“And after ‘salmagundi’, we have ‘salamander’”. (With apologies to those for whom that evocation of Twenty Questions means nothing.)

Looking back over the hundred or so posts that I have published over the last two years, I note with astonishment that I have made absolutely no mention of amphibians. The time has come, I feel, to rectify this appalling omission.

Aristotle mentioned in his writings the folk belief that the salamander can extinguish a fire through the frigidity of its body, but appeared not to accept it. Pliny (possibly after experimenting by throwing a salamander into a fire) was explicitly sceptical. Nevertheless, the folk belief persisted and, in the Renaissance period, when cloth made from asbestos was brought back from China, it was claimed that the yarn was spun from the salamander’s fur that was impervious to fire.

For the alchemists, the salamander was the creature associated with the element of fire, and was even born from fire, like the phoenix.

It seems likely that these beliefs arose because of the salamander’s habit of hiding beneath damp logs. It is conceivable that, when these logs were brought into the house and placed on the fire, the salamander emerged, as if from the fire itself, in an attempt to escape from the heat.

The salamander, despite appearances, is not a lizard, but an amphibian. It lays its eggs in ponds, just as they are about to hatch, and the larvae develop in the water. Curiously, adult salamanders are very poor swimmers.

The fire salamander, with its distinctive yellow and black colouring, is common throughout Europe, including Portugal, preferring a damp forest habitat at fairly high altitude. I suspect it is native to the region around Penamacor.

And what, I hear you ask, has all this to do with us? Well, on our second stay with the kids in Portugal, in midwinter almost two years ago, we initially found the open wood-log fire in the salon rather romantic. However, by the end of our stay, the noxious fumes, the ubiquitous ash, the heat escaping up the chimney, and the constant danger of sparks leaping into the room, meant that much of the romance was gone. We decided that, on our next visit, we would research installing a cleaner, healthier, safer and more efficient wood-burning stove, which, Micha’el assured us, was becoming increasingly popular in houses such as ours.

Of course, by the time of this, our next, visit, the kids had endured (without complaint, I must add) a second winter of open fires. Despite the sunny weather we enjoyed in our first three weeks here this time, we wanted to get a stove installed before we left, so that they would be ready for the imminent colder weather.

And so, last week, the kids obtained, through their network of friends, the name of a reliable local stove installer, and last week we arranged for him to come and take a look at the fireplace. Paolo certainly looked authentic, with his weathered features, gnarled hands and stitched hard-leather homburg. Micha’el was impressively able to negotiate Paolo’s Portuguese, and he gave us the names of three hardware and building supplies stores in Castelo Branco where we could buy the stove and the pipes that carry the smoke up the chimney. Once we had the materials, he would be able to complete the job in one day, included cleaning the chimney, at a labour cost of 80 euros.

In addition to his skills as an installer, he was also able to provide linguistic expertise. The kids had asked him about a forno de madeira (literally, a wood oven), but he informed us that what we were talking about was a salamandra. Knowing about the legend of the fire lizard, I was tickled pink to hear this name. Subsequent research reveals that similar stoves are also called salamanders in the USA (although whether that is more true in Arkansas than Manhattan I hope one of my American readers will be able to tell me).

Over the next day, I conducted some research online. I discovered that, to calculate the required output from the stove, you should divide the cubic capacity of the space to be heated by 14 if your home is well insulated, and by 10 if it is not. The resulting figure is the kilowatt capacity you require.Put like that, it all sounds fairly straightforward. The website even included a line-drawing of a neat rectagular room, showing how to calculate the cubic capacity.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never lived in a neat rectangular room, and the ‘space to be heated’ in our house in Penamacor is certainly not easily defined. The fireplace, in which the stove will stand, is in the salon, which comprises a rectangular space eaten into by a generous chimney breast, to which is added a small square area of entrance hall. However, wooden glass-panelled double doors, usually open, connnect  the salon to the kitchen, which is much narrower than the salon. Leading off the kitchen is a short passage leading to a utility room on one side and, on the other side, a wash-basin alcove that then leads on to the bathroom.

A little thought and discussion led to the conclusion that we should aim to heat the salon, hall, kitchen and passage. So, four fairly straightforward rectangles. Except for the fact that from the salon an open-plan staircase leads to the first floor with its two bedrooms and office.

In the end, I decided to add to the calculation the cubic capacity of the staircase, even though my C grade in ‘O’-level physics allows me to say with confidence that heat will escape upstairs.

The other imponderable for me was the question of insulation. I suspect that what an English website means by ‘if your home is not well insulated’ is not what a Penamacorean website would mean. I felt that I should perhaps divide by less than 10, but it was impossible for me to estimate by how much less.

A little more research indicated that stoves tend to fall into the following groups: 5-7 kilowatt, 8-10 kilowatt, 11-14 kilowatt, and so on. Calculating on the basis of dividing by a bit less than 10, I thought we should be looking for an 8- or 9-kilowatt model, and I suspected that anything bigger would be overpowering for the very narrow salon and would cost more than we wanted to spend.

We were now armed with everything we needed: an idea of the kilowattage, the right word – salamandre – and Google Maps, and so Bernice and I set off last Thursday on a shopping expedition. In the first store we visited, an assistant with excellent English was able to answer all our questions, and, to our delight, we found that the cheapest model in the store (which the assistant warmly recommended) had both an impressive efficiency rating and an output in kilowatts (11.4) that should be more than enough. It was, in addition, small enough to fit into our fireplace. I noted with interest that the (Portuguese) handbook that came with the stove suggested dividing your cubic capacity not by 14 (well insulated), nor by 10 (poorly insulated) but by 8.5 (Portuguese-insulated).

Somehow, I managed to persuade Bernice (who readily admits that her attention span for shopping rivals that of a goldfish with ADHD) that we really had to visit at least one more store. Fortunately, all three stores Paolo had recommended were within the same industrial zone in the southern end of Castelo, and it only took a few minutes in the car to reach the second store. There, it took us scarcely longer to realise that there was nothing on offer to rival what we had already seen, and so we reurned to Bricomarché.

This time, a different assistant helped us. He had surprisingly little English, but by this stage we felt like near experts in wood-stove Portuguese, and so we were happy to place the order with him. Of course, by the time we added to the cost of the stove the cost of the chimney pipes, and the cost of delivery, we didn’t have quite such a bargain, but we were still within our budget. To be honest, we had no choice over delivery. I had no intention of attempting to load a cast-iron 24-inch suitcase into the car, not with my back.

The assistant assured us that he would deliver the stove the following day, around 10AM. He wantred to know whether anyone at our end would be able to help him carry the stiove in, and we generously volunteered Micha’el. (At this point, we found ourselves wondering what we would do if we were an old couple – which, I suppose, in this case, we are – living alone. However, if we were, we would call a friend in the village to help. Our house is, after all, in a close-knit community.) We then gave the assistant Micha’el’s phone number (remember my experience with the tow-truck driver last week) and were persuaded, at the till, to join the store’s customer club at no charge, having already almost earned 10 euros off our next purchase. The application form required my tax number, passport number and full address with postcode, none of which I know off by heart, but all of which are, theoretically, easily accessed on my phone. So that took just another 15 minutes, after which we left the store with a fine sense of accomplishment.

In due course, 10AM the following morning (Friday) arrived, which is more than can be said for the stove. After a couple of phone calls, it finally arrived just before 3PM, thankfully still a good couple of hours before Shabbat. In a relatively short time, the driver and Micha’el had unloaded the package from the van, brought it in, removed the cardboard wrapping, lifted the stove from its wooden pallet, tilted it and screwed the adjustable footpads onto the base and slid the stove into the alcove where it will sit until Paolo comes to instal it. (Micha’el was quick to ask that the driver leave the pallet, since it represented useful wood.)

At this point, Bernice came in and said: ‘That’s not the right model. The handle is different.’ Indeed, when I checked the spec sheet, I saw that this model had a capacity of 10.5 kilowatts instead of  11.4, and an efficiency rating of C instead of B.. The stove itself had no identifying label, but the driver checked our order against the label on the carton and insisted it was correct. We were equally insistent, and he phoned the store to clarify. After sending a photo of the stove to the store, he very apologetically explained to us that the label on the carton did not match the stove inside.

So, he and Micha’el slid the stove out of the alcove, tilted it and unscrewed the footpads from the base, lifted the stove onto the pallet, wrapped the cardboard around it, carried it outside and loaded it back onto the van. He assured us that he would deliver the correct stove the following day (Shabbat). Micha’el then explained to him that this was inconvenient, and, to our surprise, he said that he would deliver it on Sunday morning, leaving Castelo Branco at 9AM. This meant he should be with us around 10.

Today is Sunday. 10AM arrived, which is more than can be said….However, by 10:45 the driver was here, with the correct stove, which he and Micha’el unloaded…Well, you get the picture. Again full of apologies, he even brought Micha’el a compensatory extra pallet that he presumably had on the van from an earlier delivery.

Later today, Paolo arrived, to inspect the stove. He conducted a long conversation with Micha’el, during which I persuaded myself that we had bought an entirely unsuitable item, and that, in addition, the pipes did not fit the stove. However, when Micha’el eventually translated, it transpired that my fears were completely unfounded. He will come on Wednesday, bringing dust-sheets to trap the dust when he cleans the chimney. He stressed that we should keep Tao well away during the cleaning, although I know that Tao will be fascinated to watch the assembly of the pipes and their disappearance up the chimney. We now also know that Paolo has a 4-year-old grandson and a 2-year-old granddaughter who are the light of his life!

