Don’t worry – this is not a personal medical update – the life (or lives) and death (or deaths) are not mine. Indeed, on my health front, the voice seems well on the way to complete recovery of its own (vocal) accord. (Did you see what I did there?)

No, this week we will reflect on the lives and deaths of and surrounding three figures of great distinction in the Israeli world of letters. They are front and centre in my thoughts at the moment because Bernice and I have just indulged ourselves in what is becoming an annual ritual. Every August (although, of course, not in the recent non-year, 2020), the Israel National Library holds a documentary film festival – Docutext – whose focus, as the name suggests, is on the written word, (though not exclusively).

This year, we saw four films over two days. Out of kindness to both the National Library and the filmmakers, I shall not comment on one of the films we saw. Nevertheless, we reckon three jewels and one lemon out of four is an acceptable strike rate.

The pleasure of anticipation began a month or so ago, when we bought a package of 12 tickets, and then sat down to decide what to see. This was, of course, a complex exercise. We wanted to attend two events a day over three days, rather than having to go into Jerusalem on four or five consecutive days. We wanted the emphasis to be on Hebrew language films, since this is a good exercise in staving off…um…what do they call that disease where you lose your memory? In the end, we made our selection.

First up was a 2008 American documentary about poet, diarist, Zionist pioneer and SOE parachutist Hannah Senesh, coupled with a guided tour of the Library’s current exhibit of her archive. You can read an account of her brief, but heroic, life here. Unfortunately, we weren’t, in the end, able to attend that day, but we hope to catch at least the exhibit at a later date.

Our next choice was On This Happy Note (in Hebrew על החיים ועל המוות), a 2021 Israeli film directed by Tamar Tal Anati. Where to start explaining this film to anyone who hasn’t heard of Anat Gov?

She and her husband Gidi were at the heart of a new wave of Israeli satire, that found early expression in what began as an Educational TV series, Zehu Zeh. Gidi was one of the stars of, and Anat wrote for, and played small parts in some sketches in, the series. From there, Anat eventually developed as a playwright. She also developed as a very articulate peace activist in Israel.

All of her plays are simultaneously extremely witty and deeply serious; written in everyday language they nevertheless have a poetic rhythm; although quintessentially Israeli, they remain accessible to a universal audience. Above all, they are completely – often searingly – personal.

Bernice and I have been lucky enough to see four of her plays on stage, the last of which was Happy Ending (סוף טוב): slightly surrealistic and part musical comedy, the play accompanies an actress in her 40s to her first chemotherapy treatment, where she learns that her cancer is terminal, and, over the course of the play, decides how to act in the light of that news.

At the time of the play’s premiere, Anat Gov herself had just decided, at age 57, that she was no longer prepared to undergo treatment for the terminal colon cancer that had been diagnosed 4 years earlier. She died the following year.

In that last year, as she prepared for her death, she also decided that she wanted to leave a spiritual legacy, and so she invited her theatrical agent, Arik Kneller, to interview her on film. This edited interview is overlaid with relevant spoken extracts from her plays and occasional brief observations, some years after her death, from her widower, Gidi, and from her best friend and the director of many of her plays, Edna Mazya.

These contributions are poignant, and the extracts are entertaining and enlightening, but the backbone of the film is the clarity and eloquence and calmness, the warmth and acceptance, with which Gov describes her philosophy. Death, she argues, is the one certain thing in life; it is therefore ridiculous to be afraid of it. She expresses gratitude for what she has been able to do with her life, for those with whom she has been privileged to share it, and for being granted the opportunity to prepare for her death. She is entirely accepting of her death.

She was originally opposed to having any treatment for her cancer, but her family persuaded her otherwise. However, when, after a few years, she had reached the point where she felt she had prepared her friends and family for her death, she simply stopped treatment and waited to embrace death.

On screen, as throughout her life, Anat Gov smokes one cigarette after another. When the interviewer comments on this, Anat is delighted, and proud, to point out that her lungs are completely clear. (Mazya recalls that when she was discussing with Anat the wording for her death notices, Anat was insistent that they should read “Anat Gov has finally quit smoking.” In this instance, she was overruled, apparently.)

Having seen the film, Bernice and I both felt that its lessons about facing death, and the image of Gov’s radiant face, would stay with us for a long time.

That same evening, we watched The Fourth Window (החלון הרביעי), whose subject is the literary work (and not the considerable political actvitist writing and thinking) of Israel’s best known author worldwide, Amos Oz. The film was made after Oz’s death, and therefore draws on a lot of archive material.

The trouble with that is that Oz was, in many ways, an extremely private man. He was, of course, a much filmed and interviewed public figure, but in those interviews I feel he was always very much in control of what he was prepared to share with the interviewer and the camera.

Oz had a difficult childhood, as described in his masterful family saga and magical self-portrait, A Tale of Love and Darkness. He was the only child of intellectual immigrant parents. His mother committed suicide when Amos was 12, and, in a move that seemed to spurn his parents’ heritage, he left home aged 14, changed his surname, rejected both his family’s right-wing revisionism and their academic life by moving to a kibbutz, and, after school, worked on the kibbutz’s agricultural land.  His long-time friend and biographer, Nurit Gertz, wrote that he ‘spent his whole life with a black hole inside and nothing could fill it’.

In the search to reveal more of Oz than he was prepared to share, the film’s director, Yair Qedar, struck unexpected gold. In the course of researching the film, she gained access to the recordings Nurit Gertz made of the phone calls Oz initiated with her at the end of his life. Oz asked her to write his biography, and over many phone calls ‘told’ her what she should write.

The film is interspersed with extracts from these phone conversations (or rather, for the most part, monologues). In these extracts, Oz reveals a great deal of what matters most to him, and of how he feels he has been misrepresented. He reveals insecurities and irresolutions that he usually took great pains to keep from public gaze.

Most fascinating in the film is the interplay between the guarded and unguarded Oz, the man at the peak of his powers and in full control of his narrative, and the man in his late 70s weakened by the cancer that was killing him.

Reading back over the last 1200 words, I realise this is all a bit on the bleak side. I hope that the last film I am going to talk about will life your spirits, although even David Grossman’s story is, as you may know, touched by tragedy.

Grossman will, I hope, not object to being called Israel’s second world-renowned contemporary author. It’s not a competition, as Bernice keeps trying to get me to accept, but, if it were, this is how Oz and Grossman would square up:

Remember that Oz died aged 79, whereas Grossman is only 67, and is still very much writing.

Oz wrote far more books, and was translated into 45 languages, whereas Grossman has been translated into 35.

They both received the Israel Prize for Literature. Oz won the Goethe Prize from the city of Frankfurt, while Grossman won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Oz was named to the French Legion of Honour, whereas Grossman won the Man Booker International Prize. In total, Oz won 27 awards and ‘recognitions’ from 11 different countries, including 8 within Israel, and no fewer than 7 within Germany. Grossman has won 19 such awards from 7 countries, including 8 within Israel.

Perhaps more significantly, the graph of Oz’s career has been compared to a Bactrian camel’s back, with one hump near the beginning, with My Michael, and another closer to the end with A Tale of Love and Darkness, and a number of troughs between, in terms of literary merit.

Grossman, in contrast, seems to write novels of consistent merit. He also speaks, as, in fairness, does Oz, with extraordinary clarity. Indeed, of course, so does Anat Gov. Not every writer is as fluent a speaker as each of these three is.

The director of Grossman, Adi Arbel, revealed, in the post-screening Q&A session, that Grossman was a most reluctant subject. However, it seemed to me watching that, once he had agreed to be interviewed, he was prepared to open himself up completely, and the film is fascinating in the glimpses it offers of the writing process itself, and particularly in Grossman’s descriptions of the period when an idea for a book first presents itself, and of his relation to the book, which seems to have a life quite independent of him.

However, the highlight of the film for me was a curious (perhaps unique) working practice that Grossman follows. He clearly has a warm relationship with his by now regular team of translators. When he finished writing his latest novel, More than I Love My Life, he invited some dozen of his translators to Croatia, where the book is partly set.

There, over the course of a week, they sat at a circular table, Grossman read the entire text aloud in Hebrew, and the author and translators commented, questioned, probed, discussed. The warmth, pleasure, focus and intimacy of that closed circle were completely enchanting.

I have mentioned previously my reservations about many authors reading their own work. However, I suspect there is a room in heaven reserved for when David Grossman arrives, where he will give daily readings from his work for the delight of the locals.

In conclusion, I know how lucky Bernice and I are to be retired, and therefore to have the time to go to documentary film festivals. Not everyone is so fortunate.

I have long felt that life offers very few more enjoyable experiences than a good meal eaten in the company of friends. There are even times when I feel that there are very few better ways to spend an evening than trying, and failing, to decide which is more delicious, which more nourishing: the food or the company. A good meal stimulates and satisfies; good conversation does the same.

Whenever I start going on like this, I wonder whether I’m being trivial. I surely can’t be suggesting that dinner with friends is up there with experiencing a performance of King Lear or The Marriage of Figaro? However great the chef, a meal is, in essence, an ephemeral thing, and the few traces it leaves behind are singularly unattractive. I love our friends dearly, but none of them would claim that they were wits and intellects in the class of Robert Benchley or Isaiah Berlin.

