glasgow of the 1920s, studied medicine, and practised as a family doctor for many decades, spanning the introduction into general medicine of what he always claimed was the single greatest discovery of the 20^th Century – penicillin. It was certainly not easy to argue with someone who had wrestled with the daily stark reality of family medicine before antibiotics, and lived to see their routine adoption as a first line of defence against infection, turning deadly diseases into minor unpleasantnesses.

When Bernice took herself to bed last Tuesday with a very sore throat and flu symptoms, we knew this was serious. Bernice, let me explain, is one of the world’s worst patients, since she has had so little practice at it. A veritable fusion of Edith Cavell and Florence Nightingale whenever anybody else takes ill (with, as she pointed out to me when she previewed this post, more than a dash of Matron Hattie Jacques, or possibly even Nurse Ratchet thrown in), she is incapable of judging the severity of her own symptoms. When her gall stones triggered a life-threatening infection a couple of years ago, it took me a day to drag her screaming to the emergency clinic, and even after she had been admitted to hospital and started on medication as a precursor to surgery, she was still protesting that she was over it now and could she please go home.

Having languished in bed for a day and a half, barely able to swab her own nostrils for the rapid flow tests that all came out glowingly negative, she finally agreed to allow me to make an appointment to see our family doctor, and a second appointment for a PCR test (since we all know that the rapid flow test is not worth the mucus it is written in). We saw the doctor that same afternoon. He was able to confirm that she had strep throat, and to start her on antibiotics – although he was very impressed that her own immune system was already doing a valiant job of fighting the infection.

Back home, Bernice started the course of tablets and cancelled her PCR. By the following morning, the sore throat was gone, and she felt well enough for a full story-time and conversation with Tao.

It is unfortunate for many of the most significant of human breakthroughs that, not long after they are achieved, they go almost unnoticed. Antibiotics are such a part of everyday life now that it is very difficult for those of us who do not remember life before them, in other words anybody under 90 years old, to appreciate how dramatic was the change they made. We can read about medicine before antibiotics, and understand intellectually their contribution to human well-being, but very few are still alive who can argue as passionately as Louis always did that they represented, unequivocally, the greatest human achievement of the 20^th Century.

Before I close, some other personal reflections on the list in The Atlantic. Weighing in at #11 is nitrogen fixation. Well, I don’t know about you, but to the best of my knowledge I have never heard of that one. It is, apparently, the heart of the ammonia-synthesis process, which was used to create a new class of fertilizers central to the green revolution. #37 is cement, the literal foundation of civilisation. Anaesthesia only made it to #46; as the author of the article pointed out, having had dental work before the NHS authorised the use of novocaine, he would swap his personal computer (#16) for anaesthesia in the blink of an eye.

Finally, and appropriately for my last post before Pesach, I started this week with sliced bread (since which all of the above were claimed to be the greatest thing). So let me finish with the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, who had neither wheelbarrows nor wheels (the Egyptians having not yet discovered them). Instead, they almost certainly relied heavily on #48 in The Atlantic‘s list, the lever.

Of course, no human achievement can come close to the everyday achievements of human life: a child’s smile, for example (even if (see right) wind-induced).

At this stage of the week, I’m usually desperately poking around the deepest crevices of my mind with a cerebral toothpick, hunting for crumbs of ideas to winkle out (You can tell we’ve started cleaning for Pesach, can’t you?) and serve up as my latest post. On a good week, I come up with one idea. On a stellar week, I start off thinking that one idea might turn out to be a good idea, rather than simply coming to the conclusion that I don’t know of a better ‘ole.

This week, uncharacteristically, I feel spoilt for choice. It seems that, everywhere I look, there is the kernel of an idea that seems worth teasing out. How did a film musical that Bernice and I found it difficult to get into manage to win us over and sweep us along for two hours (Tick, Tick…Boom!)? Exactly why did we find the Hebrew stage adaptation of a film we both loved so leadenly disappointing (Hooked Up to Life – adapted from the French film The Intouchables)? What lessons can we draw from the fact that, of the 11 people murdered in Israel this week by terrorists acting against the Jewish state, one was a Druse border policeman, one was a Christian Arab policeman and two were foreign workers from Ukraine?