All being well (and although it seldom is around these parts – most jobs seem to take two attempts – I have a good feeling about this), we should have a fitted working stove before we leave on Thursday morning to fly back to Israel.

Which is probably just as well, because we have had fairly persistent rain over the last couple of days: perfect weather for splashing in puddles, then sitting at home well wrapped up, eating buttered toast with Marmite.*

*Personally, I can’t even type the M word without feeling bilious, but Bernice, Esther and now Tao are all Marmite fanatics.

First, a quick update for those of you who haven’t slept since last week. The tyre mechanic, true to his word, phoned on Tuesday morning, and, within an hour, he had changed the tyre, balanced the wheel and fitted it, and all was happily resolved. I am now armed with photographs of the gash in the old tyre and a tax receipt, both of which we shall be presenting to Europcar, more in hope than expectation.

Speaking of Europcar, while walking and driving round the village this past week we have several times seen Europcar vans whizzing around. We are very tempted to stop one and ask what they are so busy doing, since it clearly isn’t serving their customers!

This week’s blog offering is a bit of a gallimaufry – or, if you prefer, a potpourri, mishmash, hodgepodge or, indeed, salmagundi – of various bits and pieces of things we have done or noticed on this trip. From this collection of interesting synonyms for a miscellany, I chose salmagundi to use in the title, for the simple reason that this post was born on a Monday. (Salma Gundi, Born on a Monday? Perhaps not!)

Here, incidentally, is a typical (and typically generous) 18^th-Century recipe for the varied dish that is salmagundi:

To make a Cold Hash, or Salad-Magundy. TAKE a cold Turkey, two cold Chickens, or, if you have neither, a piece of fine white Veal will do; cut the Breasts of these Fowls into fair dices, and Mince all the rest; to the Quantity of two Chickens you must take eight or ten large Anchovies, wash and bone them, eight large pickled Oysters, ten or twelve fine green pickled Cucumbers, shred the Oysters, the Anchovies, the Cucumbers, and one whole Lemon small, mix them with the shred Meat, lay it in the middle of the Dish, lay the Dices of the white part round the Dish, with halv’d Anchovies, whole pickled Oysters, quarter’d Cucumbers, sliced Lemon, whole pickled Mushrooms, Capers or any Pickle you like; cut also some fine Lettice, and lay round among the Garnish, but put not Oil and Vinegar to the Minced Meat, till it comes to Table.

Personally, I think I’d prefer the Jamaican dish where the original name is corrupted to Solomon Gundy: a dish made of salt herring and spices.

The first ingredient in our particular salmagundi is something Bernice and I saw on our drive from Lisbon to Penamacor. As we were cruising at 120kph on the motorway, I spotted a road hazard sign ahead. I was initially puzzled, because it seemed to be taking us rather a long time to reach it. I eventually realised that the sign was on the back of a slow-moving road maintenance van travelling on the hard shoulder. As we approached it, I saw that the sign was indicating that the outside lane was closed ahead, and was instructing traffic to move into the middle lane. I commented to Bernice that it was rather confusing to load the sign on the van so that it was visible, because drivers would assume that the outside lane was indeed closed, rather than realising that the sign was just being transported to its destination.

A little further on, we passed another road maintenance van, travelling very slowly in the outside lane, collecting traffic cones from the road. We then realised that the two vehicles were travelling in convoy, and the road sign was indeed ‘active’. Not for the first time, when comparing Portugal’s traffic control practices with Israel’s, we both agreed: What a clever idea!  

Speaking of invidious comparisons, time was when visitors to Israel would enthuse about the fresh fruit and vegetables. In recent years, the quality, particularly of fruit, in our local Rami Levi supermarket has been getting steadily worse. However, we needed to come to Portugal to realise just how much worse. Here, we are enjoying a variety of different apples, all crisp and full-flavoured, some sweet, others sharp, and delicious, and firm but succulent pears. This is in addition to the start of the citrus season, grapes, melons, bananas, mangoes, and, in the Fundao supermarket at least, plums, kiwi, and, to our surprise, pomegranates.

Nuts are also popular here, and we are all indulging our taste for fresh peanuts (yes, I know they are not nuts) in their shells, and, thanks to Tslil’s recent discovery of a grove of trees in the forest, enough chestnuts to satisfy her appetite and mine. Thankfully, neither Bernice nor Micha’el likes them, which means that we even have enough to pickle and thread some for playing conkers, if we ever decide we want to.

However, the chestniuts are far from being Tslil’s major culinary contribution on this trip. The last time we were here, I baked bread for the house. When we flew back, I left the sourdough starter that I had grown, in the hope that Micha’el and Tslil would keep it alive and be able to use it. Returning now, I discover that Tslil, who was always appreciative of my baking, has carried on where I left off, and, indeed, with the help of YouTube tutorials and various podcasts, has taken her bread baking to a level far above mine. She usually bakes once a week, and her two loaves last her family the week.

And what loaves! A really crisp and crunchy crust, a wonderful springy but firm crumb with holes just large enough for butter to fill without falling through, and the kind of flavour that you can only get by leaving your starter out on the kitchen counter, feeding it every day, and using the surplus to make sourdough pancakes, crackers and other goodies. (At home, I lock my starter in the fridge and feed it once a week, only letting it out to wake it up before use. The result is good, but nowhere near as complex and rich as Tslil’s.)

While we are here, I am supplementing these loaves with challot for shabbat, as well as beigels and platzels that can be frozen and defrosted individually. I have been baking three challot a week, and we (all but) finish two at the shabbat table, which leaves one to be toasted, or French toasted, for the next day or so.

Defrosting individual rolls is now very easy because, on our trip to Castello in our first week, Bernice and I bought a microwave, at the large electrical and electronic retail chain Worten. This was the shop where, on our first trip, we bought an oven, hob and washing machine to replace the barely functioning machines that came with the house, and a tumble dryer to make life easier for young parents who were then struggling with nappies and a family wash during a wet and cold winter. The microwave was Worten’s in-house brand, and represented good value. So far, it meets our needs, which are basically defrosting rolls, cooking salmon, and reheating cups of tea that have cooled to below a drinkable temperature, which one or other of us does roughly every 45 minutes through the day.

Let’s talk now about some of the changes Bernice and I have noticed since we were last here, 19 months ago. Obviously, the biggest change is in Tao, but, since the kids were staying with us for 5 weeks in the summer, this is not as dramatic as it would otherwise be.

The other big change (and I do mean big) is Lua, the puppy the kids adopted in March. She is now 10 months old, acquired to be a guard dog on the land. I’m not sure she quite understands that she is supposed to be a guard dog, being very placid and a real softie. Unfortunately, she really needs to be on the land, or at least in a house considerably wider than ours. When she is stretched out on the salon floor, she tends to derail toy trains, demolish Duplo houses, and block any adult’s passage to the kitchen. However, she is so adorable that nobody could take offence at any of that.

A less pleasant change for the two of us is that, since our last visit, the local authority appears to have increased the gradient of the street we live in. Walking back from the local corner shop, the park and playground or the bank, particularly with a bag of shopping and pushing Tao in his buggy, which to the best of our memory was an excellent aerobic exercise last time, is now an excellent anaerobic exercise, and, we suspect, will, at some point in the not-too-distant future, become an insurmountable challenge. Fortunately, a large car park in front of the Town Hall is conveniently situated a short walk from the shops, park and bank. If, at some point, we are reduced to that, then so be it.

Another change, much more welcome, is that, despite Covid-19, the steady flow of new arrivals to the area, seeking an alternative and healthier lifestyle, has continued, and Micha’el and Tslil have, since our last visit, acquired a circle of friends, Israelis, other Europeans, and some locals, many of whom have children around Tao’s age. Tao now has organised activities with other children twice a week, as well as a weekly playdate with one friend. In addition, Micha’el has started a music chug for young kids, which meets, theoretically at least, every week.

In addition, Tslil is out today with a women’s group that meets monthly. They both went out for an evening with friends last week while we officially babysat. Micha’el spent another evening with friends and has one as-yet-unexplored offer of a jam session. I must confess that we were initially a little concerned about the potential lack of opportunities for a social life for all three of them, but both Micha’el and Tslil have proved proactive in making this happen.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. While browsing in our favourite China shop last week, Bernice and I discovered butter knives, as well as fish cutlery. Clearly, dining in Portugal is a more formal experience than in Israel, and matches the world we grew up in. We shall be stocking up before we return to Israel.

As you can see, our life here is not action-packed, but then, of course, that’s not the object of the exercise. Just settling into a daily routine centred on Tao has been all that we wanted. The kids have managed to get to the land more than they might otherwise have been able to, as well as occasionally being able to sleep on later in the morning or have an evening out. And Bernice and I have been able to overdose on grandparenthood. Let me tell you, if you haven’t lain in bed at 5:30 in the morning telling your rapt grandson a story that you are making up as you tell it, about a digger and a dumper truck, then you haven’t known true happiness.

With a shock, we discover that, while we were looking the other way, almost two weeks of our month-long stay in Portugal have slipped past. This last week began on a real high with the day on the land that I described last week, helping to lay the cob floor in the teepee. I’m pleased to report that the good weather continued throughout the week. Although we did nothing dramatic, just being with the family has been wonderful: fitting into their routine, spending lots of time with Tao, and freeing up Tslil and Micha’el a little, allowing them to get to the land more (and sometimes even to sleep more).