And yet….and yet. There is something about dinner with friends: the interplay between the semi-formal structure and the ease of being in a group all of whom feel completely comfortable in each other’s company; the balance of predictability (the set table gives a good idea of what to expect) and a sense of the unknown (down which particular byways will our conversation take us this evening?); the knowledge that no one in the group has anywhere better to be, and that the next couple of hours will provide an oasis on the journey through life’s desert.

It has, therefore, been a wonderful experience, over the last few weeks, to read a book one of my favourite dining companions lent me, a book with the daunting title: The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature, by Leon R Kass. Let me first say that I’m not sure whether the erudition and breadth of scope of the book or the author is more intimidating. Kass summarizes his background thus:

This strange book was written by a strange author. Trained first as a physician and then as a biochemist, he now practices neither. Untrained in philosophy and literature, he teaches both without a license, studying some of their greatest works with serious students at one of the world’s best universities [University of Chicago, which has just been ranked 10^th in the ARWU (Academic Ranking of World’s Universities) list – so that’s not a baseless claim].

As for the book, it has been described, fairly, I feel, as follows:

Who would have thought that a book on ‘eating’ could turn out to be a profound and brilliant exploration of the human condition, its limits and its potential?

As another critic wrote, Kass:

…recognize[s] that everyday activities are charged with unsuspected meanings….The way we eat together has everything to do with the way we live together.

So, in choosing to write this week about dining tables I have slid my feet under, I feel that I am not necessarily throwing out a few light-hearted observations, but rather touching on something that speaks profoundly to the human condition.

In one chapter, Kass points out the prominent part played by hospitality in Homer’s Odyssey. In modern Western civilization, of course, much of that private hospitality has been replaced by hotels, restaurants, inns and so on. However, as I repeatedly discovered when I travelled abroad on business regularly over a period of about 13 years, sometimes some of us need (or at least crave) more than the hotel and the restaurant can offer. A typical trip for me would be to attend, as part of a team of 5 or 6 people, business meetings, for two weeks in a single city.

Since I was very often the only religious member of the group, I expected to be alone on the middle Saturday, when my colleagues were either working round the clock or seeing the sights. Then after meetings ended on the last Friday, my colleagues would fly home, and I would be ‘trapped’ until the Sunday, unable to fly over shabbat.

It is fair to say that I was sometimes feeling rather sorry for myself at this stage. I would typically have survived all week on kosher cup-a-soups, tuna, crackers, salad and fruit, nuts and raisins and chocolate, all eaten in the sterile environment of an anonymous hotel bedroom. I would have worked 15–18-hour days, two thirds of the time in a comfortable but characterless conference room, and the other third in that same hotel bedroom.

But then, on Friday, more often than not, something amazing happened. Having completed my work, I would shower, change, and make my way to the home of someone I had never met, who was hosting me for shabbat. Sometimes this was the friend (or, on one occasion, the parents) of one or another of our friends in Ma’ale Adumim. Sometimes, it was someone I had called without an introduction (never a comfortable experience) earlier in the week.

On one occasion, it was pure good fortune. After two weeks in St Louis, I was unexpectedly asked to fly to Dallas for a third week. After meetings ended on the Thursday evening, I was completely exhausted, and also feeling that I had used up all of my charm and affability. So, I decided to spend shabbat alone in my hotel room.

Accordingly, I drove to a supermarket that had a kosher aisle, planning to stock up with goodies. Unable to find the challot, I spotted someone who was obviously Jewish and asked whether he could tell me where the challot were. He pointed me in the right direction, and then asked: ‘Are you in town for shabbat?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Have you got anywhere to stay?’ ‘I’m just going to stay in my hotel.’ Looking around, he called out to a tall young man in the next aisle: ‘Michael, you’ll host this gentleman for Shabbat, won’t you!’ I was simply unable to refuse without appearing rude. I jotted down the address, and comforted myself with the fact that I would at least get to stay in a J R Ewing-style Dallas mansion!

When I arrived at my host’s home the following day, I discovered it was a
small townhouse (terraced house) on a very busy main road. It transpired that
Michael was the principal (headmaster) of the Jewish primary school, a post
that came with a house. As he said to me, over dinner that evening: ‘You find
yourself in the only Jewish home in Dallas that votes Democrat.’ It was,
nevertheless (or possibly in part for that reason) a delightful shabbat.

I must have been hosted by twenty different families during those work years,
and every shabbat was a very special experience. In the same way as I feel at
home walking into a synagogue anywhere around the world, so I felt among
family, sharing shabbat with all of these diverse hosts. The sense in which we
both, host and guest, felt warmed by the experience was often palpable.

Incidentally, the synagogue I attended on that shabbat in Dallas was tremendously welcoming, with designated hosts for anyone looking for a dinner invitation on Friday night and separate designated hosts for Saturday lunch. After the Friday night service, three separate people asked me if I had a dinner arrangement. The only other place where Bernice and I have experienced that level of warmth was on our first shabbat in Ma’ale Adumim almost 24 years ago, when we first attended what has been, ever since, ‘our’ shul – Musar Avicha.

In only one city did I receive no welcome at all; that was Chicago (despite my dropping broad hints, to various congregants, that I was a visitor in town and staying in a hotel). This just bears out what has always been my experience: large, established communities are much less welcoming than small ones.

Which brings me to the most open house I have ever known, the house where Pauline and Louis Saville lived. They were the parents of Bernice’s closest friend since childhood – Denise. Louis had grown up between the wars in the then strong and close-knit Glasgow Jewish community, while Pauline had grown up in England’s second city, Birmingham. Louis qualified as a medical doctor, and, in 1940, Pauline and Louis married. During the Second World War, Louis was ordered by the Government to move to Ogmore Vale, a small mining village near the head of a South Wales valley, to serve as a family doctor there.

It is fair to say that, for Pauline, who loved the bright lights and social buzz of the big city, tiny, insular Ogmore was a huge disappointment, and, I imagine, for Louis as well. However, to Ogmore they were posted, and there they stayed for the rest of their lives. They very soon decided that if they were destined to live in a backwater, then no boat, however little, that ventured anywhere near their backwater would be allowed to float past without mooring for a shorter or longer time at their home.

I first experienced their extraordinary hospitality in April 1965. By that time, I was a veteran of one winter camp of Hanoar Hatzioni (the Zionist organization where Bernice and I met), and five or six of us from Ilford took the train to Swansea during the half-term holiday, to stay with various of our new friends. One afternoon, we decided to train and bus up to Ogmore Vale, to visit Denise. I can’t now remember how much notice we gave; I doubt if it was more than a few hours.

Regardless, we and our Swansea hosts (so, a party of about 10 or 12) turned up at the Savilles’. We spent a couple of hours listening to Beatles records on Pauline and Louis’ rather grand music centre, and were then ushered through to the dining room, where a long, long table, easily seating all of us, bowed under the weight of fried fish and salads.

That same hospitality was shown to anyone of interest who passed through, or even just nearby (both Cardiff and Swansea, the two cities of South Wales, were an hour’s drive away)….and probably the most important lesson I learnt from Pauline and Louis was that everyone is of interest, if you open your house to them, put them at their ease, ask the right question, and sit back and listen. They were both wonderful listeners. With them as your audience, you always felt as though you were a fascinating person, full of perceptive insights.

I always told them that it was a terrible shame that they did not keep a visitors book, because the number and range of guests they entertained over the decades was extraordinary.

Theirs was also a hospitality that could not be strained. One Saturday evening, Bernice and I had arranged to drive the eight miles up the valley from our home in Bridgend to Ogmore, for an evening of bridge. As we drove through Bridgend, a few snowflakes began to fall. We decided that it would be an exaggerated reaction to turn back, and so we continued to Pauline and Louis’ home. We arrived safely as the snow started to thicken. We were eventually ble to drive back home on the following Wednesday, after snow ploughs had cleared the drifts on the valley road. Meanwhile, the Army had helicoptered bread and milk in to the village. I bring up this story only to say that at no point in those four days did we feel for a moment that we had outstayed our welcome.

So, you will appreciate that it is with a broad smile that I tell you that my voice is now much stronger than it was, and I have been given the okay from the throat specialist to speak freely. Not the least welcome outcome of that is that we can now resume issuing, and accepting, dinner invitations…..at least until the next lockdown.

Tao, as you can see, has already learnt the art of engaging his audience non-verbally over dinner.

Author’s Note: The title is a reference to the 1959 11-minute film ‘The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film’, which those of you with shorter memories can get some sense of from the description here. However, rest assured that the film has nothing to do with this week’s post, so you can safely ignore the link and go through the rest of your life unaware of what proved to be a seminal bridge between The Goons and Monty Python.

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, said: “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part,” he cannot possibly have imagined what the Olympic Games would look like in 2021. As I write this, on Sunday 8 August, the very last Olympic medal has just been decided, and all that it is left is the closing ceremony. So, having made an oblique reference to the Games last week, I thought I would give them my full attention this week.

First, in the interests of full disclosure, I should probably mention that I have not seen (live or recorded) a single moment of the Olympic Games 2020. (Here’s a great trivia question in another century or so: When were the Olympics 2020 held?) I have, however, seen some still photographs, and so that, I think, is where I’ll begin.

