At my grammar school (high school for my trans-pond readers), one of the Classics masters was a mildly eccentric character who could easily be deflected from the topic of the lesson by an ostensibly innocent question from a pupil. There was a running competition in the school to see which class could manage, using this method, to get this teacher to speak on the largest number of subjects in one 40-minute lesson. I believe the record was 47. (Incidentally, this was one of the more gentle examples of ways in which we tormented our teachers. The more I look back on my own childhood, the more convinced I am that William Golding, in his dystopian novel Lord of the Flies, painted far too rosy a picture of pre-pubescent boyhood in post-War middle-class England.) Anyway, I invite you to count the number of topics in this week’s rambling and entirely trivial post.

I have only walked out of the cinema in the middle of a film twice. Once I gave up on Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils, from Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun via John Whiting’s stage play. In a family blog like this, I can’t go into the intricacies of the plot but two of the film’s publicity taglines were ‘There have never been exorcisms like this’ and ‘Hell will hold no surprises for them’; so you can imagine! The film starred Oliver Reed in one of his more understated performances (which was almost the only understated thing in the film), and I can, having now put 49 years between it and me, remember little else, thankfully.

The second film I walked out of was Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). You may know this film first hand, or you may know it from regular references to it (largely by Graeme Garden), in BBC Radio 4’s self-styled ‘antidote to panel games’ I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue (ISIHAC). While the programme has fallen off a little since the demise of Humphrey Lyttelton, the jazz trumpeter and bandleader who chaired the show from 1972 until his death in 2007 at the age of 85, it still has me listening, not least to marvel at the continued speed of wit of Barry Cryer, who wrote material for many of Britain’s comedy greats in the 1950s-80s, and who,at 84, has lost little of his comic creativity. Please don’t write and tell me that the panel get a week’s warning of the topics in the upcoming edition of ISIHAC. I prefer to live with my illusions (particularly as 84 seems to me less distant than ever). You can hear a typical archive edition of the programme here, but be warned: the humour is very British and very schoolboy.

Or (to return to the second sentence of the last paragraph), you may never have heard of Bring Me the Head… If so, let me explain that the title is a quote from an American Mafia boss on discovering that his daughter is pregnant by said Alfredo. The remainder of the film, which I have always thought of as Peckinpah’s blood-soaked parody of 1963’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (but which he apparently regarded as the only one of his films on which he did not have to compromise with studio executives, and which appeared on the screen exactly as he envisioned it), documents various people’s efforts to retrieve and hold onto the eponymous head, in order to bring it to the mafia boss and collect the one-million-dollar reward.

The only other thing you really need to know, for the purpose of this post, is that the central character, who initially retrieves the severed head from the grave, keeps it in a drawstring canvas bag on the passenger seat of his convertible as he drives across the Nevada desert, so that, as the film progresses, the bag attracts more and more flies.

And so to the topic of this week’s post, which is my adventures last Friday at the hotel where we are staying. Because we sleep over at the house on Friday nights, we have to check out of the hotel every Friday morning, and check in again every Saturday night. Seeing how under-occupied the hotel is, we requested to keep our belongings in the room over shabbat, to avoid having to physically pack, vacate the room, and then unpack the following night. The hotel readily agreed.

Last Friday morning, Micha’el whatsapped me at about 6:30 to ask if I was/we were awake, and, if so, whether I/we could come over early, to relieve them after a not-so-good night with the baby. I was awake, but Bernice wasn’t, so I got up, dressed, grabbed a quick breakfast, then went back to our room to collect our drawstring laundry bag, since we were planning to do a wash and tumble dry before shabbat.

As I was walking across the (fairly large) lobby area on my way to the car, it suddenly struck me that: a) the hotel staff at the desk had only ever seen Bernice and myself leave the hotel together; b) we usually left around 9 to 9:30, whereas it was now 7:15; c) I was carrying a drawstring canvas bag of about the right size and shape to contain a severed head. To my relief, the desk was unstaffed, and I managed to reach the hotel doors unspotted by any of the staff.