My personal highlight of the week was the discovery of a children’s book which post-dates our own kids’ childhoods, and was therefore unknown to me previously. I listened as Bernice read to Tao Oi Frog, and by the end was almost helpless with laughter. I realise I am probably very late to the party (as usual), but here is a book that has total integrity. It starts with a simple idea – animals sit on something that rhymes with their names, so frogs sit on logs, cats sit on mats, and so forth. The two characters in the book are wonderfully realised: the sophisticated and urbane cat, who knows all the rules for animal sitting, and who rather scathingly patronises the eager but ignorant frog. The author accepts the challenge of finding some seating arrangements for animals with challenging names –pumas and puffins for example – and the illustrations are full of humour and imagination. Add to all this a great punchline and you have an absolute classic.

The lowlight of the week was a puncture. While they are never welcome, this one proved (and, indeed, is still proving) particularly challenging. It happened on Thursday, when we took Tao to one of his two weekly playgroup activities. This one is in a village a 30-minute drive away. We arrived to find about nine children and half-a-dozen parents waiting to start a walk along country lanes. We walked for two-and-a-half hours, including some breaks for snacks, and, on our way through the gently rolling agricultural landscape,we passed fields with ducks, goats, sheep and pigs, as well as plenty of olive trees and some figs. Even at a slow pace, that represented a good workout, particularly as we had not brought a buggy and, although Tao walked most of the way, we each took a turn at carrying him at various times. Bernice was further burdened by the pocketfuls of acorns that Tao insisted on collecting.

We headed for home around 1:15 and, just after filling the car with diesel, as we reached 80kph, I suddenly noticed a flapping noise. I stopped on a convenient grass verge, at first wondering whether the petrol flap had not been replaced properly. However, when I walked round the passenger side of the car, I saw that the front tyre was completely flat. Remarkably, I had felt no juddering or pulling on the steering wheel: the wonders of modern technology.

I really did not relish changing a tyre on a fast country road (or, indeed, at all), and so I called the car rental office in Lisbon, and, within four minutes, I had been answered by a customer rep who spoke English, and had explained to him what had happened, and exactly what our location was. He said that he would send a tow truck, although I had expected a service van, and that it should be with us in 40 minutes. I was very impressed.

[A brief aside about customer-facing staff speaking English. On the phone, even though I have selected the ‘English’ option, the rep always greets me in Portuguese. I always then say: ‘Do you speak English?’, and the answer is always ‘A little’. I then usually find that the rep’s English is either excellent or more than adequate for the needs of our transaction.]

Bernice and I decided that, since we were only 7 kilometres from home, we would phone Micha’el and ask him to come and pick up Tao, who had slept through the entire incident. After that, we waited, and waited. I was a little less impressed. About an hour after my first phone call, I received a call from the tow-truck driver, who addressed me in Portuguese. ‘Do you speak English?’ Clearly, the answer was ‘No’. He then asked me for our location, which was aggravating, because I had, of course, given our exact location to the English-speaking customer rep. I was a little more less impressed. We managed to agree (as far as I could tell) on the road number and our location relative to Penamacor.

While we waited, again, Bernice sensibly suggested that I send the driver’s phone number to Micha’el and ask him to phone the driver to ensure he had understood our location. This Micha’el did and, 15 minutes later, the tow truck (actually a single-car transporter) arrived. The driver had clearly been expecting to arrive at the scene of an accident and, when I showed him the punctured tyre, he said ‘Problemo’. He was not prepared to change the tyre on the road, and said that he would load our car and drive us to Penamacor, to replace the tyre. However, he could only take one of us in the cab with him, so we had to call Micha’el out again. (In fairness, the original service rep had asked how many people were in the car and, thinking that Bernice would go home with Micha’el and Tao, I had said ‘One’. However, Bernice didn’t want me to wait indefinitely by myself, so we were two.)

When Micha’el arrived, it occurred to me to ask him to clarify with the driver whether I was expected to pay for the new tyre and be reimbursed, or whether the rental car company – which was, after all, Europcar, and not some fly-by-night cowboy – had an arrangement with a chain of tyre repair centres throughout Portugal. The driver (who works for a contracted haulage company, rather than directly for Europcar) knew of no such arrangement. I was starting to be rather unimpressed.

In the end, the driver took the car to the large parking area of the petrol station in Penamacor, changed the wheel for the temporary (80kph maximum) spare, got me to sign a couple of forms, and left. I phoned Europcar in Lisbon, and asked where I could take the car to have a new tyre fitted. The rep told me that I had a choice of bringing the car to Lisbon (270 km) or Porto (280 km). This was the point at which I became very unimpressed. ‘Do you honestly expect me to drive for 4 hours, at not more than 80kph, on a temporary tyre, and then for 3 hours back? That is not an acceptable solution. Do you not have a service centre closer?’

The rep promised to find out and asked me to hold. After a few minutes, he returned to say that I could take the car to Fundao (35 km) or Castelo Branco (50 km), where they would try to sort out the problem. I called the Fundao office and spoke to a rep (who, I suspect, may be the only person staffing the Fundao office) who clearly had little idea what to do with our problem. Determined not to despair, I called the Castelo office, where the rep said that, if I brought in the car the next day, the mechanic would look at the tyre, and repair it if he could. (Since the tyre has a six-inch gash in it, I knew that would not be an option.) If it proved irreparable, the office would exchange the car. ‘For a car of the same size?’. The rep could not guarantee this, and I felt sure that we would end up being given a much larger car which would use more petrol and would be much more challenging to drive and park on the country roads around here.

When I came off the phone, Tslil pointed out that the Israeli solution would be not to notify Europcar at all and to get the tyre replaced privately. In the end, that is what we decided to do.

So, the following morning (Friday), Bernice and I took the car (and Tao) to Penamacor’s tyre repair centre. Micha’el pre-armed me with the necessary vocabulary: to change = trocar, tyre = pneo (which is a sound not entirely dissimilar to Jack Lemmon clearing his sinuses in The Odd Couple). We found the place easily, even though we had never noticed it before, despite driving past its entrance every time we enter or leave the village. I parked and walked over to the owner-mechanic. ‘Bom dias! Trocar…pneo.’ Not for the first time, I realised too late the drawback of arming yourself with the two initial words you need: once you have fired them off, you are utterly defenceless. Understanding nothing of his response, I was forced to ask: ‘Do you speak English?’ ‘A little.’

In fact, his English was excellent. He was able to explain that he did not have the Bridgestone tyre we needed in stock, and he was not prepared to fit one tyre of another make, because we would not pass the MOT test if he did. I explained that the car was a rental and I couldn’t care less about the test, but he was still not prepared to fit another tyre, for safety reasons. Fair enough. He suggested that we try the nearest large tyre centre, in Fundao. I asked whether he could possibly phone to check whether they had a tyre in stock. He then asked where we were staying, and when I told him we were in Penamacor, he suggested that he try to get the tyre we needed himself. I told him that was an excellent idea. He took my phone number and said he would phone when he had the tyre. ‘How long will that be?’ I asked, expected him to say: ‘A week’. Instead, he said: ‘An hour or two’, which should have made us suspicious, but didn’t.

He phoned me an hour later to say that he had located a tyre, and I said I would drive straight down. That, of course, was when he explained that locating and taking delivery of a tyre are two different things. You will not, at this stage, be surprised to hear that we are still waiting for his phone call to tell me that he has received the tyre.

Once he has changed the tyre, and we have paid, I will then have to start the process of complaining to Europcar about their appalling service, and requesting a full refund for the tyre. And we all know how that will end, don’t we?

None of which is actually spoiling the wonderful time we are having here. We are very grateful that the whole tyre incident did not result in anything worse than a few hours’ inconvenience and some damage to the pocket, especially since we were carrying such a precious cargo.

Today’s post, dear reader, is a race against time, for reasons that will become clear as we continue. Probably the first thing to tell you is that I am writing to you from the glassed-in balcony (which, I suppose, makes it a kind of conservatory, although that sounds a lot grander than the reality) that leads off the bedroom of our house in Penamacor. Yes, we are here!

Last Monday, we went through a very thorough check-in process at Ben Gurion airport, which involved presenting our vaccination certificates (of course) and (a requirement of the Portuguese authorities) a passenger location form giving our seat allocation on the flight and our contact details in Portugal, so that we could be located in the event of any close-by passenger having Covid-19.

We also had to complete, online, (a requirement of the Israeli authorities) a form of which we had been completely unaware, stating that we were not travelling to any country classified red by Israel. Ironically, by the time we landed in Portugal, Israel had taken all countries off the red list. Completing this form provided a healthy adrenaline rush while we were queuing for check-in.

My phone refused to read the Q-code displayed on boards in the queuing area. Bernice had more success with her phone and completed and submitted the form online in both our names. Showing astonishing presence of mind, she then took a screenshot of the confirmation that the form had been submitted successfully, which is just as well, because, although the form was supposed to be sent to her email, it never arrived. Fortunately, the check-in clerk accepted the screenshot as sufficient proof of submission.

At each stage of this process, we were allowing ourselves to believe with a little more conviction that we were actually going to make it to the kids.