Running
Arguably the greatest achievement of the Games was the smashing of his own men’s 400 metres hurdles world record by the Norwegian Karsten Warholm . This event is notable for having long-standing world records. The American Ed Moses dominated the event in the late 70s and early 80s of the last century (I feel about 140 years old when I write something like that), and the fourth and last world record time that he set, in 1983, stood for almost 9 years, before American Kevin Young took 0.24 seconds off Moses’ time, to set a new record of 46.78. (How is it, I wonder, that a country where everybody drives everywhere produces such good athletes?)

Young’s record stood for almost 29 years until July of this year! If you think for a moment of the advances that have been made over the last 29 years in such things as running shoe technology and training and diet regimens, Young’s achievement seems almost unreal.

Then, in Oslo, before his home crowd, last month, Karsten Warholm shaved 0.08 of a second off Young’s time. A Norwegian! Can you even name another Norwegian track athlete? Checking back, I see that, in 27 Summer Olympics, Norway has won 9 gold medals, which is, to be honest, more than I expected. Another good trivia question. Norway is one of only three countries to have won more medals in total at Winter Olympics than Summer Olympics (368 and 160). Can you name the other two countries? (Answers at the end.)

And finally, of course, on 3 August, Warholm improved his own month-old world record by a staggering 0.76 of a second, to take Olympic gold. And what was the photo that made the world’s front pages? What is the moment that captures the essence of the Olympics in 2021?

Well, if you google ‘karsten warholm world record’ and filter for images only, of the first 38 images you get, 28 are close-ups of Warholm after the race, showing his facial expression of shocked delight when he realized he had broken the record, 5 show him standing by the record display board, and only 4 show the actual race, with any of the other competitors. Someone clearly needs to explain to the photographers that “the important thing is to take part”.

Jumping
Speaking of which, the Olympics produced one story that was universally presented as heart-warming, although I have my suspicions. I’m talking about the men’s high jump final. After an unusually long competition, Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi couldn’t be split, having each recorded best clearances of 2.37 metres, failed three times at 2.39, and produced error-free records on countback. The pair were invited to take part in a jump-off, but the Qatari asked whether they could share the gold medal instead, and everyone agreed.

The media have been full of glowing stories of how they both felt that it would have been terrible for the other one to be deprived of gold. But I can’t help thinking: if they came to me and said: ‘You can share the podium with a gold medal round your neck, or risk getting silver’, I wouldn’t hesitate either. For these two, I suspect, “the important thing is to make sure you don’t not win, by turning down the opportunity to continue to take part.”

Standing Still
But at least all of the above athletes did take part. Probably the biggest story of the Olympics, and certainly the celebrity competitor who attracted most media attention, and a great deal of admiration, was Simone Biles, who, after suffering from the twisties (a potentially extremely dangerous disorientation in mid-exercise), elected to drop out of the team competition and, ultimately, withdraw from all but one individual competition, in which she won a bronze medal.

Before the games, of course, she had been tipped to repeat or better her 2016 haul of 4 golds and a bronze. CNN’s gymnastics correspondent wrote a telling piece, focusing less on Biles’ decision, and more on the prevailing culture in the American gymnastics camp.  

At the 2016 American Cup, I asked then-national team coordinator Marta Karolyi how she dealt with athletes who felt fear. She blew me off, saying, at the elite level, fear is not a problem anymore.

This, obviously, was not true. Asked by the New Yorker in 2016 why she wouldn’t try a front handspring double-front vault, called the Produnova, Biles said, “I’m not trying to die.” But many elite gymnasts have described the pressure to never show weakness under Karolyi.

The correspondent goes on to suggest that this prevailing culture of iron discipline may have helped create a climate in which then USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was able to prey sexually on the gymnasts, with none of his victims being prepared to call him out for a long time,.

I must confess that my initial reaction to Biles’ speaking of mental health issues was less than sympathetic. This was partly because of Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from two successive Open tennis championships; she felt unable, or unwilling, to tolerate the required post-match press conferences.

I respect her right to withdraw, but anyone who is ready to sign the very valuable sponsorship contracts that a player of Osaka’s stature attracts must recognise that she is not only a competitor but also a commodity. If she feels unable, or unwilling, to handle that, then, sadly, top professional tennis player in the 21st Century is not a profession that she is qualified for.

However, the more I read about the treatment of gymnasts, the more persuaded I am that there is a real issue here that Biles has been brave enough to confront.

And finally
I may have mentioned before in my blog what was for me the greatest moment of irony in the history of the Olympics. At the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, a children’s choir, and then John Lennon on a huge screen, sang Imagine, which, of course, includes the line ‘Imagine there’s no countries.’ This after many, many countries around the world had invested millions over four years preparing for a two-week contest built entirely around competition between countries. Then, for 17 days, the world checked medal tables to see whether their country had improved its position. Finally, at the closing ceremony, thousands of athletes waved their national flags in time to the music, and nobody appeared to see the absurdity.

I have always found Imagine a fatuous song, and I was therefore delighted to read just a couple of weeks ago of a music journalist friend of John Lennon visiting him in New York. When he walked into the apartment and spotted a large ice-box containing a collection of fur coats, he turned to Lennon and said: ‘Imagine no possessions!’. Lennon replied: ‘For goodness sake! It’s only a song!’ I cannot tell you how far, in that moment, Lennon went up in my estimation.

There you go: an entire column about the Olympics with virtually no discussion of actual sport. How do I do it?

In 2032, Tao will only be 13 years old, so it’s probably unrealistic to expect him to compete in the road cycling events at the Brisbane Olympics…but it’s never too early to start practising.

And the two other countries to have won more winter than summer Olympic medals are Austria (218 and 86) and Liechtenstein (10 and 0). Incidentally – more fodder for trivia fans – Liechtenstein is the smallest country in the world by population to have won an Olympic gold medal, and the second smallest by area (after Bermuda), although San Marino is the smallest country to have won any medal.

Athletes from Liechtenstein have won a total of ten medals, all in alpine skiing. It is the only country to have won medals at the Winter, but not Summer, Olympic Games. Liechtenstein has the most medals per capita of any country, with nearly one medal for every 3,600 inhabitants. (If Israel performed that well, we’d have won 2,500 medals!) Seven of its ten medals have been won by members of the same family: siblings Hanni and Andreas Wenzel, and Hanni’s daughter Tina Weirather. Further, the brothers Willi and Paul Frommelt have won two of the other three; only Ursula Konzett has medaled for her country without being related to Wenzels or Frommelts. Bet you wish you hadn’t asked. Ah, right! You didn’t.

First, an Olympic update. Four weeks ago, I attempted to describe to you the hoops that Israel and Portugal are making Micha’el and Tslil jump through in order to prove that they are not married, so that they can now get married in a civil ceremony in Portugal, which will, among other things, make various bureaucratic procedures in Portugal simpler for them and for Tao. It strikes me that, if skateboarding (2020) and breakdancing (2024) can qualify as Olympic sports, then there is no reason why bureaucracy shouldn’t qualify as well.

Or perhaps it should be a founding sport of the Anti-Olympics. The motto of the Olympics is Citius, Altius, Fortius – Faster, Higher, Stronger – so perhaps the motto of the Anti-Olympics should be Tardius, Inferioris, Inbecillioribus – Slower, Lower, Weaker; in that case, this clash between the bureaucracies of Israel and Portugal is starting to look like a gold-medal contest.

Last week, we received a slip from the Post Office informing us that a registered letter for Micha’el was waiting to be collected. When Bernice collected it, the envelope had already been torn open, albeit quite neatly. (I find myself wondering how much postage one has to pay to ensure that a registered letter arrives intact.)

When she looked through the contents, Bernice saw that the envelope was sent by the Israel Foreign Ministry, returning all of the documents that Micha’el and Tslil had submitted to prove their identity. These documents included Micha’el’s birth certificate, translated into Portuguese and notarised. Attached to this birth certificate by a paper-clip was a handwritten, unsigned, undated slip of paper from (presumably) a Foreign Ministry clerk, which read:

Greetings!
It is not possible for us to authenticate the attached document since the authorized signatory no longer appears in the system.
You have to get a new certificate issued by the Interior Ministry, and then send it again. 

If we understand this correctly, authorized signatories are removed from the system even though documents they signed will continue to circulate for decades. It beggars belief, and it makes me believe that the similarity between the Latin for weaker – inbecillioribus – and the English imbecilic cannot be a coincidence.

We only hope that Bernice manages to get a new certificate issued, and that the new certificate will reference the old one, so that the Portuguese notarisation document will still be valid, and Micha’el and Tslil will not need to pay another exorbitant notarisation fee.

I have presented this story in a light-hearted fashion, but it is, in truth, infuriating.

Speaking of slower, lower and weaker, my voice is not really improving, and I am, this week, making a concerted effort to speak as little as possible. It’s not easy, let me tell you. I have now managed to train myself not to answer my phone as a reflex reaction, but to hand it to Bernice. When I first got my voice back a little, I answered the phone and embarked on the following conversation.

• Hello.
• Hello.
• Is this David?
• Yes.
• I’m calling from [a charity].
• I’m sorry. I can’t speak.
• I can call back later.
• No! I can’t speak!
• Well, when would it be convenient for me to call back?
• I can’t speak! I’VE LOST MY VOICE.
• Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I wish you better. Goodbye.

I have started attending services in synagogue again, which also has its challenges. Much of the service, even the weekday service, includes verses that are sung and responses that are spoken aloud. When I went back, I could only speak in a whisper, and I was determined not to take part in those congregational responses; however, it is almost impossible not to get sucked in, particularly if the service is being led by someone who has a tuneful voice.