At about 2 the same afternoon, while waiting for the hallot to rise prior to giving them a wash of egg and putting them in the oven, I suddenly realized that I had left my chumash (the book containing the Torah reading that I needed for shabbat) in the hotel. So I set my phone countdown timer for 25 minutes (after which time the challa would need my attention), asked Bernice to turn the oven on in 20 minutes, and set off for the hotel (a 5-minute drive away).

Which is where Hudson Hawk comes in. This 1991 comedy crime caper is, for me (or, rather, was, in 1991 – whether my tastes have changed I couldn’t say) a delightful piece of fluff, with Bruce Willis proving as entertaining as he was playing opposite Cybill Shepherd in the TV series Moonlighting. In Hudson Hawk, he plays an art thief who works with a partner. On the job, they calculate how long they have to carry out the job, and Hudson, from his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Great American Songbook, and of the standard versions of those songs, selects a song that is exactly the right length. The two thieves then sing said song concurrently but separately, to time and synchronize their exploits. (Among their choices, for example, is Bing Crosby’s rendition of Swinging on a Star.)

So there I was, entering the hotel, with 20 minutes still on the clock. I knew deep down that, if I was seen by the desk clerk, I could easily explain that I had forgotten something in the room, but I nevertheless hoped to get in and out without being seen. Again, the desk was unmanned at the time. I reached our room, to discover that it hadn’t yet been made up. I assumed that they were leaving that until the next day, and it occurred to me that I had just enough time to take the shower I had skipped in the morning, in the walk-in shower, in a warm, spacious bathroom, rather than facing a colder, over-the-bath-hand-held-showerhead shower in the house, made all the more exciting by the chance that someone would, at the same time, use the kitchen sink (which is upstream from the bathroom), thereby giving me the dubious pleasure of being frozen or scalded almost to death. I brought my phone into the bathroom, and calculated I had just enough time. Indeed, I managed to complete my shower, dry myself off and get dressed except for my socks and shoes, before I heard a tap at the door. I toyed for a moment with the idea of tiptoeing across the room, silently opening the balcony French window, slipping outside, swinging over the railing and hanging by my fingertips until whoever was at the door had let themselves in, finished and left the room. (I blame this fantasy on the fact that one of the hotel TV channels had just run a season of the Bourne films.) However, I soon saw sense, and opened the room door, to see two chambermaids. It only took a moment or two of pointing to my watch then holding up two fingers (in the nicest possible way), while muttering ‘Dos minutos’ (with no idea whether this was the Portuguese equivalent of Dog Latin), for them to understand, express what I assumed from their body language was agreement, and start to walk away. A glance at my watch told me I still had 7 minutes, so I hastily completed my dressing, picked up my chumash (remember that?) and left the room. I caught up with the chambermaids and proudly used almost half of my Portuguese: ‘Desculpe. Obrigado. Boa tarde!’ (‘So sorry! Thank you! Good afternoon!’) I found myself wishing that their cleaning trolley had included a bag of spelt flour, so that I could deploy over 50% of my entire stock of vocabulary: ‘Desculpe. Obrigado. O! Farinha de espelta! Boa tarde!’.

I walked swiftly to the hotel door, where I stopped to check how much time I had left on my phone. My phone! Where was it? Aaargh! I had left it in the bathroom. Hastily, I retraced my steps, retrieved my phone from the smiling chambermaids and raced back to the door. Unfortunately, there was a clerk at the desk as I crossed the lobby. Without breaking step, I smiled in my most winning way, waved my chumash and called out: ‘Would you believe it? I forgot this book this morning’, and went out the door.

Four minutes later, exactly as my phone’s timer started beeping, I pulled up outside the house.

And that was my Hollywood Friday!

I’ll do my best to provide more serious content next week.

Meanwhile, here’s Tao helping me to make challa. Note that he appreciates this is a serious business.

Remember: If you want less of the meanderings of my stream of consciousness, and more of the kids’ progress, you can follow, subscribe to, and like their youtube channel.