After that rather stressful 45 minutes, we were through to the departure lounge, for our traditional airport Aroma snack: tea and a sticky bun – an almond chocolate croissant for Bernice, a cheese bun for me. We regard this as advance compensation for the fact that we cannot enjoy a similar snack in any of the Penamacor cafes, because of kashrut.

By the time we finished that, it was time to make our way to the gate. Boarding was on time, and very quick, with the plane about two-thirds full. We took off on time, and, after a smooth flight, landed 15 minutes early. The official at passport control asked to see only our passports, and then waved us through with a smile. Our luggage arrived at the carousel a minute after we did, We were not stopped at customs, and stepped through to Portuguese soil, feeling like Steve McQueen sailing over the wire on his motorcycle in The Great Escape. On a more prosaic note, there was no queue at the car rental desk, and, apart from one superfluous lap of the airport car park, we made it to our hotel without incident, arriving about 70 minutes after landing.

The hotel was absolutely fine for our needs, clean and comfortable, with a 24-hour complimentary hot and cold drinks machine in the foyer and the usual channels on Portuguese hotel TV: 24 channels of Portuguese news, game shows and reality shows, a couple of movie channels and several sports channels, all with Portuguese commentary. This, for some reason, always includes Eurosport snooker. Over the years, I think I have watched Ronnie O’Sullivan in at least ten languages.

The following morning, the weather was bright and clear, and we were on the road by 7:40, having spent 10 minutes taming the car’s nat sav system. The hotel was only a two-minute drive from the motorway, and since I felt well rested and we did not need to break the journey, we arrived at the house at 10:30. It was wonderful catching up with the kids and, to our delight, Tao was completely at ease with us immediately. Even Lua, the kid’s dog, seemed cautiously accepting of our presence, which is just as well, since she is (theoretically) a guard dog, and, although a puppy, she is already the size of a small pony: the perfect size for the kids’ land, but ridiculously oversize for our little house.

Over the week, Lua has grown much more relaxed. The first night, when I got up to go downstairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night, Lua was sleeping in the hall outside the kids’ bedroom, and gave one low, quiet growl. By the end of the night, she had realised that my wanderings throughout the night are just bathroom breaks, and not attempts to murder the kids in their bed, and she remained silent. When we took Tao to bed with us one night to give the kids a break, Lua spent the night on the floor in our room, just to make sure Tao was okay. Since then, she has slept downstairs, as usual.

The rest of the week was fairly routine: shopping, playing, shopping, playground, shopping, shabbat. We managed to combine one shopping expedition with a visit to a fairly large playground, which Tao enjoyed, but apart from that most of our time has been spent reading to and playing with him at home. Since we have a long video call every week, we did not expect to see any dramatic changes. However, we have been surprised by the complexity of Tao’s sentences. One example, from before our visit to the hypermarket 40 minutes away, was: ‘Go to supermarket, buy truck with doors that open and close.’ What grandparent could fail to comply with a request expressed with such competent complexity!

We have also been struck, not for the first time, by the intensity with which Tao plays, and the length of time that he can stay absorbed in what he is doing. He is passionate about diggers and dumper trucks, and can play by himself, narrating to himself what he is doing, for a very long time.

He is also an avid devourer of books and songs, giving the reader or singer his undivided attention. Needless to say, both Bernice and I are quite comfortable with that state of affairs, and it is nice, for a change, to read a book with him on our lap or sitting next to us, rather than having to turn the book to face the screen and read the story upside down, peering over the top of the page.

Shabbat was very special for us. Tao had been eagerly looking forward to it: not only because he had spotted the bottle of grape juice we had brought, and because he loves challa. On Friday night we sang, and he remembered that he had to wait for the bracha before drinking his wine. On shabbat morning we sang, and then ate lunch. When we finished singing havdala, Tao said: ‘Now we eat’, and was rather disappointed to discover that, no, now we go to bed.

Today (Sunday) was a very special day indeed. The long, complex and multi-layered process of preparing the floor of the tipi* on the kids’ land has been continuing for many months. After levelling the ground, building a retaining dry-stone wall, laying a layer of rocks, a layer of gravel, a layer of soil and then a levelling layer of fine-sifted soil, Micha’el and Tslil were now ready for the final layer of cob. This is a mixture of clay-based earth, double-sifted to almost the consistency of sand, water and straw. The kids had prepared what they hoped would be enough soil for the cob, and today was the day for laying the floor.

They enlisted the help of a few friends, and invited us along to watch the momentous event. First, Bernice, ably assisted by Tao, watered the floor to ready it to receive the cob, while one team began mixing the cob, by hand, by foot, and then with spades and trowels in a wheelbarrow. The second team then began laying it like plaster in the tipi. Micha’el was uncertain whether we had enough sifted soil, and, after the first couple of loads, it seemed likely that more would be needed.

By this stage, I found, much to my surprise, that I felt invigorated by watching so much hard work, and wanted to join in. So, Micha’el and I headed off to a nearby part of the land, where he had started digging a swale – an open trench following the natural contours of the land, to catch rainwater and channel it to be used for permaculture irrigation. We carried on digging, then sifting the dug soil, and wheeling it back to the tipi area for a second, fine, sifting. Bernice, Tao and other two toddlers (children of the friends helping) joined in with this. We were able, over the rest of the day, to sift enough extra soil so that just enough cob was produced to complete the floor.

After a delicious alfresco lunch of pasta, salad and fruit, work proceeded a little less energetically in the afternoon (certainly, as far as I was concerned). Bernice and I headed back home with Tao early enough to shower before the kids arrived home. Once we were showered, I came upstairs to start writing this, knowing that it was a race against time. It’s now 7PM and I can already feel myself starting to flag. So, I’ll stop here, and leave you with some shots and videos from today’s activity.

*When I was growing up, Red Indians lived in teepees. (Well, of course, they no longer did, but you know what I mean.) Now, I understand that they are Native Americans, and it appears that they live (or, more accurately, no longer live) in tipis. Some people might call this progress, but I’m not entirely convinced myself!

In the fortnight (that’s two weeks in new money) since I last updated you about our forthcoming trip to Portugal, much has changed (or, to put it another way, nothing has). By the time this post reaches you, we will probably know no more than we do now. However, a week from now, I expect to be writing to you from…who knows where?

Let me try to explain. In mid-September, the Portuguese Government was reported in the media as having rescinded its previous decision to ban Israelis from entering the country. However, even now, no Portuguese Government website that I have been able to find states this explicitly. In addition, the decision was reported as being valid until the end of September, with the expectation that it would then be renewed.

As our planned trip on 4^th October grew nearer, Bernice and I grew more nervous. We sought reassurance that we would not be refused entry at Lisbon airport, or, alternatively, not be blocked from boarding the aircraft in Israel. However, I was unable to find any clear statement online. TAP’s site still linked, in its Covid update, to a statement from the Portuguese authorities from 2^nd September.

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeking clarification through other channels. Not the Portuguese embassy in Tel Aviv, by the way. Their website has a helpful list of telephone numbers, all of which lead to a recorded message informing you that the embassy staff will only interact with Israeli citizens in face-to-face meetings. On the website, it is possible to book such an appointment, but I wasn’t able to, because I haven’t yet bought a diary for 2022 – the earliest available date.

I decided to try TAP, reasoning that they would know whether they are currently flying Israelis to Lisbon, and, if so, they would have surely noticed whether the Lisbon arrivals lounge was becoming clogged with Israelis all wandering around like Tom Hanks in The Terminal. So, I phoned their Help Desk on a Thursday – twice, actually: once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Or, more exactly, from 9 till 11:30 in the morning and then from 2:00 till 4:00 in the afternoon. Apart from devising a striking four-part harmony for the TAP call-waiting jingle, it was an unproductive day.

By the following Monday, I had recovered sufficiently to try again, and I actually got through to a living, breathing, English-speaking person. I kept my question nice and simple: ‘Can Israelis enter Portugal by air at the moment?’ I should have been alerted by the fact that the help-desk rep did not know the answer; instead, I was charmed by the fact that she said she would immediately find out, and asked me to hold. ‘Don’t hang up,’ she urged me. I assured her that that was the last thing I would do, having got this far.

After holding for around five minutes, I was surprised to hear a different voice beg me not to hang up. This voice then proceeded to ask me to participate in a brief survey about my satisfaction with the service I had received today. At this point, I realised I was listening to a recorded message.

Question 1 invited me to choose between tapping ‘1’ to indicate that I was satisfied with the service I had received, and ‘2’ to indicate that I was not. I decided not to answer, for two reasons. First, by tapping either number, I would have implied that I agreed that I had received service, whereas I felt that what I had received was a start, but it wasn’t really substantial enough yet to constitute service. My second piece of reasoning was that, if I kept the voice waiting for long enough, my rep might return to rescue me with an answer.

After telling me that my answer was inappropriate, the voice gave me just one more chance, then, without seeming to be at all perturbed by my lack of co-operation, it went on to Question 2: ‘Has the service you have received today resolved your problem?’ Again, both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ made me complicit in the charade that I had received service. So, again I abstained, and the system hung up on me in disgust.