To my surprise, I suddenly realized, ten minutes into the service, that I could hear myself reciting the prayers. My voice had suddenly strengthened considerably. This, of course, meant that I had to remain continuously conscious of how I was reading, in order to stop myself speaking aloud.

This led to a couple of very interesting discoveries. First, there are many prayers that I have been reciting aloud for years, without needing to glance at the prayer book. Suddenly, I found I was unable to recite these prayers silently. I only know them off by heart if I recite them aloud. Over the last couple of weeks, I have developed a technique where I consciously ‘hear’ the prayers inside my head, even though I am making no sound. Using this technique, I remember the prayers perfectly.

This technique also helps me to weigh each word separately, rather than having the words melt into each other as they tend to do when I am not ‘hearing’ them. Needless to say, weighing each word is something I strive to do anyway when I pray (with, it must be said, varying degrees of success).

This led me to wonder about memorizing other texts. If you ask me my ID number, I can tell you it without hesitation…in Hebrew, but not in English. However, if you ask me to write down my ID number, I have discovered that I cannot do that unless I ‘speak’ the Hebrew name of each number silently in my head. Interestingly, I still know my army number (although I haven’t used it in 20 years) in English, but that is presumably because I found a convoluted arithmetical hook to hang that number on, and I still certainly do my arithmetic in English. (In my experience, counting is the very last language act that people retain in their native tongue, however well they speak the language of their adopted country.)

None of this really surprises me, because I have long known that I am a verbal, and not a visual, apprehender. If I were ever present at a crime scene, I hope that I would refuse to appear as an eye-witness, because my testimony would, I am sure, be unreliable. One of the reasons I dread Bernice disappearing is that I would have to report it to the police and they would inevitably ask me a string of questions I would be embarrassingly unable to answer. ‘What was she wearing when she disappeared?’ ‘How tall is she?’ ‘What is the colour of her eyes?’ ‘Her hair?’

Let’s make this perfectly clear: This is not the main reason I dread Bernice disappearing – of course it isn’t; don’t be silly. Nevertheless, it is a reason. (When Bernice reads this, she will suddenly realise why I insist on taking a photo of her every time she is about to leave the house.)

I leave you this week the most tenuous double segue since I started this blog. Are you ready? Speaking of leaving the house, a couple of celebrities left their shared home – Earth – rather spectacularly recently. Inspired by the examples of Richard Branson and Jeff Besos, Tao commissioned a spaceship and is pictured here about to make his maiden voyage.

As a small and select group of you will know, last week my acquaintance with the work of Jacques Brel was renewed and, subsequently, considerably deepened. So, with acknowledgement and thanks to my friend Shalom/William for the inspiration, I’m going to indulge this week in an in-depth look at perhaps the best-known work of perhaps the best-known chansonnier of the second half of the Twentieth Century – Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas.

If you look up ‘chanson’ in a French-English dictionary, you will find that it means ‘song’, and this is undoubtedly true. However, ‘chanson’ is also used to denote a particular kind of song. (Actually, several particular kinds, but, for our purposes, one will suffice.) The most succinct definition I have seen is ‘lyric-driven songs’; however, the rather fuller description Wikipedia gives of Brel’s work fleshes out that definition: ‘literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs’.

So, let’s start with a look at the lyrics. Alongside the French, I offer what seems to me a faithful translation into English. But first, a brief diversion, which will, I promise, bring us back to Brel.

I’m currently reading Robert Alter’s The Art of Bible Translation, which is both insightful and entertaining. Alter slipped almost by accident (or perhaps was sucker-punched) into translating the entire Hebrew Bible into English, and he brought to the task not only what he describes as “a good competence” in Classical Hebrew but also his background as a literary critic. This second element gave him a perspective rather different from that of most translators of the Bible.

His own translation reflects his belief that the style of the Hebrew text is a very significant part of what shapes the meaning. The art of the translator, he therefore argues, is not to smooth out the language of the original, but to retain, as far as possible, its ‘feel’; not to clarify what is unclear in the Hebrew text, but to preserve that lack of clarity in the translation. In this way the translation sets the reader the same challenges of comprehension as the original Hebrew does, and gives the reader the same experience as the reader of the original Hebrew has.

Of course, Alter realizes that all this is impossible. The translator cannot honestly do more than strive to come as close to this as she is able.

Alter references the translation theorist Lawrence Venuti, who distinguished between ‘domesticating’ and ‘foreignizing’ translations. Each type has its place. In translating a contemporary French novel into English, the translator may wish to make the text as ‘comfortable’ as possible for an American readership.

In reading translated fiction, I often find myself forgetting that I am reading a translation; the English is so natural. However, as Alter points out, it is important to avoid creating the impression that the Bible was written in English the day before yesterday, and to keep the reader aware that the linguistic patterns and cultural context of the original are very different from ours.

The modern age has, of course, seen various ‘special interest’ translations – feminist Bibles, Black English Bibles and so on. So, for example, one modern version renders the first lines of the Shema rather differently from what many of us are used to.

The version many of us grew up with is: ‘Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.’ This contemporary version offers the following: ‘Attention, Israel! God, our God! God the one and only! Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got!’ To my ear, at least, the domesticating translation jars.

Back to Ne Me Quitte Pas. Here are the lyrics, with what seems to me a foreignizing translation.

Ne Me Quitte Pas                    Don’t Leave Me
                            
Ne me quitte pas                      Don’t leave me.
Il faut oublier                             We must forget.
Tout peut s’oublier                     All can be forgotten
Qui s’enfuit déjà                        That has already passed away.
Oublier le temps                        Forget the time
Des malentendus                      Of misunderstandings
Et le temps perdu                      And the time lost
A savoir comment                     Trying to know ‘how’.
Oublier ces heures                    Forget those hours
Qui tuaient parfois                    That sometimes kill,
A coups de pourquoi                 With slaps of ‘Why?’,
Le cœur du bonheur                 The heart of happiness.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
                            
Moi je t’offrirai                           I will give to you
Des perles de pluie                    Pearls made of rain
Venues de pays                         From countries
Où il ne pleut pas                      Where it never rains.
Je creuserai la terre                   I will work the land
Jusqu’après ma mort                 All my life and beyond
Pour couvrir ton corps              To cover your body
D’or et de lumière                      With gold and with light.
Je ferai un domaine                   I will make a land
Où l’amour sera roi                    Where love will be king
Où l’amour sera loi                    Where love will be law
Où tu seras reine                       Where you will be queen.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
                            
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Je t’inventerai                            I will invent, for you,
Des mots insensés                   Fanciful words
Que tu comprendras                That you’ll understand.
Je te parlerai                             I will tell you
De ces amants-là                     About those lovers
Qui ont vu deux fois                 Who have twice seen
Leurs cœurs s’embraser          Their hearts set ablaze.
Je te raconterai                        I will tell you
L’histoire de ce roi                   The story of the king
Mort de n’avoir pas                  Who died of not having
Pu te rencontrer                       Ever met you.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
                            
On a vu souvent                      We’ve often seen
Rejaillir le feu                           Fire flowing again
De l’ancien volcan                   From an ancient volcano
Qu’on croyait trop vieux          Considered too old.
Il est paraît-il                            It’s said that there are
Des terres brûlées                   Fire-scorched lands
Donnant plus de blé                That yield more wheat
Qu’un meilleur avril                  Than the best April.
Et quand vient le soir               And when evening comes
Pour qu’un ciel flamboie          With a burning sky,
Le rouge et le noir                   The red and the black –
Ne s’épousent-ils pas              Are they not joined together?
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
                            
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Je n’vais plus pleurer               I won’t cry anymore.
Je n’vais plus parler                 I won’t talk anymore.
Je me cacherai là                    I will hide over there
A te regarder                           To watch you
Danser et sourire                     Dance and smile,
Et à t’écouter                           And to hear you
Chanter et puis rire                 Sing and then laugh.
Laisse-moi devenir                  Let me become
L’ombre de ton ombre             The shadow of your shadow,
L’ombre de ta main                 The shadow of your hand,
L’ombre de ton chien              The shadow of your dog.
Mais                                         But
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas.                    Don’t leave me.

‘Literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs.’ How true. Let’s take a closer look at what is going on here.

In the very first line, the singer makes a blunt plea – Don’t leave me – without offering any reason why his lover should not leave. As the song progresses, this plea is repeated again and again in an act of ultimately humiliating begging.

In asking to gloss over their problems, he sweeps aside everything that has been in their relationship – All can be forgotten. He then makes a series of fanciful, unrealistic promises, stressing the lengths he will go to for her – I will work the land all my life and beyond to cover your body with gold and with light.

Then follows a promise of things he will say, a series of empty fairy tales – The story of the king who died of not having ever met you, and then a series of powerful images drawn from nature, suggesting that their love can be revived. It’s said that there are fire-scorched lands that yield more wheat than the best April. However, even some of these images are only hearsay – It’s said that… – and thefinal image is couched as a question, with a suggestion of uncertainty – Are they not joined together?

It is true that these same sentiments, expressed by someone at the very beginning of a love affair, could appear attractive (even if we also smiled wryly at their innocent super-optimism, and of the prospective lover’s eagerness to do everything, and expect nothing in return). However, for a man standing in the wreck of a relationship, they seem pathetic.