The title of this week’s post is borrowed from a book I first read over 50 years ago. In the 1940s and 50s, a number of books were published evoking life in the shtetls (the Jewish rural communities of Eastern Europe), a life that was utterly destroyed in the Shoah. The most famous and the most warmly received of these books was Life Is with People, which grew out of a broad academic study at Columbia University led by Margaret Mead. There were two things I did not know at the time I read it. The first was that its idealized and romanticized picture of shtetl life was largely rejected and scorned by academics: it is a very warm and fuzzy read, but there are apparently many places where it sacrifices accuracy on the altar of sentimentality. The second was that the co-author, anthropologist Mark Zborovski, was, when he wasn’t at his day job, an influential Russian spy. I kid you not. You can read more about the book and about Zborovski’s extraordinary story, in this article from Jewish Review of Books.

The reason why I have borrowed this title is because Micha’el and Tslil’s experiences since they first arrived in the village of Penamacor five months ago have demonstrated very clearly what it means to be welcomed into a small, close-knit community. I had been thinking for some time about writing about this aspect of village life, and events this past week helped me decide that now is the time. Even before the kids moved in, in the few days I spent house-hunting last June, I already felt some of this sense of community. The estate agent (realtor) who showed me the house we eventually bought (Eventually? From first viewing to transfer of ownership was only 55 days!) is Anabella Gaspar. a very friendly woman in her 30s with whom I quickly developed a warm relationship, even though her English was marginally less good than my Portuguese. We did a lot of gormless smiling at each other.

We had corresponded for a few weeks before my trip: she in English (courtesy of Google Translate), and I in Portuguese (likewise). In one afternoon, accompanied by an English-speaking colleague, she showed me three properties. The first remarkable fact was that all three properties met the criteria I had given her. (My experience in Israel is that estate agents always believe they know better than you what you are looking for…or, rather, they believe that their powers of persuasion are so remarkable that they will be able to sell you whatever property they most want to move, regardless of your needs.)

At the end of the viewings, she gave me a three-page questionnaire, inviting me to comment in detail on what I had liked and disliked about the properties I had seen. This is something I’ve never encountered before, but it really makes sense. In our case, we bought one of the three houses I viewed; in the event, however, that we had rejected all three, the agency already had a clearly-documented and detailed analysis of what we were looking for.

In the following weeks, we continued to correspond, while Bernice and I waited for the results of a ‘check-up’ we ordered for the house, for confirmation that the renovations we wanted were feasible, and for a detailed estimate. During this time, Anabella was anxiously pressing us for a decision, but always in slightly formal and very polite language, her emails always beginning: ‘Dear Mr David…’

When the sale was completed, Anabella sent me an extravagantly grateful email. When, a couple of months later, the kids moved in, she came round with a bottle of wine as a token of her gratitude. She was not to know that we couldn’t drink it because of kashrut, and the kids wouldn’t drink it because they don’t drink alcohol; it was a lovely thought.

Over the following weeks, she proceeded to take the kids under her wing. She accompanied them on their first trip to the health clinic, and introduced them to all the key people. She became their go-to person for advice on all matters Penamacorean. During our first stay in November, when Tslil needed to go to A&E one Sunday morning (Don’t worry: all was OK), the kids phoned Anabella to ask her which hospital she advised them to go to. (There are two fairly equidistant, about 35 minutes’ drive away.) She immediately came round to the house, with her husband, who happens to be an ambulance driver. They advised on which hospital to use, and we were only just able to persuade the husband that he didn’t need to drive in front of Micha’el all the way to hospital, because google maps would get him there.

And then there are the neighbours. Going up the hill, our immediate neighbours are a couple perhaps a little younger than us. The husband, Joce, was born in Paris, but moved to Penamacor in his childhood and was raised here. He spent his working life in Paris, and then retired to Penamacor. We reckon they bought a row of four houses (which I never even managed while playing Monopoly) and converted them into a single home, including putting a covered swimming pool in the back garden. Every detail of that description should indicate to you how little they have in common with Micha’el and Tslil, and yet… They have proven to be wonderful neighbours, starting with inviting the kids in for tea. This led to a bizarre conversation. They introduced themselves in Portuguese: “We are Joce and Lucrecia – Portugal”, and so the kids introduced themselves as: “Micha’el and Tslil – Israel…and what is your family name?” “Portugal,” was the puzzled and rather puzzling reply. Yes, their family name is indeed Portugal, and the sign bearing that name on the wall of their home is not, as we originally thought, evidence of extreme patriotism, but rather a routine name plaque. On reflection, ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ are both surnames.