Undeterred (shades of Robert the Bruce’s spider), I dialled again. This time, I was connected within three minutes. Another helpful rep asked me to hold while she found out the answer to my question. This time I immediately responded by asking her to write down my number, so that, if the system again hung up on me, she could call me back. She took my number and promised to do her best, but explained that the system feeds her another call as soon as her current call is terminated. I should have responded: ‘Well, then, I hope that a fire doesn’t break out in your office, because you will never be able to call the fire brigade.’ However, this was, sadly, l’esprit de l’escalier, and did not occur to me until I was retelling the story later for Bernice’s benefit.

This time, the rep returned before the surveyor could step in, and told me that Israelis were not allowed to fly to Portugal. At this point, it occurred to me to ask whether the rep was based in Lisbon, which she said she was. I found this reassuring: cocooned in an office block in downtown Lisbon, she obviously knew nothing about, and knew nobody who knew anything about, what was actually happening at the airport. I really needed to speak to someone from TAP in Tel Aviv, but, of course, there is no way to reach them.

So, another two days had passed, and we still had no clear proof that we were going to be able to get into Portugal. At this point, I whatsapped a friend who had been due to fly to the Azores from Israel. She was able to assure me that she and the entire group of Israelis she was travelling with had had no problem at the airport.

Sadly, when I checked the Portuguese government website again, I discovered that, indeed, the Azores had a much more lenient admissions policy that mainland Portugal.

At this point, I realised something interesting. As I seem to be mentioning with increasing frequency, while I am, by nature, somewhat Eeyorean, Bernice is considerably more Pigletish. This ought to have meant that she was optimistic about our chances, and I was not. However, in fact, she was really disturbed by the situation, and had great difficulty sleeping for a couple of nights. I, on the other hand, viewed the situation with more equanimity, as just another example of how things can turn out badly. Exactly as expected!

Throughout this period, Micha’el was assuring us that there were a number of Israelis in their area who had arrived in September by air from Israel without incident, and we, of course, found this heartening. It even calmed Piglet down.

At this point, I decided to contact my old friend Tal at the consular section of the Israeli embassy in Lisbon (see the post of two weeks ago) and ask whether she had heard back from the Portuguese authorities regarding our application to be considered as an exceptional case on the grounds of family reunification. At the same time, I asked whether she knew what the situation was for Israelis entering Portugal.

In her reply, which she sent within three hours, Tal told me that the situation was unchanged, and Israelis were only being allowed in for essential reasons. She also sent me the embassy’s own statement from their website explaining the situation.

This news caused Piglet to have a relapse, despite my brilliant deductive reasoning, which ran as follows. If Israelis were being turned back at Lisbon airport, at least some of them would have contacted the consular section of the embassy. If that had happened, Tal would not have quoted from the website, but would have told me that Israelis were actually being turned back. Therefore, since she had told me no such thing, it had to be true that Israelis were entering Portugal without incident. Elementary, my dear Piglet.

What finally calmed Bernice down again were screenshots from Micha’el and Esther. Micha’el sent us a facebook page answering a question from an Israeli in our position. The answer read that there were lots of Israelis at the airport with only an Israeli passport and no problems. Micha’el then followed that up with an excerpt from the TAP Covid guidelines stating that citizens of countries with whom the EU has reciprocal vaccination certificate recognition can enter mainland Portugal. Israel, we know, is such a country

Esther, meanwhile, forwarded us a link to a site that provides worldwide travel updates, and that also stated unequivocally that Israelis can enter Portugal. It is wonderful to have two children who are both finely attuned to the hysteria in our voices and who are so prepared to humour their angst-ridden parents.

So, while it is true to say that neither of us will actually breathe freely again until we can watch Lisbon airport receding in the rear-view mirror of our rental car, we are both feeling a lot calmer. Indeed, Bernice now feels relaxed enough to devote considerable attention to worrying herself sick over the fact that our luggage is going to be way overweight, which, of course, it is not. This, at least, feels like a traditional pattern of our last 49 years together.

[A couple of quick updates on Sunday afternoon.

Now that we have packed, even Bernice is convinced that we are comfortably underweight (at least our cases are).

We also both received negative test results today, so that’s one more obstacle removed.

Finally, at 6AM today, I saw sense, suddenly realising that driving from the airport immediately on landing makes no sense, both because of the strain and stress it places on the driver and, even more so, the passenger, and also because Micha’el will have to wait up for us, even though we have a key, because their puppy, though lovely and sweet-natured, is nevertheless a guard-dog, and has never met us. She possibly wouldn’t take a chunk out of my leg, but she would probably wake the entire street at 2AM with her barking.

So, by 6:10AM I had booked us a room in a modest airport hotel. We can now drive, in daylight, after a good night’s sleep, and probably arrive at the house only an hour or two after we would have woken up had we arrived there in the middle of the night. I can’t tell you how relieved Piglet is that good sense has prevailed.]

Have there been moments in the last stressful weeks when we have wondered whether the game is worth the candle? See below, and then you tell me!

I am writing this on Sunday morning. Since Tuesday is chag again, the plan is to publish this post on Monday (again). This will be the third week running that I have published on a Monday. There is a strong Jewish tradition that, if something is repeated three times (or, more accurately, for the pedants among you – and I promise you I know who you are – if something is done once and then repeated twice), then it acquires the status of a custom and should be observed in perpetuity.

I am very tempted to follow the tradition in this case, for a couple of reasons. First, provided that nothing untoward happens between now and then, next Tuesday morning at 9AM (standard posting time) will find me in Portugal, where it will be Tuesday morning at 7AM. I expect to be in one of two conditions at that time.

I might be sleeping off the effects of my (estimated) 22-hour Monday that will, I hope, start with a 45-minute walk in Maale Adumim at 6AM and end with a three-and-a-quarter hour drive from Lisbon airport, arriving in Penamacor around 1:45AM local time on Tuesday. Or I just might be downstairs playing with, or more likely reading to, Tao. Either way, a post will not be the first thing on my mind. It is therefore almost certainly safer to post on Monday morning, before all the big events of the day, and the coming month, begin.

An additional reason for publishing on Mondays is that every week, just before I post, I check how many people read my previous blog. Until now, I have done this by adding the number of visitors each day in the previous Tuesday–Monday period. However, since the software I use to write and publish my blog starts its week on Monday, if I switch to publishing on Monday I will be able to switch to view the visitor stats in a weekly display rather than a daily display, and avoid the need to do all those sums. Or, if I feel that I ought to keep doing the mental arithmetic to stave off Alzheimer’s, I will at least be able to check the accuracy of my calculations.

All of which is merely a preamble to the official announcement that:

Henceforward (if we don’t dig these words out every now and again from the dusty recesses of our thesauruses, they will go rusty on us), Penamacorrespondent publication day will be Monday, and not, as heretofore, Tuesday.

By the way, the morning synagogue service on Monday (which is Hoshana Raba) is particularly long. By dint of having led prayers three times on Hoshana Raba – see my opening paragraph above – I appear to have become the traditional leader of prayer on Hoshana Raba in my shul. Since I am not noted as one of the speedier leaders of prayer, we will be finishing fairly late on Monday morning, and so I doubt that I will publish on the dot of 9AM. I’m aiming for 10AM.

Unsurprisingly, at a time of year in the Hebrew calendar that is packed full of traditions, my thoughts have been turning, over the last few weeks, to the power of tradition. I have just reread what I wrote on this subject two weeks ago, and, if you will indulge me, I wanted, this week, to reflect further on the power of tradition.

In my previous reflection on this subject, I spoke about the mechanical act of executing a mitzvah, and the conscious intent in fulfilling it. On the surface, tradition seems to be much more about the first than the second. This seems particularly true if, over the generations, understanding and explanation fade, and only the rote tradition remains. It is easy to find both common and exceptional examples of this, sometimes within the very same mitzvah.

Take, for example, the practice of lighting candles on Friday night. Today, throughout the world, millions of Jewish families do not observe the bulk of the commandments, nor even most of the commandments relating to Shabbat. Nevertheless, in many of these same families, the mother will light candles every Friday evening. After their meal, family members may then watch television, or go out to the club with friends. They may not even eat a meal together first. But the mother will still light candles.

There are even, as I mentioned in a previous post, some families in Portugal in which the mother, completely unaware of her Jewish heritage, has maintained the tradition of lighting candles in the basement every Friday night, a tradition handed down from mother to daughter from the time in the late 15^th Century when those Portuguese Jews who were not prepared to leave either their home or their religion became anusim – clandestine Jews.

I find myself unwilling to accept that even this kind of candle-lighting is merely mechanical, a rote action devoid of any deeper meaning. It seems to me that traditions absorb something of the conscious intentionality of the originators of the tradition. Tradition takes on a resonance of its own, reflecting the originally fully understood significance of the tradition. This resonance remains, even after the significance is forgotten.

Traditions, I feel, exist, in Jewish religious life, both to reinforce the understander’s conviction and to act as a substitute for understanding in the ignorant. Whenever a Jewish man recites a prayer, even if he is only parroting it without any understanding, or a Jewish woman chooses to hear the shofar, even if she knows nothing of its symbolic significance, the performance of the tradition allows the performer to feel deep within herself the echo of that resonance.

At first sight, tradition looks very much like blind execution, but its resonance, I believe, can sometimes add something that sounds, looks and feels more like fulfilment. Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, in his theologian’s analysis of execution and fulfilment, made a very clear distinction between the two. However, in the heart of the follower of the tradition, this distinction may be less clear.