In the last verse, the singer desperately promises to make himself invisible, realising that his lover does not want to see him or hear him anymore – I will hide over there to watch you…Let me become the shadow of your shadow…your hand…your dog. Your dog! How humiliating is that! Finally, the begging refrain is repeated – Don’t leave me.

At no point in the song does he describe a healthy or realistic relationship.

The time has come to listen to Brel performing the song – a more complete and accurate word than ‘singing’, I think. (The English subtitles here are a slightly less successful translation than the version I gave above, but they’ll do.)

In a 1966 interview, Brel said that Ne me quitte pas was not a love song, but rather “a hymn to the cowardice of men”, and the degree to which they were willing to humiliate themselves. He knew, he said, that it would give pleasure to women who assumed it was a love song, and he understood that. (I’m not sure he would be able to get away with last sentiment 50 years on!)

And so, dear reader, we come to a domesticating ‘translation’. In fairness, this is not a translation but an adaptation. However, I think it speaks volumes about the distance between mainstream American popular music and chanson. Rod McKuen wrote new words to the tune of Ne Me Quitte Pas as If You Go Away. In that changed title, we already see much of the shift that McKuen made in the tone and meaning of the song. Here the lover’s going away is seen as a possibility, rather than something to be denied – If rather than Don’t.

Here are all of the lyrics:

If You Go Away

If you go away on this summer day
Then you might as well take the sun away;
All the birds that flew in a summer sky
When our love was new and our hearts were high;
When the day was young and the night was long
And the moon stood still for the night birds’ song.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

But if you stay, I’ll make you a day
Like no day has been or will be again.
We’ll sail on the sun; we’ll ride on the rain;
We’ll talk to the trees and worship the wind.
Then, if you go, I’ll understand.
Leave me just enough love to hold in my hand.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

If you go away, as I know you will,
You must tell the world to stop turning till
You return again, if you ever do.
For what good is life without loving you?
And I tell you now, as you turn to go,
I’ll be dying slowly till the next hello.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

But if you stay, I’ll make you a night
Like no night has been or will be again.
We’ll sail on your smile, we’ll ride on your touch
I’ll talk to your eyes that I love so much.
But if you go, I won’t cry,
For the good is gone from the word ‘goodbye’.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

If you go away, as I know you must,
There’ll be nothing left in the world to trust.
Just an empty room, full of empty space,
Like the empty look I see on your face.
I’d have been the shadow of your dog
If I thought it might have kept me by your side
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.


The major differences between the original and McKuen’s adaptation are clear to see. First, rather than the whole of their prior relationship being swept aside, it is here recalled in loving detail in the first verse – When our love was new and our hearts were high. Then, in the second verse, instead of the future being imagined as fairy tale, as in Brel’s song, and being what the singer will do for the lover, it is realistically (in a romantic context) described, as an equal partnership – We’ll sail on the sun; we’ll ride on the rain.

As the song progresses, the possibility of the lover leaving becomes stronger and stronger – as I know you will…as I know you must…as you turn to go. The singer can visualise the leaving, and can talk about what life will be like after that event. For Brel’s singer, the situation is unimaginable, a measure of his cowardice. McKuen’s singer is braver, even though the prospect is bleak –  I’ll be dying slowly till the next hello. However, even in this bleakness, McKuen’s singer can imagine a reuniting – the next hello.

In addition, McKuen’s singer, unlike Brel’s, realises how pathetic wishing to be the shadow of the lover’s dog is – I’d have been the shadow of your dog, if I thought it might have kept me by your side.

Finally, McKuen has the line If you go away appear three times at the end of each verse, which fits the rhythm of the song. Brel adds a fourth Ne me quitte pas each time, spilling over the rhythm, as if he cannot stop begging even after the verse has finished, It is a further measure of his lack of self-control.

So, McKuen’s singer is smarter, more realistic, more self-aware, more dignified than Brel’s. Here is Shirley Bassey’s rendition of If You Go Away. Apart from the willing suspension of disbelief required to imagine that anyone would walk out on Shirley Bassey in her prime, notice the strength of the character she portrays.

Hers is a cover version that McKuen very much admired, and it is not difficult to see why the song attracted not only Bassey, but also, among so many others, Dusty Springfield, Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Julio Iglesias, Barbra Streisand, Glen Campbell, Scott Walker, Ray Charles. If You Go Away is much recorded. The singer is invited to inhabit a very sympathetic persona.

Yet Brel’s is the more gripping character, because the song is so merciless a portrayal of weakness, that has lost none of its power and immediacy in the intervening 60 years. Chansons: ‘Literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs.’ Indeed!

Meanwhile, in Portugal, someone is starting to hone his skills in preparation for a possible future in chanson (or maybe even fado).

If you’re under 50, then 10 points if you recognize the source of the above quote. If you’re in your 70s, you lose 30 points if you don’t recognize that it is a Simon and Garfunkel song.

After last week’s blog, a friend complimented me on how I connected the various strands of the blog together. I explained that it was all pure chance. I just stand here at the top of the hill, kick the ball once, and watch. What rocks it bounces off, what ruts it gets stuck in, what windows it smashes, on its bumpy descent – all that feels completely out of my control.

In one of my increasingly common serendipitous moments, having decided what I wanted to write about this week (a real no-brainer), I cast about for a suitably attention-grabbing title, and The Sound of Silence almost immediately presented itself. As part of my warm-up, I ran through the lyrics.

In a pre-internet age, this would, of course, have been a nightmare, because we only have the song on vinyl/LP, and we no longer have a deck/record player. (I am growing increasingly sensitive to the wide range of ages among my audience.) I can picture myself struggling like Himesh Patel, playing the lead in Yesterday, desperately trying to drag the lyrics of She’s Leaving Home from the recesses of his mind.

However, in yet another of the multiple daily reminders of the wonders of the web, I can google the lyrics instantly. (Mind you, if there were no internet, there would probably be no digital media, and we would still have a record deck and I would be able to play The Sound of Silence.)

Looking through the lyrics, I was immediately struck by the lines: ‘People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening’. Simply by switching the two verbs in the second line, I realized that I had, in a nutshell, the predicament Bernice and I currently find ourselves. I can, at the moment, talk, but only in a whisper that does not really qualify as speaking. Bernice, in perfect symmetry, listens, but because, at the moment, she is suffering with blocked ears, she can’t actually hear me. I’m not sure we’ve ever been a Simon and Garfunkel song before (and anyone who mentions Old Friends can leave now).

All of which is incidental, and, we hope, temporary. Bernice has an appointment to have her ears syringed soon by my throat doctor, and, by the time you read this, I should have had my throat examined by Bernice’s ear syringer, and I hope he will provide the solution to our problem. (I’ve always found it curious that one specialism covers what seem to me to be three very separate parts of my body arbitrarily lumped together – I can’t imagine specialism in toenails, spleen and neck. I know, intellectually, that E, N and T are all connected by a single canal system, but it doesn’t feel like that in my head. Just a thought!)

Editor’s Note: He didn’t (provide a solution). My vocal cords are only closing partially (an improvement on a month ago), so I can still only whisper. If they were not closing at all, the doc would know what to do, but, on the other hand, my position would then be more serious. What he has done is refer me to the top woman in Jerusalem, so I face another four weeks of whispering until my appointment with her. I am, at least, now officially allowed to talk, but only in short sentences and not in a loud voice.

This top woman is the Director of Hadassah Hospital’s Voice and Swallowing Outpatients Department. My brother Martin usefully pointed out that having a team devoted to swallowing outpatients should certainly reduce waiting times.

The real topic this week (reached in under 600 words) is the sound of silence: the silence that descended on our house at 1AM last Thursday, when Micha’el, Tslil and Tao drove off to the airport. Not just the silence: rather, the silences.

There is, first and foremost, the silence created by the absence of a two-year-old who is constantly on the go, and who is perfectly capable of engaging non-stop in an intelligent conversation even if he only offers one word each time it is his turn to speak. Excitingly, while he was here, he started putting words together in rudimentary sentences, such as “Caught ball”, and compound phrases such as “Big red truck!”. We fully expect that, by the time we fly to Portugal and see him again (planned for October), we won’t be able to get a word in edgeways.

Editor’s Note: Indeed, since arriving back home, he has. apparently, graduated to three-word sentences such as “Put it there”.

Then there is the silence left in the evenings, instead of the not-quite-discernible murmured conversation heard as Micha’el and Tslil catch up with their closest friends in the back garden.

Or the sheer joy of listening to Tslil, Micha’el, and Bernice each constantly enriching their own unique bond with Tao. Three very distinct voices and styles, wrapping Tao in love and security.

Next time I make granola, (following the wonderful recipe shared years ago by our good friends Bobbie and Joe), it is going to be a very quiet process. This is in contrast to last time, when Tao added all of the ingredients according to my instructions. I, of course, had to be generous with the nuts and seeds, because Tao, like his grandpa, has to taste everything as he goes along. If anything, Tao granola tastes even better than my usual batch (even if it does take twice as long to make, and three times as long to clear up the counter-top and sweep the floor). The granola is one lingering trace that he has left behind for me.

Above even all of that is the silence left when we are not sitting around the dinner table with our four children and our grandson. Hearing our seven voices (or, rather, their six voices and my hiss) in inter-weaving harmony has been the greatest pleasure of their trip, for me.