When a friend brought the kids a sack of citrus fruit last week, Tslil took a bag of oranges in to Lucrecia, who immediately asked: “Would you like me to make some marmalade and give it to you?”

The kids’ car was due for its annual roadworthiness test last week. This is a 1991 Opel Astra that they bought from a couple they are friendly with, who are in the middle of a period of spending a couple of months in one country then moving to another. In each country they visit, they buy an old car and use it to get around. Micha’el broke off a wing mirror last week on the dirt track to the land, when he was negotiating a particularly treacherous pothole after torrential storms a couple of weeks before we arrived. Obviously they needed to replace the wing mirror before the test, and we suggested that, before the test, it would be wisest to get the car checked, and have any necessary work done in advance. The testing centre is in Castelo Branco, and Micha’el would not want to have the car fail, be forced to leave it in a garage (repair shop) he didn’t know, and have to travel back to Penamacor without the car, then back again to Castelo Branco. Much better to find a local mechanic. Bernice sensibly suggested asking the neighbours, which Micha’el did. Joce was indeed able to recommend a reliable garage, and insisted on leading Micha’el there (10 minutes outside the village) and introducing him to the mechanic, waiting while the car was checked in, and driving Micha’el back. After a couple of days, when Micha’el had not heard from the mechanic, he went next door to ask for a phone number. Joce tried phoning, but was unable to reach the mechanic. Joce then launched a village-wide search to locate him. I believe he had gone to his brother’s smallholding. Anyway, when he was finally reached, he assured Micha’el that everything was progressing well. There were a number of replacement parts needed, and he had ordered them all. Micha’el made it clear to him that he would have expected the mechanic to submit a quote and get Micha’el’s authorisation before starting work and ordering parts, but, naturally, Micha’el agreed to the work, all of which was essential to pass the test. Joce had heard Micha’el’s end of the conversation, and immediately offered to lend Micha’el the money to pay the mechanic. Micha’el assured him that the money was not a problem, but it was important to establish the principle of getting prior approval for work. When the work was finally done, Joce offered to take Micha’el back to the mechanic, but Micha’el explained that I was able to take him.

Incidentally, the car passed the test with flying colours, the tester assuring Micha’el that he had “a very good car there.”

I know that the Portugals have a daughter and grandchildren in Paris, and I imagine they hope that neighbours are looking out for their family in the same way as they are looking out for our family.

These are two extreme examples, but, walking around the village with the kids, and listening to the stories they have to tell, it is clear that they have been made to feel very welcome, by neighbours and nodding acquaintances, bureaucrats and shopkeepers. It is very good to know that our children are living, and our grandson is growing up, in a genuine community.

Speaking of our grandson, he went down to the land yesterday with his father and us, and, while he seemed a little concerned about the condition of the soil, he was very pleased with the new growth.

If you are interested in learning more about Tao’s plans for the land, you can follow, subscribe to, and like his family’s youtube channel.

When I used to travel abroad on business, I usually had a more interesting time than my non-religious Israeli colleagues. They were free to wander unaccosted around whatever major city we found ourselves in, whereas every walk I took was liable to involve an encounter of one kind or another, because my kippa advertised to almost all the world and his wife that I was Jewish.

Only one of these encounters proved less than pleasant. That was when an Israeli confronted me and lectured me for 15 minutes about how he could not bring himself to return to Israel because of the evils of Bibi Netanyahu. I got the distinct impression that, far more than he wanted to convince me that he had made the right decision, he wanted to convince himself.