And then, of course, there’s the extraordinary story of the slap heard around the world. 1500 words? That story must have 15,000 words in it!

But in the end, I’ve decided to opt for a small story that caught my eye online today, and another story that that one led me to, about two people who, six years apart, raised all sorts of interesting questions about the nature of art. Both were, coincidentally, women (always assuming I know what that word means – there’s another subject for a post right there) and both were described, in the news reports I read, as pensioners (although I’m not sure of the relevance of that fact).

Our story begins, however, with that infinite group of monkeys, eternally and uncomprehendingly pounding on an infinite number of typewriters – or, I suppose, these days, keyboards. Eventually, so I was always led to believe, one of their number would randomly type out the text of Hamlet, or, I suppose, another, as yet unwritten, masterpiece of the theatre. My question is: Would that manuscript be a work of art? Let me ask the more generic question: Must a work of art necessarily be the result of a conscious act of creation? You may be inclined to dismiss the question as trivial, since it arises from a completely unrealistic situation. (Where are you going to house this infinite number of monkeys? How will you persuade them to keep typing away? How are you going to afford to buy all the bananas you’ll need?) However, let me give you a far more plausible example.

You can occasionally find, on certain seashores, a washed up, twisted piece of driftwood that is aesthetically very pleasing. Imagine taking such a piece home and placing it on display. A friend walks in and admires what she calls your ‘new artwork’. Is she mistaken? Or do you feel that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – in other words, if it has beauty, is interesting to look at, can stir the observer’s emotions, stimulates reflections on the transience of form or the ceaseless passage of time – then it is indeed a work of art (or, perhaps, a duck)? 

And so to our first pensioner, a retired dentist who, in 2016, visited a Nuremberg museum and stopped in front of an art exhibit in the form of a crossword puzzle with clues in English, which was captioned “Insert words” and “so it suits”. Since this 91-year-old knew English, she started filling in the answers, as she believed she had been invited to. She even used a ballpoint pen! She was then accused of damaging property – the 1977 artwork was valued at £68,000, and was on loan to the museum from a private collector.

When questioned, the woman pointed out that, if the museum did not want people to follow the artist’s instructions, they should have placed a warning notice alongside it.

Her lawyer later produced a seven-page rebuttal, arguing that, rather than harming the work, her actions had increased its value by bringing it to public attention, and, furthermore, her “invigorating reworking” of the exhibit meant that she now held the copyright of the co-created artwork, and perhaps the collector should sue the museum for destroying the co-creation by erasing the ballpoint pen additions.

You may find the lawyer’s rebuttal too clever by half, but is it any more so than the original work?

And then, in the Picasso Museum in Paris this week, a 72-year-old noticed a blue overall hanging on a wall. Assuming it had been forgotten, she took it, tried it on, found it was too big, and asked her tailor to shorten it. When she revisited the museum a few days later, she was arrested for art theft. The overall was, in fact, Old Masters, an example of the artist Vilanova’s “critical yet lively reflection on issues such as the role of images in transmitting culture and cultural values”, according to another gallery.

The pockets of the overall were full of the postcards that Vilanova collects in flea markets and which are a major theme of his work. The garment was intended to be unhooked and handled, and the postcards studied.

Prosecutors accepted the pensioner’s explanation that she had no idea she was stealing an artwork, although she confessed to the theft. She was let off with a warning. The museum is now left with an artwork 20cm shorter than originally. Is it still a work of art? Is its value reduced by the alteration? Was the alteration an act of vandalism, unintentional damage, or, indeed, artistic collaboration?

The side of the argument that I instinctively find myself on will not, I suspect, surprise many of my readers. Art, I would argue, requires artifice. That is a word that usually carries a negative connotation. Merriam-Webster notes:

‘Artifice’ stresses creative skill or intelligence, but it also implies a sense of falseness and trickery. Art generally rises above such falseness, suggesting instead an unanalyzable creative force.

As a counter-argument, I would cite Picasso’s comment that:

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth – at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

There are, I believe, two points to be made here. One is that art is always the result of a conscious act of creation as creation. For me, driftwood can be beautiful, but it cannot be art. Even the tailor’s handicraft is not part of the overall as a work of art; it is conscious, and indeed skillful, but it was not intended as art; it was not carried out to enhance the truth contained in the piece of art.