Bernice and I spent Thursday packing away the toys and books that we had taken down from the wardrobes, or bought specially (in the hope that they will be a good investment for the future – no pressure). We also packed up and put aside items we had borrowed (thank you, Metanel for the Lego, Gan Horim for the wheelbarrow and Hagit for the mattress.)

This involved a fair bit of dismantling, squeezing into boxes and retrieving marbles and pieces of Lego from behind sofas. When we had finished, we sat down and surveyed the vast, empty expanses of our salon. (It’s true what they say about bringing in the goat!)

Incidentally, our best buy, without a doubt, was a balance trike or bimba (no pedals) that folds down quickly and simply, is light but extremely sturdy, and cost only 60 shekels. At home, Tao spends a lot of time on his quad bike (pardon the oxymoron) and we wanted him to have a substitute here, which certainly got very good use.

It was, for us, a great visit, and the ease with which Tao settled in was wonderful and very reassuring to see. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks after they arrived, the municipality closed off and started digging up the little playground just at the top of our street, which Tao visited daily. The renovation is still not finished, so we had to find another suitable park further away.

However, even this cloud had a silver lining. While the playground no longer boasts swings, slides or roundabouts, it does have a roller and a digger. Since this latter is just about Tao’s favourite thing, we were able to spend lots of time standing in the 38^o heat, with the desert sun beating down on us, watching the digger loading up a big blue truck and spread a fine layer of dust over all of us. Who needs seesaws?!

Even that I miss. And so, we hang in abeyance, wistfully awaiting the next invasion. Meanwhile, I have to start practising speaking laconically, so here goes.

Bye.

I nearly fell of the path into the wadi on my walk yesterday. Let me tell you how that happened. But, be warned, this is a long, tortuous and fairly pointless explanation, which takes us past some of the icons of twentieth century entertainment.

The more erudite of my readers will already have guessed that two of those icons are Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, because they will have recognized this week’s title as a quote (the most famous quote) from To Have and Have Not. This is, in fact, a complete red herring, although I welcome any excuse to watch again that iconic scene.

There is, of course, the added frisson of knowing that we are watching the first moments of what was to become the real-life love of Bogart and Bacall. With benefit of 20/20 hindsight, we are confident that we can see the chemistry on the screen.

Falsely referencing the film also gives me an excuse to casually let drop two pieces of trivia about that scene. It was not originally in the script co-written by William Faulkner, nor in the Ernest Hemingway novel on which the film is, very loosely, based. The author of those lines was Howard Hawks, the film’s director, who wrote them as a screen test for debut actress Lauren Bacall.

Her performance in the screen test not only won her the part, but also compelled Hughes to insist Faulkner work the scene into the film. No mean achievement: Hawks made the only film ever adapted by a Nobel Prize winner from the novel of a Nobel Prize winner, and then he himself penned the film’s most memorable lines.

The other piece of trivia, which I find touching but you might think is a little saccharine, is that thirteen years later, at Bogart’s funeral, Bacall placed a whistle in his coffin.

However, as I said, this post has nothing to do with any of that. I must apologise for misleading you there. I should, in fact, have added two words to the title; it would then read: You Just Put Your Lips Together and…blow…and…draw.

The even more erudite of my readers may realise that ‘draw’ here is, in a particular context, the correct technical term for ‘suck’, so that the quote means You Just…Blow and Suck. And what is that context? Playing the harmonica.

And who, I ask you, is the twentieth-century icon of harmonica playing (or as he insisted on calling it, mouth-organ playing)? Well, your answer to that question will tell me a lot about you. If you say: ‘I don’t know any twentieth-century harmonica icons’, then you are either not British or American, or you are British and under 55, or you are American and under 85. If, on the other hand, you say: ‘Why, Larry Adler, of course!’, then you are the reverse…or a harmonicafficianado.

Which brings me back to my walk, and my narrow escape from tumbling into the wadi. I was striding along, listening to a typically quirky and fascinating edition of the Revisionist History podcast that I recommended last week. when I heard Malcolm Gladwell say:

“Larry Adler was the greatest harmonica player in the world. Your grandparents would know who he was.”

I was a bit surprised at that, but then I decided that Gladwell’s target audience are probably in their 30s, and Adler shone in the 40s, 50s and 60s, so maybe the ‘grandparent’ reference wasn’t so outrageous. But then Gladwell continued:

“I have to admit I’d never heard of him…”

That statement shocked me so much that I almost lost my footing. How could he possibly not have heard of Larry Adler? Everybody knows Larry Adler!

Back home, I first googled Malcolm Gladwell to discover that he is 63 years old. Even making allowances for the fact that he grew up in small-town Canada, his self-professed ignorance made me feel 80 years old.

I then started WhatsApping assorted friends and relations of various ages and of British and American origin. I started with a couple of Americans, one in his early sixties and the other in her early seventies, both people of culture and sophistication and lovers of good music. Neither of them had any idea who Larry Adler was. I followed with a Brit in his 40s, and drew a similar blank. (He tentatively wondered whether Adler had played J. R. Ewing in Dallas.)

At this point, I was starting to wonder whether I was losing touch with reality, or whether Malcolm Gladwell had got together with a group of my family and friends to play an elaborate trick on me. Imagine my relief when I turned in desperation to Bernice and her reaction was identical to mine.

Further enquiries led me to the conclusion mentioned earlier, that the only people who know of Larry Adler are British and over 55, or American and over 85.

‘Why?’, I asked myself. ‘Why this age difference?’ I knew that Adler had spent a lot of time in Britain, but plenty of American celebrities in the 50s and 60s toured in Britain. And then I did a little research and discovered the obvious answer. But before I share it with you, let’s go back and trace Adler’s career from its beginnings.

I read online that he told the story of how, at the age of two, he went off alone, and was discovered by his parents standing on a pool table in a neighbourhood saloon singing a popular song of the time. However, as Adler himself pointed out in an interview: ‘Raconteur is a very polite word for liar,’ and at least some of his wonderful stories probably need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

What is well documented is that Adler taught himself harmonica as a child. At the age of 14, he ran away from his home in Baltimore, with $25 that he had saved from winning music contests. He arrived in New York, where he sneaked into a theatre to audition for Rudy Vallée. This led to vaudeville work, and eventually, to a career in film. In 1934, he played Rhapsody in Blue for George Gershwin, who commented: ‘The goddam thing sounds as if I wrote it for you!’ If you listen to Adler playing it, you can see what Gershwin meant.

The same year, he was hired to perform in London, where he became an overnight star. British audiences seemed more receptive to the harmonica, and, reportedly, harmonica sales in Britain spiked as his fame grew. His repertoire always included popular and classical music. (In his debut competition, as a 13-year-old, while other kids were playing folk music, he performed a Beethoven minuet. He won the competition, of course.)

Between 1936 and 1954, he premiered music written for him by half-a-dozen classical composers, including Vaughan Williams’ Romance in D flat for harmonica, piano and string orchestra, Milhaud’s Suite Anglaise and Malcolm Arnold’s Harmonica Concerto.

In the 1940s, Adler toured in the States and internationally with Paul Draper, a tap dancer. Draper was clearly no slouch, as you can see here, and their show was a great success. During the Second World War, he played for the troops, travelling with Jack Benny and other big names.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the reveal. Suddenly, in 1948, Adler and Draper found all their usual bookings cancelled. The reason, as you may have guessed, was that they had both been accused of being communists.

Adler was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and, when he refused to co-operate (he claims that he was given a list of 12 names to ‘expose’), he was blacklisted. He sued, and the case resulted in a hung jury.

Then and there, Adler turned his back on the USA, and, although he returned later to perform there, he never lived there again, making his home in London, where his celebrity continued to grow.

As well as being a wonderful interpreter of others’ music, Adler was also a prolific composer – although, since he did not read music, he was unable to write any of it down. He began a new career as a composer of film music, starting, in 1954, with the English (very English) comedy about rival vintage-car drivers taking part in the London-to-Brighton rally, Genevieve. The film was a huge hit in Britain, and the music was nominated for an Oscar. Please have a listen: it’s a delightful piece in its own right, and Adler plays it with gusto and virtuosity.

Of course, when the film was released in America, all mention of Adler was removed, and the Oscar nomination was in the name of the music arranger. As Adler later commented: ‘How fortunate that it did not win.’ Eventually, the Academy righted that wrong, and restored Adler’s name on the nomination.

Adler went from strength to strength in Britain, culminating with an album of Gershwin songs recorded with George Martin for Adler’s 80^th birthday in 1994. The album reached No 2 in the British charts, although that may have something to do with the format. Each track was sung by an invited guest, accompanied by and orchestra and Adler. The guests were: Chris de Burgh, Sting, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John, Carly Simon, Elvis Costello, Cher, Kate Bush, Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Oleta Adams, Willard White, Sinéad O’Connor, Robert Palmer, Meat Loaf, Issy Van Randwyck. Adler promoted the album on tour, opening each concert with a performance of Rhapsody in Blue in which he played piano and harmonica simultaneously!