My most amusing experience was in Thailand. Close to the Bangkok open market, there is a Chabad Centre, which, like all Chabad Centres around the world, offers religious services, free meals on shabbat, and uncritical acceptance of all Jews, and is a magnet for hordes of Israeli backpackers (whether they are religious or not), as well as for Jews from around the world who are in Bangkok on business or holiday. Five minutes’ walk from the Centre there is (or, at least, there was, 17 years ago) a hotel whose bedrooms used locks and keys rather than electronic keycards, which made life easy for orthodox Jews, who would otherwise not be able to access their rooms over shabbat. The hotel offered special weekend rates to any guests who mentioned that they were referred there by Chabad, and the reception staff knew that these observant guests would, on Friday night and Saturday, hand in their room key every time they left the hotel, to avoid infringing the prohibition on carrying any goods from the private domain (the hotel) into the public domain (the street) on Shabbat. The walk from the hotel to the Chabad Centre took you through a street packed with tiny massage parlours, with masseuses sitting on their beds, waiting for customers. As you passed each parlour, the diminutive Thai masseuse would wish you ‘Shabbat Shalom’, which was simultaneously slightl;y surreal and strangely comforting.

Finally, my most bizarre experience was when an elderly Puerto Rican crossed the road in San Juan to ask me whether I was something senior in the Catholic church.

In recent years, I have wondered about the wisdom of wearing a kippa in public outside Israel, and, if I was still travelling frequently, I suspect I would resort to a cap more often than I did 15 years ago.

However, I didn’t think, and still don’t, that I have any reason not to wear a kippa in Penamacor. I got some curious and puzzled looks around the village, but nothing more sinister than that.

However, I did also collect a strange encounter to add to my collection. I mentioned a few weeks ago that we ordered some white goods online. When they were delivered (impressively punctually), the lorry driver and his assistant greeted us with a warm ‘Bom Dias’ and then made short work of wheeling the cooker and washing machine in. As they went out to fetch the tumble dryer, the assistant, who was quite swarthy, with broad features, spotted my kippa and gave me a warm ‘Shalom’. I was mildly, but not very, surprised that ‘Shalom’ had penetrated to rural Portugal; after all, Bill Clinton had made the word famous at Yitchak Rabin’s funeral, and hosting the Eurovision Song Contest three times has possibly done more to bring Israel into people’s living rooms than anything else, so I thought very little of it.

However, when the same young man, after all the goods had been brought in, turned to me again and wished me ‘Shalom Aleichem’, my curiosity was aroused. The phrase may simply denote ‘Peace be to you’, but, as I have attempted to show in my translation, it has rather old-fashioned and faintly religious (sometimes almost ironic) connotations. It is, in short, not a phrase I expected to hear from a European whose only experience of Israelis was from the popular media.

And so, Micha’el asked the young man where he had picked up the phrase, and he explained that he was born in Brazil, and his best friend growing up in Rio de Janeiro had been an orthodox Jewish boy. You can’t hide away, even in Penamacor!

Which brings us to the China shop. My more perceptive readers, noting the upper-case ‘C’, will realise that the china in question is not ceramics, but rather the world’s most populous country.

In recent decades, relations between Portugal and China have warmed considerably. As a result, not only are large national Chinese corporations moving heavily into utilities and transportation in Portugal, but, in addition, large numbers of Chinese, principally from Macau and Shanghai, have moved to Portugal to launch smaller businesses. (Of course, ‘large numbers’ is a relative term, reflecting here the size of the population of Portugal, and not that of China.) To counter its negative population growth and boost employment opportunities, Portugal offers initial tax incentives to non-European foreign nationals moving to Portugal and starting businesses there. 20,000 Chinese have so far moved to Portugal (16,000 of them in the last two decades), though, since the population of Portugal is only about half the population of Shanghai alone, this migration has been felt more in Portugal than in China.

Many of these Chinese have opened shops, the length and breadth of Portugal, selling a wide range of household goods. (Apparently, China produces quite a lot of these goods very cheaply. Who knew?!) Even Penamacor boasts its own China shop, and our major social activity on our first stay in our new home was walking down there to buy a sweater, a pastry brush (a soft bristled one that I had been looking for in Israel for about a year), an electrical extension lead, Shabbat candles, plastic sleeves for filing, aluminium foil disposable baking dishes, a computer mouse, liquid soap, a kettle, and so on. We were in the shop every day (sometimes twice a day), and on only two occasions did they not stock what we were looking for. Once, I wanted a black marker pen, and the shopkeeper, after I had finally managed to explain to her what I wanted, immediately phoned her local triad contact, and the pen was in the store the following day.

On the other occasion, we wanted a bamboo rice steamer, and, paradoxically, that was the one item the China shop could not supply. Go figure!