The second, not unconnected, point, is that art has to be cooked, not raw. Of course, just how much preparation is required to constitute ‘cookedness’ is a moot point. I was recently at a meal where one of the guests was very sceptical whether steak tartare could be called a food dish. (This scepticism meant, I am pleased to say, all the more for me!)

In a similar way, I am not sure whether an overall hung on a hook requires sufficient, and sufficiently skilled, preparation to ‘earn’ the status of art. There is a continuum: at one end (for me, at least) is a late Rembrandt self-portrait; at the other is an entirely blank, untreated canvas, hung in a gallery. Somewhere along the continuum a line needs to be drawn, dividing art from non-art. I don’t really feel qualified to decide where the line should be drawn, although I know that if I were forced to draw it, my line would be much closer to the Rembrandt than modern art experts argue. I am certainly out of kilter with the times; fortunately, galleries have not discarded their genuine old masters to make room for such work as Old Masters. There is still plenty for me to see when I visit a gallery.

Speaking of beautiful pictures (I keep doing it!), here’s two more. Tao clearly found this week’s stories more amusing than last week’s, and Raphael continues to thrive under tender, loving care.

But first, the announcements.

Last Friday morning, our younger grandson (I rather like the sound of that), who up until then had been known only as the baby (or, by his three-year-old cousin on Maayan’s side, as Jo-Jo), was brought into the covenant of Avraham and given the name Raphael (not, under any circumstances, to be shortened to Rafi, as Esther (not, under any circumstances, to be shortened to Esti, as David (not, under any circumstances, to be shortened to Dave, as my late mother always made very clear) made very clear) made very clear). Raphael, as you can see, comes from a long line of people whose names are not to be shortened. (Whether his cousin will be allowed to continue to call him Jo-Jo is still under discussion.)

The name Raphael has no familial significance; it is, rather, the name that Esther and Maayan increasingly felt, during that crazy week between his birth and his brit, belonged to him. Esther and Raphael continue to do well, thank God, and they and Maayan are starting to get used to their new life together. Thank you all for your many good wishes, expressed publicly, in comments on last week’s blog, and privately. The wonderful thing about good news is that, when you share it with others and see them take pleasure in your joy, it simply redoubles your joy.

The brit itself was held in Esther and Maayan’s home; we were only 10 adults and one child (not counting a baby and a mohel, of course) just the mothers, grandparents, and two of Maayan’s siblings and their spouses. The quiet intimacy of the occasion seemed very fitting, to be honest. We brought some gooey cakes, and Maayan’s parents provided the savouries, including cheese and wine. I cannot recommend too highly having at least one of your children marry the daughter of a Frenchwoman who enjoys the pleasures of the table.

And now to this week’s other big story. As we were celebrating Raphael’s birth, I was also witnessing the death throes of my laptop. It has been showing signs of its advanced age (only five years, for Heaven’s sake!) for some months now, and I have been googling and YouTubing patches and workarounds and solutions.

First, booting and shutting down started taking a little longer, and then the laptop’s response time in general started to become a little sluggish.

Next, the battery started playing up: the laptop would show 50% of battery left, and would then shut down suddenly. I eventually bought and installed a new battery, which represented, for me, an achievement the equivalent of assembling a precision Swiss watch while blindfolded. When I switched the laptop on after installing the battery, and it didn’t explode, I kept waiting for the Cape Canaveral control centre to break out in applause and whoops.

Then I started having problems with internet connection. The laptop started failing to recognise any Wi-Fi signal. The ‘solution’ I found was to carry out a network reset and reboot, something I ended up having to do sometimes two or three times a session. Eventually, I started connecting my phone by USB cable to the laptop and using my phone as a hotspot, which worked okay, although, for some reason that I never really understood, in this configuration the laptop was unable to recognise the network printer. (If you happen to understand why this happened, please don’t feel a burning need to explain it to me.)

Last week, the laptop refused to shut down, looping round to a reboot every time.