In 2001, Adler was one of a galaxy of stars who performed for Prince Philip’s 80th birthday. He counted Prince Philip as a friend, since he was a member of the Thursday Club, the dining and drinking luncheon club that featured in an episode of The Crown and that apparently counted among its members Arthur Koestler, Cecil Beaton, John Betjeman, the Kray twins, David Niven, Peter Ustinov and Kim Philby. Limitations of time prevent me giving the background of that extraordinarily motley crew. If you do not recognize the names, an hour’s googling is liable to raise your eyebrows.

So, if Larry Adler is someone you had never heard of before, consider your musical education now a little more rounded, and, as an encore, listen to him enoying himself playing Summertime with Itzhak Perlman.

I have to go now, to welcome back – for their last three days in Israel – the kids and Tao, who seems to have been enjoying himself up North.

The other day, a friend who had read last week’s post specifically made a point of asking me to “keep giving us the medical updates; they’re so funny.” I’ve been wrestling with this comment ever since, trying to decide whether I should feel flattered or insulted. On balance, I’ve decided that, if I have to suffer this string of health issues, at least let it be of some small benefit, bringing a smile to other’s people’s day.

I thought this week I would offer you a bouquet of vignettes, in no particular order. We will get back to my health, tangentially, later, but first:

One of the things that Micha’el and Tslil have discovered during their time here is that the interface of Portuguese and Israeli bureaucracies is the equivalent of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.

I looked up ‘marriage’ in the dictionary: ‘the legally or formally recognized union of two people as partners in a personal relationship’. While Micha’el and Tslil, in their own eyes, formalized their relationship in a wedding ceremony, this was not a ceremony legally or formally recognized in Israel. According to the Israeli authorities, they are not married.

Portugal is a very traditional, Catholic country, and various administrative and bureaucratic procedures will be much easier for Micha’el and Tslil, as well as for Tao, if they are married. They therefore intend to get married in a civil ceremony. This will be in Portugal, not least because civil wedding ceremonies conducted in Israel are not recognized in Israel. (But that’s a whole other story.)

To prove their eligibility to be married, they are required by the Portuguese authorities to provide evidence that they are not already married. When they approached the Israeli authorities to request such evidence, they were informed that Israel does not issue formal recognition of single status. Rereading the last sentence of the last-but-one paragraph, I realize that it has two possible interpretations:

According to the Israeli authorities, they are not ‘married’. In other words, there is no record of them having been through a marriage ceremony.

According to the Israeli authorities, they are ‘not married’. In other words, there is a record of them not having been through any marriage ceremony.

The Portuguese authorities require this second interpretation, but the Israeli authorities do not recognize this.

The kids are left having to try to convince the Israeli authorities to issue a formal statement, while simultaneously trying to convince the Portuguese authorities to waive the requirement for a formal statement. I have a hunch about how this will pan out in the end, but I am, for the moment, keeping my own counsel.

While the kids have wrestled with these, and other, admin issues, Tao has started to get adjusted to life in Ma’ale Adumim. He was initially overwhelmed by the volume of traffic here: ‘Bus! Truck! Car! Digger! Motorbike!’. (Those of you who know Ma’ale Adumim will realize that this indicates just how sleepy Penamacor is.)

He has also had to cope with far more people at one time than he is used to. On Tuesday last week, we invited friends to hear Micha’el talk about their life, their plans, and his interest in water management. On Wednesday, we had our extended family over. As the last guests arrived, Tao was heard to say: ‘More?’.

Among the questions Micha’el was asked on both evenings was whether Tao is in any ‘framework’. I was, of course, unable to take part in the conversation, because I have to rest my voice. Had I been able to chip in, I would have said: ‘Yes! He is in the best possible framework – the nuclear family.’ Anyone who has spent any time seeing Tslil and Micha’el with Tao will understand what I mean.

My accumulated frustration over those two evenings at being unable to take a meaningful part in the conversation made me determined to find a way to change this. I managed to cobble together a kind of solution. I activated the Select to Speak functionality on my phone. This allows me to type a note on my phone, then select it, and have my device speak it aloud.

I haven’t yet tried this out in company, but it was very useful when we went to Kfar Saba last week. Bernice was driving, so I obviously couldn’t message her or show her notes on my phone. However, I was able to ‘play’ those notes to her.

Of course, this is not an ideal solution. Despite my carefully choosing a male voice not dissimilar to my own, my device insists on selecting a female voice. This leaves me feeling like a transgender whose wishes are being ignored.

What actually pains me more is that the voice has no sense of irony, no nuances of stress. All of my sparkling wit is blandly flattened.

Worst of all, repartee is impossible. When Bernice made a comment, I immediately thought of a riposte, typed it, activated the functionality and highlighted the text. My brilliant reply arrived about 40 seconds after Bernice’s comment. My wit suddenly had the turning circle of a transatlantic liner. This was not so much l’esprit de l’escalier as l’esprit de corpse.

Over Shabbat, of course, things were even more challenging. On several occasions, I resorted to miming. Now, our family are very fond of charades, and Bernice and I pride ourselves on being pretty good at miming, and, after almost 49 years of marriage, at guessing as well. However, it is one thing to mime ‘Dr Strangelove’, and quite another to mime ‘Adele and Martin went to an exhibition about the Czechoslovak Jewish teenage refugees who were brought to Britain after the war’.

This was, let us say, a quiet Shabbat, much given to reading and contemplation.

Indeed, Bernice and I are enjoying/suffering a respite from the kids. They went up to stay with Esther and Ma’ayan for a few days, and also to spend shabbat with Tslil’s family, camping on the Kinneret.

In all of these various groups, Tao has blossomed. He has been playing happily with his cousins, interacting with the various adults he has met for the first time, and moving effortlessly between English and Hebrew. It does not seem as though he will have a problem socialising as he gets older.

And finally*, for today, a recommendation. I know I am coming late to the party, and I also know that I have made this recommendation to several of you individually, but nevertheless…

On my morning walks, I have been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast Revisionist History. This podcast describes itself as ‘Malcolm Gladwell’s journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past — an event, a person, an idea, even a song — and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.’

It is quirky, stimulating, amusing, fascinating. Gladwell convinces me that these are all subjects he is interested in (and the personal anecdotes that accompany many of the episodes certainly reinforce that impression).

The podcast also passes my two tests. First, despite the fact that Gladwell has a transatlantic accent (albeit Canadian), and despite the fact that I have been listening to an episode a day for six days in a row, neither the voice, nor the mannerisms, nor the structure, are yet grating on me at all. The subjects Gladwell selects are very wide-ranging (if, not unreasonably, US-centric), and the format and ‘take’ of each edition is very different.

The second test is that Gladwell can present a subject in which I have zero interest – Elvis Presley in performance, for example – and have me completely absorbed in his presentation. This is, for me, the mark of true communicators: they sweep you up in their enthusiasm.

*‘Finally’, of course, means except for the pictures. Tao has this week been learning chess with amateurs, as well as studying patisserie with a professional – his aunty ‘Es’.

Sunday

It’s good to know that there are some things you can always depend on. In a constantly changing world, there are still some immutables. Nobody could have predicted what corona has done over the last 15 months to the entire world. It’s a brave man who would have bet on the exact combination of parties that currently form Israel’s coalition government. Even Roger and Rafa may be passing their sell-by date.

And yet, reliable as ever, whenever man proposes, God can still be relied upon to dispose. This time last week, I blithely wrote, regarding my health: I don’t see the need to issue further bulletins.

And then……. And then…….

I’ve been sounding hoarse and repeatedly clearing my throat for a couple of months now, and last Sunday I felt sufficiently recovered from my hip operation to introduce my family doctor to yet another part of my anatomy. (He and I have long agreed that, considering that I have so many things wrong with me, I am remarkably healthy.) He saw me at 5 the same afternoon, took a quick look at my throat and then told me to wait outside while he contacted the ENT clinic to get me an urgent appointment. That rather spooked me.

9 o’clock the next morning found Bernice and myself very nervously waiting to be seen by a specialist, who seemed, by contrast, remarkably calm (But then, it wasn’t his throat!). He gave me a swift examination with a mirror, remained very calm, and then informed me that I had throat polyps. He didn’t examine me further or take a biopsy, but simply prescribed a throat spray for a month, and advised me to talk no more than necessary, and even then not to speak loudly or sing. I have an appointment to see him again after a month.

So, I have been inundating Bernice with WhatsApps several hundred times a day, and, when friends visited on Shabbat, I spent a lot of time nodding, and a little time trying, and mostly failing, to make a contribution to the conversation by assertive whispering. (This is, of course, an oxymoron and physical impossibility – and, incidentally, may cause more damage than normal speaking, according to Dr Google.) Tslil sees this month as a wonderful opportunity for me to meditate and get in touch with my inner self. (I’ll give that a moment to sink in.) Even after several years, she really doesn’t know me very well.

Over the last weeks I have had a few mood swings, particularly when I convinced myself that I was not making further progress in strengthening my legs. However, in the last couple of days I have started feeling improvement again, and have made some occasionally successful attempts to stay sunny. Bernice has, of course, as always, been incredibly understanding, and cut me far more slack than I deserve. After a very encouraging and reassuring visit from the physiotherapist earlier today, I feel a lot happier.

The greatest frustration has been that I am now no longer able to talk or read to Tao in any normal way. He has been as understanding as his nana, and we’ve developed a couple of games where I move my joints in response to commands from Tao, and we have also started reading very familiar books where I turn the pages and Tao tells the story. However, it is not easy for me to keep him engaged for more than a few minutes, without sliding into talking, which I really want to avoid.