Traditions, then, may be the strongest remaining point of contact a particular Jew has with his religious heritage. They may also be one of the aids an observant Jew uses to move from ‘mere’ execution to more meaningful fulfilment. Either way, if you are looking  for a way to explain to an interested non-Jew the relationship between Jews and their religion, buying them a ticket to Fiddler on the Roof remains a pretty painless, but not inaccurate, introduction.

Meanwhile, under the guidance of Tao, Bernice and I seem to be creating our very own traditions. Our weekly WhatsApp video calls have now reached the point where Tao shoos Micha’el away, and we and he enjoy up to an hour of story-time and action songs. We are normally sitting in the salon, but last week, since it was sukkot and since the weather was cooler when we called, we were in our sukkah. As soon as Tao saw us, his face dropped. ‘Outside?’ he declared. ‘Salon! Books!’

We were eventually able to reassure him that reading need not be exclusively an indoor activity, and, as this screenshot from the story-time shows, he was soon, as always, completely absorbed in, and delighted by, what we were reading.

The experience demonstrated that, even at this young age, he clearly has a healthy respect for tradition. I couldn’t be more thrilled, speaking as someone who revels in a variety of British traditions, even those I have never actually particpated in. I bring you, as a parting shot (across the bows, in all probability) that extraordinary celebration of perhaps the most jingoistic extolling of all that we used to know was great and good (but now that we have been ‘woked’ up we are required to realise was despicable and bad) about the British Empire.

Ladies and gentleman, you are invited to wallow in (or, alternatively, stagger in shocked amazement at) the 2009 version of the closing concert of the BBC Promenade Concerts (The Last Night of the Proms): more specifically, Land of Hope and Glory, containing the immortal sentiment: ‘God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet’. If you’ve got it, flaunt it (or, in England’s case, flaunt it even when you no longer have it). If you are a snowflake, consider yourself to have been trigger-warned.

Well, dear reader, so much has happened since last week that I hardly know where to start. If you follow the news in Israel you probably already know the bottom line, but, even if you do, please accompany me down the highways and byways of my idiosyncratic path to that point where we feel we can leave our worries on the doorstep as we plan to direct our feet to the less sunny side of the Mediterranean. (Catchy lyric, no? I think there might be a song in that.)

I left you last week in limbo. Portugal had announced that it was banning Israelis from entering the country, but had not (yet?) issued any guidelines about possible exceptions or appeal processes. We were desperately trying to find reliable information. Let me now bring you up to date.

Last Tuesday, Bernice stumbled, online, across a statement from the Israeli Embassy in Lisbon, simply restating the Portuguese Government’s bald official statement. However, this site included the Embassy’s email address. She suggested that I write to the Embassy and ask whether they knew anything more. I agreed that it couldn’t do any harm, and was better than stewing quietly and doing nothing, and so, more in hope than expectation, I dashed off the following email at 3:42PM (1:42 in Portugal):

Dear SIr/Madam

I understand that Portugal has banned entry to Portugal of all Israelis, other than for  Humanitarian Reasons and Essential Needs.

My wife and I have dual Israeli and British nationality and are resident in Israel. We are booked to fly from Tel Aviv to Lisbon on October 4, to visit for a month our son, his wife and our grandson, who live in Portugal as foreign residents and landowners. My wife and I own a house in Portugal.

We are unable to find any information on Portuguese Government websites about the ban, and, specifically, about qualifying as essential visitors. Would our trip constitute family reunification?

Can you advise me whether there is any way we can find answers to these questions?

I immediately received an automatic reply, acknowledging receipt, and assuring me that I would receive a reply shortly (Yeah! Sure!)

Then, at 3:48 (6 minutes after I sent my email – let me say that again: SIX MINUTES AFTER I SENT MY EMAIL), I received the following reply:

Dear David,

I enclose the wording of the announcement for you.  

If you want to apply for family reunification, please attach:  
   *Passport photos  
   *Flight ticket  
   *Vaccine certificate  

We will try to help.  

Regards,  

Consular Section – Lisbon.

When I had recovered sufficiently to tell Bernice the amazing news, I plunged myself into the welcome busy work of digging out and scanning documents. I also contacted Micha’el, and asked him for proof of residency in Portugal, and some proof of his change of name. (When Tslil and Micha’el married, they took the new surname Orlev.)

Bernice eventually managed to locate his birth certificate. Within a few minutes, Micha’el sent his NIF certificate (the equivalent of a certificate issuing a social security number), his Portuguese driving licence, his Israeli ID card, and the Israeli Population Authority certificate of name change.

With the adrenaline now pumping fiercely, I sent all of our requested documentation (but not Micha’el’s), with the following covering email, an hour and six minutes after receiving the consulate’s reply:

Thanks so much for the speed of the response!  

At your request, attached:  

   * Photographs of 2 passports
   * 2 flight tickets (E-TICKET)
   * 2 vaccination certificates
I also have photographs of our son Michael’s documents: ID, NIF, Portuguese driver’s license, change of name. They are not attached.  

Thank you and [since this was now about 25 hours before Yom Kippur] Gmar Hatima Tova

So, Bernice and I went into Yom Kippur struggling to manage our expectations. We knew that we had to be realistic. With Yom Kippur and Sukkot, there would probably be very few working days before we were due to fly (which was now only two-and-a-half weeks away) when the Consulate was working. In addition, even with the help of the Consulate, there was absolutely no reason why the Portuguese Government should be co-operatively expeditious.

Then, on Friday, at 1:34PM, another email arrived from the Consulate:

Dear David  

Attached is a letter requesting entry to Portugal.  

We would like to emphasize that the Embassy cannot take responsibility for the entry itself, and that the discretion to authorise entry or not rests with the authorities in Portugal.  

Regards,  

Tal  

Consular Section

This was amazing progress. In one bold stroke, the Consulate had given us not only the identity of a real human being (bless you, Tal), but also the following letter (and a similar one covering Bernice).

It may be that some of, you, like me, can remember receiving your first British passport, turning to the inside cover, and reading the glorious copperplate inscription:

Her Britannic Majesty’s
Secretary of State
Requests and requires in the
Name of Her Majesty
all those whom it may concern
to allow the bearer to pass freely…

I don’t know about you, but, my goodness, it made me feel very special that my free passage was being required in the name of Her Majesty.

While considerably more ‘chummy’ (‘I would much appreciate your cooperation’) and less ‘gunboat-threatening’ than the passport (‘requests and requires’), this letter nevertheless gave me the feeling that, just like Her Majesty, the State of Israel has my back.

I was also rather impressed that, on the basis, presumably, of the warmth of both my expression of gratitude for the alacrity of Tal’s response, and my greetings for a positive outcome to Yom Kippur, the Consul felt that he (or, indeed, she) was a good enough judge of character to take my word for it that we have a son who is resident in Portugal.

And so, as we entered Shabbat, Bernice and I were, in discussion with each other, managing our expectations by kicking the can down the road. ‘Even if our claim is approved, the approval is never going to come through in time.’ ‘The greatest likelihood is that we will be able to go some time in November, probably when numbers in Israel have come down and Portugal aligns itself with the emerging EU countries’ position of accepting fully vaccinated or recovered Israelis.’

And then, as I came in from davening at the end of Shabbat, Bernice showed me the message Micha’el had sent – a screenshot from facebook:

Portugal adopts EU decision – Recognize Israeli vaccine certificate starting tomorrow.
Following the report of the EU decision, the Portuguese government approved by government order the recognition of the Israeli vaccine certificate. This will take effect from 18.9 and will apply as of this moment until 30.9 (probably extended thereafter)

This was followed by fuzzy screenshots of 5 pages from the Portuguese Government website.

At this point, Bernice was failing to suppress her inner Piglet’s enthusiasm, while I was channeling my inner Eeyore* (which, if I remember rightly, includes the cochlea, the vestibule and…I forget the third part). The five pages (in Portuguese) were tantalisingly almost legible. I could make out a list of countries, which I thought I recognised, from previous viewings of this page, as countries from which Portugal was accepting visitors. However, Israel was not on this list.

I read the announcement again, and wondered aloud whether it meant only that Portugal was still banning Israelis, but, when it decided to let them in, it would recognise the Israeli vaccination.

Briefly checking on Israeli news websites was enough to convince even Eeyore that, indeed (as I hinted two weeks ago) our superpowers have enabled us to leap mountains of paperwork at a single bound (or, perhaps, that a gentle and companionable hint from the Israeli Consul was all that was needed to nudge the Portuguese Government into line with the EU).

Either way, the skies are open and our trip is on, leaving on 4 October. Wait a minute! That’s two weeks tomorrow!. You can’t imagine what we still have to do before then! And sukkot occupies one of those two weeks (which is why you are seeing this on Monday morning, and not Tuesday morning).

Never mind. I’m sure we’ll manage to sort everything out, and just this morning I received a message. We ordered, for our trip, Sonovia masks (that claim to neutralize over 99% of bacteria and viruses). They were due to arrive on 27 September, but now I am told that they are arriving today. Another item from the list that we should be able to tick off.

Of course, while we are running around here, life in Portugal proceeds at a more leisurely pace. I personally can’t wait to grab some of that!

*See my post of 7 July 2020: Could Be Worse. Not Sure How, but it Could Be.