It was around this time that I started feeling like one of those frogs that is prepared for the dining table by being boiled alive. Popular legend has it – at least among those who enjoy eating frogs, but not, I suspect, among vegetarians – that, if you gently lower the frog into a pot of cool water, then gradually increase the temperature, the frog easily adjusts to each increment, and never actually notices as the temperature reaches boiling point. At no point in the gradual decline of my laptop was the extra work (the extra workaround) that I was now required to do so burdensome as to make me stop and think that it was unacceptable.

Finally, last Wednesday morning, I was unable to switch the laptop on. I spent three frustrating hours following a couple of helpful YouTubers (one probably from West Africa and the other certainly from the Indian sub-continent) who offered the six things you can try before you have to bite the bullet and clean or replace your hard drive. I tried all six. None made the slightest difference, although in one or two cases the laptop toyed with me, pretending that something momentous was about to happen before admitting failure. Since cleaning or replacing the hard drive would involve losing all of my applications, I felt I had reached the point where I really needed to call in someone who knew what they were doing.

This, incidentally, is a point I reached with household plumbing some years ago. After the second occasion on which my attempting to fix a small problem had resulted in the need to call in a professional to fix the now larger problem my attempt had created, and after our plumber had assured me that his foreign holidays are all sponsored by people like myself, I vowed never again to boldly go round the bend. The humiliation of discovering how easily the problem is fixed is no worse than the humiliation of having to admit that my efforts have made the problem much worse, and I no longer have to get filthy dirty and/or soaking wet as a prelude to humiliation.

So, at lunchtime on Wednesday, I called a computer technician who came highly recommended. In an unexpected development, I did not have to explain to her where we live, which is in a one-way street at the very edge of one of the older areas in Maale Adumim. If you don’t live there, you never pass the street, and many people don’t know where it is. However, this lady happens to live in the street off which our street runs, so she needed no directions, and arrived within five minutes of my phone call.

Unsurprisingly, none of her quick fixes worked, and so my laptop went off on the equivalent of a gurney. She was able to copy all of my data, in preparation for a re-installation of Windows. All she needed from me (and you’ll find it hard to imagine the depth of the irony in that word ‘all’) was a complete list of the applications I had installed on the laptop, together with usernames, registration codes and passwords.

I mentioned this to a number of people the following day, so I think I can imagine the expression on the faces of at least some of you as you read that last sentence. (Some of you will, of course, be looking very smug. If you value our friendship, don’t tell me who you are.) How lucky I am that I now have a mobile phone on which I can access my Gmail account, and how doubly lucky I am that I never delete emails. By searching by name for the apps I could remember, and then searching for ‘software’, ‘download’, ‘registration’, ‘application’, I was able to locate emails for almost all of the software that I had bought.

How trebly lucky I am that my passwords are always predictable. I was able to remember virtually all of the ones I needed.

So, while we drove up to Zichron to visit ‘the baby’ (as he was then known) on Thursday, I spent a couple of hours trying to remember whether I had forgotten any vital applications in the list that I sent the technician. We stayed overnight in Zichron, and, by the time we arrived back home after the brit, the backup was complete and the reset had started. After shabbat, the technician phoned to say that everything was ready. This morning (Sunday), I have been test-driving my rejuvenated laptop, which is now noticeably faster and not at all quirky.

I have managed to reinstall three or four applications that I had forgotten about, and everything is looking good. Well, as good as it looked before. It would have been wonderful if it had been possible to copy back all of the data, all of those thousands of files in their hundreds of labyrinthine folder structures, in a slightly more methodical configuration. Unfortunately, I am still confronted by the coral reef of data that has sprung up over the years on my laptop. The technician did a wonderful job, but she is not, sadly, a miracle worker.

My takeaway from all this, of course (and you might want to make it yours as well), is to keep, in my sock drawer, a written list of all my applications, registration codes and passwords, ready for the next time something similar happens, as it doubtless will. Norton 360 LifeLock, with its password vault, is a wonderful thing, but, if I can’t reinstall Norton without the password, it’s not a lot of use.

Amidst all this excitement, we only managed to squeeze in a short video call with our big boy this week, but, as you can see, it was long enough for him to be totally absorbed, as always, in a story his Nana read. Meanwhile, I finally managed to catch our little boy with his eyes open.

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.