Fortunately, I am now able to accompany Tao and Bernice on walks and to the park, and tomorrow we are planning to have a grandparents’ day out at the zoo with Tao.

Monday

And yet, reliable as ever, whenever man proposes, God can still be relied upon to dispose. This time yesterday, I blithely wrote: and tomorrow we are planning to have a grandparents’ day out at the zoo with Tao.

And then……. And then…….

I woke up this morning feeling dizzy and light-headed. Bernice is confident that it is nothing more than the effects of dehydration during the (very hot) night, after fasting yesterday. I probably just didn’t drink enough yesterday evening.

I’m a lot better now (apart from feeling awful that this blog is turning into a rejected screenplay for an episode of Dr Kildare), and I really only bore you with it to explain why, as Bernice and Tao watch the penguins being fed, and ride the zoo train, I sit here feeling sorry for myself and burdening you with my troubles in a way that I would never dream of doing if I were talking to you face to face…even assuming that I was able to talk to you face to face without aggravating either my polyps or you, or indeed, judging by how my luck is currently running, both.

And then, no sooner do I type that last thought, than I realise just how wonderfully my luck is actually running. We are currently in the middle of Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s five-and-a-half week visit, during which we’ve been able to celebrate Micha’el’s birthday. With Esther and Ma’ayan, all seven of us have been able to spend time together. I’m recovering reassuringly well from my hip replacement op; in fact, my physiotherapist tells me I should no longer consider myself ‘after an op’. I have the most supportive family imaginable, led by the woman with whom I make a perfect match: I honestly don’t deserve her, and she definitely doesn’t deserve me. I have no idea what I did right in a previous existence, or she did wrong, but both acts must have been humungous.

Right! Enough of this cloying nonsense. If I’m going to gush, let me gush about two-and-a-quarter years of sheer delight – Tao. Rather than submit you to another 500 words of elaborating on his placid character, his powers of concentration, his sense of humour, his manual dexterity, his already evident self-possession, let me leave you with a video.

For his birthday, Micha’el and the family went to a climbing gym, or, as we afficionados call it (so I’m told), a bouldering gym. Dressed in his climbing shoes, Tao belied his tender years in a display of concentrated awareness both of space and of his body. His every move was considered, and his bodily control was almost perfect. (Alright then, just a little gush.) Perhaps most impressively, he had confidence in his abilities to go so far, and then he calmly decided when the time had come for him to descend. (Fortunately, his nana and grandpa weren’t there; if we had been, he would never have climbed so high, trust me!

Medical Bulletin: Making great progress. Walked 2 km today without using the stick. I don’t see the need to issue further bulletins. Thanks for all your good wishes.

I’ve been reading quite a lot of books this last couple of weeks, and doing a certain amount of thinking about books, and I decided this week I’d share some of those thoughts with you. I know that some of you are rather turned off by my musings on literature, but please don’t stop reading just yet. I hope this might be a bit more accessible than usual.

Let me first tell you some of the titles I’ve been reading, re-reading and thinking about: Inside, Outside, Upside Down; Five Minutes’ Peace; Meg and Mog; Grandma Goes Shopping; Where the Wild Things Are. Yes, this has been a fortnight of children’s picture books, and I must say it has been a real pleasure revisiting old favourites and discovering new treasures, and a double pleasure reading them to a totally absorbed and very appreciative listener and viewer, albeit one who knows very well what he likes and what he doesn’t. As the days have passed, I have found myself musing, not for the first time, about writing story books for young children. After all, how difficult can it be? All it takes is 200 words and a talented illustrator.

Well, the last month has given us all a painful reminder of the fact that not everybody can succeed in this endeavour. Even if you are a Hollywood actress, even if you are married to a prince, and even if you are a close friend of Oprah, you can still produce a children’s book that is a total embarrassment. If this has somehow flown under your radar, then I invite you to read The New Statesman’s searing review of The Bench, by Merghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.

Almost all of the books Tao has here (many of them saved from Esther and Micha’el’s childhoods) range from good to brilliant, but one or two have me puzzled. I am always surprised how much Tao enjoys one particular book about a builder constructing a bedroom over the garage for a family with a new baby. The book could virtually serve as a do-it-yourself manual: it goes into details of laying floor timbers, mixing sand, cement and lime to make mortar, nailing rafters, laying roofing felt, and so on and so forth. We even see the builder giving the customer a quote for the job.

There is little humour to lift the story, and both the storyline and the prose are…prosaic. Yet Tao finds it fascinating. Of course, this may be because he already realises that it is very much in his own interest to acquire all of these construction skills as early as possible.

Thinking about the books that he and I both agree are well worth reading, I have been drawing a few conclusions, which I present here.

The most successful books are those that engage both the adult (usually parent) reader and viewer and the child listener and viewer. There are two ways to achieve this. The easier way is to interweave humour and interest for the child with humour and interest for the adult. We are used to seeing this in the realm of film with the work of Pixar Animation Studios, whose full-length films almost always combine two sets of content so that they appeal to parents and children. In a children’s picture book, with its inherent limitation on number of words, it is much more difficult to sustain both plot strands.

The more challenging, but more economical, way is to present a single set of content that simultaneously appeals, at two different levels, to parents and children. Jill Murphy’s Five Minutes’ Peace achieves this, by focusing on the relationship between a mother elephant who desperately wants to have a quiet, soaky bath by herself, and her three children who constantly demand her attention.

The dialogue in this book is pitch-perfect: Murphy captures with complete accuracy the speech of mother and children. This must help the child listener identify with the elephant ‘children’, and certainly any mother of three children, or even one child, yearns, like Mrs Large, for five minutes’ peace. The book is accompanied by illustrations that highlight the humour of the situation, and despite the surface conflict of interests, both text and illustration make it clear how warm and close the bond between this mother and her children is.

Of course, picture books do not need to deal with everyday situations. The only thing unusual about Five Minutes’ Peace is that the family are not people but elephants. The Meg and Mog series of books, on the other hand, are about a witch who is always casting magic spells, and her adventures with her cat and owl. I wish I could ask Tao what he enjoys about these books, since he has no conception of what a witch is. I should perhaps ask Esther, whose absolute favourite Meg was, but I doubt whether she can remember exactly what appealed to her at age two.

The illustrations here are very stark, lacking the softness and the domestic detail of Five Minutes’ Peace. They do not expand the horizons of the story, but rather illustrate with great clarity the core plot. The regularity with which Meg’s spells go amusingly wrong and the strong personalities of all three characters make the books enjoyable to read. There is a briskness and energy in text and illustrations, and the text dances all over the illustrations, making an excitingly integrated whole. The word count is about as low as it can be while still narrating a rich story without becoming incoherent. Where Five Minutes’ Peace includes 460 words in 26 pages, Meg and Mog, in 28 pages, contains only 230 words.

A different kind of surrealism can be found in Grandma Goes Shopping, a book that takes an everyday character in an everyday situation, and weaves a bizarre story from this. Finding that the cupboard is bare, and Grandpa is ready for dinner, Grandma goes shopping. Her purchases begin with an amiable alligator and include a bicycle made for two and a variegated vicuna. However, they also include a round cheese and a fish for frying, which means that, in the last picture, we can see Grandma and Grandpa sitting down to a healthy meal.

The text is cumulative – the entire list is recited after each new purchase – which gives the listener ample opportunity to become used to the strange items and obscure words. In parallel with this growing list, the illustrations are packed with the kind of detail that an engaged viewer will love. A mouse that is not mentioned once in the text nevertheless appears in every illustration in a completely different place. Tao also finds great interest in some backgrounds that surprised me. For example, he always spends time identifying the various vehicles on an overpass in one picture – a background that I don’t think I registered until he drew my attention to it.

Looking back, it seems to me that all of my selections so far have been British – some of them very British, so it only seems fair to finish with two books from across the pond.

The first is a Berenstain Bear book: Inside, Outside, Upside Down. In the unlikely event that you are looking for a picture book to teach positional and directional spatial adverbs and prepositions, then this is the book for you. If, on the other hand, you just want a fun book to look at with a toddler, then this is still the book for you. Its 27 pages contain only 66 words, which means that any reader is going to have to improvise. Fortunately, the lively illustrations give reader/viewer and listener/viewer plenty to talk about. Since Tao is fascinated by the concept of position, he loves this book. He is particularly fond of ‘under’, specifically in the context of: ‘How far do I have to push my cars under the sofa so that we will need to use grandpa’s walking stick to get them out?’

And finally, the book that I haven’t yet persuaded Tao to let me read him. He is, in fairness, probably not yet ready for it, but I can’t wait until he is, because Where the Wild Things Are demonstrates just how great an art children’s picture books can be. The prose sings; the pictures dance. The narrative speaks to children and their parents simultaneously. As Max goes deeper and deeper into the imagined world, the illustrations take over the page, leaving no room for text; as he is pulled back to the real world, the text drives out the illustrations again. Celebrating both the power of children’s imagination and the strength of family love, Where the Wild Things Are is a magical journey and a profound lesson for children and their parents.

Well, that’s 1490 words, so I’m stopping here (and keeping the other 56 books on my list for another time). I’d love you to leave your recommendations in the comments. We’re always on the lookout.

No videos this week, I’m afraid, but I managed to catch a couple of reading sessions.