Travel update (perhaps that should be Lack of Travel update): No official Portuguese site has yet acknowledged the fact that Portugal has closed its doors to Israelis. I have not yet received a reply to my query through the Portuguese Government website. The Israeli Portuguese news website has no update. Facebook is full of questions, but no answers, from Israelis (some of them people who have received preliminary approval of their applications for Portuguese citizenship under the ‘Law of Return’ that Iberia introduced some years ago).

Meanwhile, TAP has cancelled our return flight from Portugal (so we may not be able to get there but at least we won’t be able to get back), and moved us to the following day (a Thursday, which makes preparations for Shabbat exciting, but we feel up to the challenge).

Watch this space for further updates, as, when, and (I increasingly feel) if they become available.

As I grow older, I am increasingly mocked by my close family for the fact that I have lost the ability to act spontaneously. This is a very unfair accusation. I can still be spontaneous….it just takes me longer than it used to.

My thoughts have turned to spontaneity this week because of the Jewish calendar. As I write this on Sunday, we are midway between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, in the sixth day of the period known as the Ten Days of Repentance. This is a period when we are called upon to contemplate our actions of the last year, consider how we have fallen short of ideal behaviours, acknowledge our sins, resolve to do better in the coming year, and plan to make that possible.

While this is a set of activities bound up in Orthodox Jewish rituals, liturgy and traditions over the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, a surprisingly large number of Israelis, secular as well as religious, spend time (particularly on Yom Kippur) conducting some form of heshbon nefesh (literally ‘spiritual accounting’). Clearly (as shown also by the practice in the Christian West of adopting New Year resolutions), taking stock and vowing to turn over a new leaf are activities that speak to humankind. We strive to be self-improving individuals.

Precisely because this is so thoroughly ritualised in Orthodox Judaism, there is a very real danger that the process can become mechanical, automatic, unthinking. The pre-eminent twentieth-century Jewish theologian Rav Joseph Soloveitchik identified some mitzvot (commandments) for which the execution of the mitzvah is sufficient, and some for which it is not.

When we build our sukkah next week, and dwell in it, the ‘mere’ act of dwelling will be enough to fulfil the mitzvah. Even when a Jew is asleep in his sukkah, he is fulfilling the mitzvah. However, when we pray, ‘merely’ reciting the words is not enough. There must also be conscious intent, and it is only through such intent that we fulfil the mitzvah.

Repentance is an example of the second kind of mitzvah. Mere performance of the rituals and recitation of the prayers does not achieve true repentance. It must be a heartfelt process.

This leads some people to feel, understandably, that the rituals, and the formulaic prayers (many of them repeated word for word four times throughout Yom Kippur) actually get in the way of genuine repentance. They feel their spontaneity stifled, and they feel the prayers do not speak to, or come from, their heart.

For me, however, who is not by nature spontaneous, the liturgy offers a way in. I find that reading the familiar words prepares me to be receptive to more personal thoughts of repentance, and creates an atmosphere where I can look inward without feeling self-conscious. The prayer (not every prayer, and not even every year, but at some precious times) is a launching-pad for my own heshbon nefesh.

I am, I know, fortunate, that my Hebrew is good enough, and the prayers are familiar enough to me, for me to understand what I am reading. Of course, someone not so lucky can read the prayers in their own language. However, as I have said before, and will doubtless say again, any translation is, at best, a pale reflection of the original.

Yom Kippur, a day stripped of all distractions – a day when we are not rushing home to eat, and when bathroom breaks are uncharacteristically few and far between – is a day when I can dwell on every word of a prayer, and take the time for it to unfurl within me. These are words that were refined in the mouths and hearts of righteous men centuries ago, and that come down to me bathed in the tears and mounted in the cries of the generations of worshippers since. For me personally, they are words that I sang in the shul choir almost 60 years ago, that have echoed in my ears sung by leaders of prayer in Ilford, Swansea, Gilo, East Talpiot and Ma’ale Adumim. My life is measured out in them.

I recognise, of course, that not everyone responds to these rituals and this liturgy in this way. There are many to whom these things do not speak. I used to think that these were people who rejected ritual and embraced spontaneity. But, increasingly, I suspect that all of humanity welcomes ritual. Both of our children created their own, unique, wedding ceremonies. However, those ceremonies contained many elements that drew on rituals from a variety of sources, and were variations on a clear theme.

I know someone who is very unhappy with synagogue services. He feels unable to pray at his own, considered and measured, pace; the lack of decorum and multiple distractions interfere with his concentration. He therefore chooses to pray by himself, in the open air. However, I know that he has favourite spots that he always goes to, and he has created his own routine.

There may be some people who can, with no pre-determined structure, stop what they are doing and, at any moment, turn to God and speak to him directly. Tevye the Milkman is one such person. I have always envied him his personal relationship with God. For most people, I believe, a supporting framework offers a guided path into the appropriate frame of mind. For me personally, the Orthodox liturgy, annealed in the furnaces and ice-baths of Jewish history, represents my best chance of feeling a connection with God. It does not always – or even often – work, but I firmly believe that if you don’t show up, you can’t win. If I keep giving it a shot, I won’t miss the occasions when it does work.

In the spirit of repentance, I now turn to each of you: if, in the course of the last year, in anything I have written in this blog, or said to you, or failed to say to you, or in any way that I have behaved towards you, I have upset or offended you, then I sincerely ask your forgiveness.

Meanwhile, Tao appears not to be upsetting or offending anyone,

The story so far: Bernice and David booked a month-long trip to Portugal, flying out from Israel on October 4.

Now read on.

Some of my happiest memories of illicit pleasure from 60+ years ago are of being locked with my friend Peter in the bathroom of his home.

I’ve just read that sentence again, and it strikes me that it’s possibly open to misinterpretation, so let me explain.

Peter’s parents, like my own, and like many from the period, regarded American superhero comics as works of depravity and evil, explicitly designed to corrupt young innocent English children. I don’t remember ever discussing with them exactly what it was they objected to. (These were not the kinds of conversations I usually had with my parents.) I suspect it was a combination of what they perceived to be bad English language and inferior American popular culture. They surely could not have objected to the moral virtue of the superheroes’ championing of justice over evil!

If the finer points of their objections were a little hazy to me, the absolute nature of the ban on our buying these comics was crystal clear. My rebellion against my parents consisted of reading these comics whenever I could, at the homes of friends with a greater spirit of rebellion, or, alternatively, more liberal parents. Peter, who certainly had more of Che Guevara in him than I did, took his rebellion one step further, and defiantly collected Superman comics.

This presented him with the problem of where to hide his collection. He came up with a brilliant idea, worthy of the British World War II prisoners of war in Colditz, whose escape exploits we so enjoyed reading about. Peter unscrewed the formica board panel that boxed in the bath, and stashed his hoard behind the panel. When we wanted to read the comics, we would creep into the bathroom with a screwdriver, retrieve a comic, and, with one of us sitting comfortably on the toilet seat, and the other less so on the side of bath, we would escape into the (only temporarily) troubled streets of Metropolis.

I seem to remember one edition that dealt with Superman’s arrival by spaceship on earth as an unaccompanied baby and his discovery and adoption by Jonathan and Martha Kent. That edition included a scene where the Kents first became aware of the baby’s superhuman strength. At that moment, they were overwhelmed by a sense of wonder at such power, and concern over the harm that might result from it.

I feel as though I know how the Kents felt. Having spent months debating over whether to book flights for Portugal, we eventually took the plunge on August 23, and, less than a week later, the EU decided to advise a travel ban on Israelis. There was just one glimmer of hope: the EU’s position was advisory, and individual EU member-countries were free to decide whether to ban Israelis from entering.

And which was the first EU member to make that decision? Why, Portugal, of course. I feel personally responsible for triggering that chain of events, by booking tickets. I now find myself in possession of these incredible powers, and I’m terrified, because I have no way of knowing what will be the consequences of any further action I take. From the decisive action-taker I presented you with last week, I have reverted to being the deer in the headlights…who now, having leapt off the road, finds that he has landed on a railway line with a 1000-tonne high speed train bearing down on him.

It’s even worse than that. If Britain were still a member of the EU, Bernice and would, I believe, still be able to enter Portugal on our British passports. So now I feel directly responsible for Brexit.

I have also discovered that I can add another sentence to the list of things there is no point in saying:

• Don’t tell someone in the middle of a nervous breakdown to pull herself together.
• Don’t tell someone suffering from clinical depression to cheer up.

And now:

• Don’t tell someone who’s just booked a ticket to manage his expectations.

When the news broke a week ago, Bernice and I tried different coping strategies.

She went upstairs, fought back a few tears, took some deep breaths, entered a meditative mood, and eventually recognised how much more terrible our situation might be.

I, on the other hand, wasted an hour on the internet, hunting, with an ever mounting sense of frustration, for details of just what the ban meant. Here is what I discovered:

The Portuguese government has not updated its website advice since April, and gleefully declares that travel is now open to Israelis.

None of the Covid-19 Travel Update links on the TAP website or any Portuguese Government agency website links to updated information.

It appears that there are certain exceptional circumstances, under which individuals can appeal for special authorisation to visit Portugal. One such exception is if the trip is for reasons of family reunification.

This last sounds promising. Unfortunately, we still have several unanswered questions:

1. What family relations qualify? Specifically: Does this include parents ‘reunifying’ with adult, married children?
2. Does ‘reunification’ mean moving permanently to Portugal, or does it also include visiting for a month?
3. Does ‘family reunification’ apply only to reunification with Portuguese citizens? Or does it extend also to foreign residents (as Micha’el is)?

Let us assume, since we’re not managing our expectations, that the answers to all of the above questions are in our favour. We will then have to face the bureaucratic questions of exactly what documentation, in which language(s), we will need to submit to which authorities, when, and also what tests we will have to undergo when and what period of isolation we will have to serve.

I would say these are trivial matters, but, having watched my brother and sister-in-law struggle for months to submit the paperwork and get approval for a family reunification trip from Britain to Israel, I know it is far from straightforward. (Incidentally, they unexpectedly received authorisation a couple of weeks ago and are now in Israel, out of isolation, and having a wonderful time.) In addition to which, we would undoubtedly have to conduct at least part of this process in Portuguese.

Are we daunted? You betcha! Are we defeated? Far from it! Bring it on! We may still be learning how to control our superpowers, but, who knows, we may find that we are able to leap a mountain of paperwork at a single bound, and maybe even fly to Portugal under our own power.

A more realistic view might be that sometime in the next few months Israel’s numbers will come down. Portugal (and the other EU countries that have subsequently joined the party) will reconsider and, possibly demanding reciprocity (which Israel might by then be prepared to consider), will allow Israelis to visit. The fact is that we can take a trip anytime between October and March. Meantime, we did have over five weeks with the kids here in June-July, and we hope they will come over again next August, to help us, PG, celebrate our golden wedding.

And we still have WhatsApp video, for our regular calls with the kids and Tao. We’re building up our library of reading books that we have here and there, so that Tao can follow along as we read to him, and, as his speech develops every week, we are more able to have a sustained conversation, so those calls are becoming even richer. It also helps that Tao has spent an extended time in our home, so that he can recognise where we are when we video-chat.

It’s not only his speech that’s coming on: he’s also working on one-handed bamboo knife grape cutting…and that’s a skill his grandpa, for one, hasn’t mastered yet!

For the last couple of months, we (Bernice and I) have been devoting considerable energy to not doing something….and in a magnificent joint effort over the last two weeks we finally did it! What, if anything, will come of it, far wiser folk than we are would be hard pressed to say, so we’re certainly not counting any chickens or placing any bets ….although, in a sense, we already have placed our bet. Let me explain.

In June 2020, in common with millions of other people, we didn’t fly; in our case, to Portugal, using the national carrier, TAP. When we were forced to cancel our trip, TAP issued each of us a voucher for the full value of the flights we had booked, redeemable over the next 24 months against equivalent flights to the value of up to 20% more than the flights we had cancelled. This seemed a very fair arrangement. Actually, we each received two full-value vouchers, but, sadly, TAP realised their mistake a couple of days later, and cancelled one pair of vouchers.

For a brief period a few months ago, we considered booking to fly to Portugal for the month of August. In the end, we decided against that, for a number of reasons. First, the whole Covid-19 international air travel situation seemed potentially very volatile. In addition, if we were able to get to Penamacor, and found ourselves unable to return to Israel, we would have to spend the Tishri chagim (festivals) there, and the prospect of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Sukkot in Portugal seemed overly challenging.

Plus, the kids were here in Israel for a visit that only ended in mid-July. It seemed wiser to wait a little for our next visit.

Of course, that didn’t stop us talking almost constantly about when that next visit would be. We soon decided that a month’s trip, starting soon after all the chagim, made most sense. The weather in Portugal then would probably be not too cold; it would be two and a half months since we had seen the kids; if we ended up having to stay longer, we could manage Chanukkah and even Purim in Portugal, so we really wouldn’t have to be back in Israel until Pesach, in mid-April. (A five-month cushion seemed enough for most Doomsday scenarios – Polyanna is our middle name.)

Having made the decision, the time still didn’t feel right to start making the arrangements. We told ourselves that we should wait until the situation was clearer, even though I felt, and still feel, that the only thing that is going to get clearer in the foreseeable future is uncertainty. I suspect that our hesitation had something to do with a feeling that booking a flight was tempting providence.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we took ourselves in hand. To be more accurate, Bernice finally persuaded me to stop hiding under the metaphorical bed. As soon as I had agreed, she took the first bold step, of phoning a travel agent who had been recommended to us. This was because, some weeks earlier, I had spent one of those fruitless four-hour sessions jumping from one online travel site to another, watching flights appear and disappear and prices rise and rise. I had come away traumatized, which also partly explained my subsequent deer-in-the-headlights inability to act.

The travel agent was tremendously helpful, and no use at all. She pointed out that, since we wanted to cash in our vouchers from TAP, we had to book through them, rather than using her. She also offered another invaluable piece of advice. Many of her clients had been discovering that they were unable to get travel insurance, or that it was going to cost more than they were prepared to pay, and so she urged us to arrange our travel insurance before booking our tickets.

Inspired by Bernice’s seizing of the initiative, I sprang into action, and found online outward and homebound flights that ticked our various boxes. Those boxes included, for example: the outward flight had to be early enough in the week to allow us time in Penamacor to prepare for shabbat, and also had to be timed to allow a Covid test less than 72 hours before departure.

I then called our insurance agent, who arranged a conference call with an insurance company. I explained our situation, and asked for a quote. The very pleasant lady from the company explained that they could not give a quote until we had booked a flight. I explained that I had been told not to book a flight until I had a firm insurance quote. She restated her position. I restated my position. Impasse.

In the end, we decided we had no choice, and so I went into the TAP site online, and proceeded to book flights. I was pleasantly surprised by how user-friendly and responsive the site was; even the level of English was excellent. I cruised through to the penultimate stage, a page on which I was asked whether I had a voucher that I wished to redeem. I entered the number of my voucher, and then noticed that there wasn’t any box for a second voucher.

So, I typed in a comma and Bernice’s voucher number and clicked Submit. As I half expected, I got an error message – Invalid Voucher Number – and so I back-pedalled and entered only my voucher number, hoping that, after Submit I would be asked whether I wanted to redeem another voucher as well.

Instead, I got the same error message – Invalid Voucher Number. Taking a deep breath, I checked back through all my emails to confirm that I had used the correct voucher number and not the cancelled one. I then re-entered the number, double-checked that it was correct, clicked Submit, and got the same error message. Echoing in my ears was a comment from our daughter-in-law Tslil that rumour in Portugal had it that TAP was about to go out of business, and was no longer honouring vouchers.

At this point, I searched the TAP site and found a Tel Aviv phone number for customer support. Since it was now 8PM on Thursday, I knew there was no point phoning. I also suspected that the office would be closed on Friday. On Sunday morning, I decided that the office was probably staffed by Portuguese, and they would all obviously be at church. You can see that the prospect of spending hours waiting for my call to be picked up did not appeal to me.

It was therefore 10AM on Monday when I decided to bite the bullet. Pausing only to equip myself with a couple of cheese sandwiches, a mug of tea and a cryptic crossword, I tapped in the digits, and was connected to a straightforward English language menu. I listened carefully to the eight menu options, but of course none of them was anythiong remotely resembling Ticket Purchase or Flight Booking, So I listened to the options again and selected the least unrelated one: Technical Online Help. I then settled down for the long haul.

Not two minutes later (I still stagger in astonishment as I recall that), a pleasant service rep picked up. I explained my dilemma and she explained that ticket purchases involving redeeming vouchers have to be handled on the phone, and I had reached the correct extension. Naturally, I wanted to ask why, in that case, the website page includes a box for entering a voucher number and then claims that the number is invalid. However, I recognised that this was neither the time nor the place for me to attempt to troubleshoot TAP’s website, and I should stay focussed on the task in hand.

The service rep asked me all the relevant questions about the vouchers, confirmed that they were valid, asked about flight dates, asked me to hold, and, two minutes later (here I am, staggering in astonishment again), returned to say that she had booked the flights, departing October 24th, using the vouchers. I pointed out that we wanted to book a flight departing October 4th, not 24th (“One, two, three, four!”).

Profuse apologies, another wait of only two minutes (another stagger), and then an email arrived with all of the correct details. I confirmed that all was correct, and the rep issued the tickets. She was even able to tell us that the total cost was less than the value of the two vouchers, and we still had a balance of about ₤100. I felt as though I had won the lottery.

The same day I hired a car, and we then visited our family doctor for a summary of our medical conditions. Bernice’s summary, of course, fitted onto one side of a sheet of A4 paper, and mine…..didn’t. We are still waiting to hear what our travel insurance is going to cost. However, we keep telling ourselves that, because of Covid restrictions, we have missed four trips to Portugal, so think of all the money we have saved!

And here we are, more or less ready to go, though still determined to manage our expectations, since, of course, the situation in Israel or in Portugal can change at any time.

Just before I finish, a piece of housekeeping. For the first time since I started my blog, Jewish holidays are going to disrupt the publishing of next week’s post. I always aim for publication on Tuesday, 9AM Israel. Next Tuesday at that time, I expect to be deep in prayer in synagogue, on the first day of the New Year. At the moment, I am planning to publish 24 hours earlier.

This means that the post you are reading now may not be the last post of 5781, although I imagine many of you will have better things to do on Erev Rosh Hashana than read my blog. This therefore seems to me to be the ideal time to wish you all individually a happy and a healthy New Year, and to wish the world at large a more stable and healthier 5782.

Mind you, for a little one who has hardly known any different, and who is at the heart of a loving family, 5781 appears to have been very healthy, very stable, and very happy.