By the end of our stay, we were firm friends with the shopkeeper, a very warm, cheerful and outgoing Chinese woman who spoke utterly impenetrable Cantonese and (to us) equally impenetrable Portuguese. When she asked Micha’el about the significance of my kippa, it transpired that she had never heard of Israel or Jews).

I would set off the electronic sensor at the shop entrance every time I came in, which is why one of my five sentences in Portuguese is: ‘Tenho um quadril artificial’ – ‘I have an artificial hip’.

When, at the end of our stay, Micha’el explained to her that we were leaving the following day, she was devastated. Whenever we were in the store, there would be at most another two people there, buying, typically, just a devotional candle, or a lightbulb. I suspect we were her best customers ever. She was very relieved when Micha’el explained that we would be back.

When I showed her the photo I had taken of her, she reminded me that what unites mankind is far greater than what divides us, by declaring (with graphic miming) that the photo made her look fat.

Chinese languages are, as you may know, tonal. Cantonese boasts 6 different tones, as shown in the chart, which represents the voice going up or down in pitch when pronouncing a syllable. I understood that correct pronunciation in Cantonese requires the correct use of tones, but I had always assumed that the Chinese ear was as well able to ‘decipher’ a foreigner’s tonally incorrect speech as an Englishman is to understand someone speaking with a thick French or German accent. However….

Within a short time of Micha’el and Tslil arriving in Portugal, they were on friendly terms with the China shopkeeper. She made a fuss of Tao, as is common in Penamacor; there are not a lot of babies there to make a fuss of, and he is eminently fuss-of-makeable. Micha’el informed her that his name was Tao, expecting her to be delighted that they had chosen such a significant Chinese name. “Tao?”, she said, furrowing her brow. “Yes, Tao,” Micha’el replied. “You know, the path, the way, the great philosophy.” She looked even more perplexed. There followed a few minutes while they both googled on their phones, the shopkeeper occasionally muttering “Tao? Tao!!?” to herself. After a few minutes, Micha’el found a site in Chinese that promised to clear up the confusion. He showed it to her, triumphantly. “A-a-a-h-h-h! Tao!” she declared, using a different tone from the one Micha’el had used. Then she looked at him as if to say ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

All of this makes our linguistic challenge even more daunting. As well as learning the distinct Penamacor dialect of Portuguese, we now apparently have to get our Cantonese tonals polished up before our next trip in February.

Don’t forget that you can get a clearer picture of Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s life in Portugal by following, subscribing, liking (and maybe even sharing) their youtube channel

First things first. I never expected to be (mis)quoting Xmas songs – particularly in mid-January, but there you are!

Second things second. I know that, as a True Brit, I should have written Aubergine Roasting on an Open Fire, but it doesn’t scan. I needed a spondee rather than a dactyl. Oh, the benefits of a classical education! (I can still, ludicrous as it may sound, recite from memory the first line of the Horace ode I declaimed in the London schools Latin poetry-speaking competition I was entered for 57 years ago.)

In addition, I used to call the vegetable aubergine when I lived in Britain, when only a deranged Frenchman would consider the abomination fit to eat. Take a beautiful silky-smooth, glossy, deep-purple bulbous object, looking for all the world like a Henry Moore sculpture, then burn it until the skin is only fit to throw away and you are left with amorphous greyish-mushroom gunk, and then eat it? Are you mad? Now, of course, I call it chatzilim (Them chatzilim? It chatzil?), and I know that it is ambrosial. So, the word aubergine carries inappropriately negative associations for me, whereas I am indifferent to the word eggplant.

Third things third. Chestnuts were, when we left Portugal at the end of November, in high season, and to be seen everywhere. I will try to find an opportunity to write more about them sometime soon, but, in the interests of accuracy, you need to know that Tslil roasted chestnuts in our new Electrolux oven, and very tasty they were, too (but, somehow, ‘Chestnuts roasting in an Electrolux oven’ hasn’t quite got the same ring to it), and it was chatzilim that Shir (the kids’ ‘business’ partner) wrapped in aluminium foil and roasted on the open fire, then transformed and blended magically into a baba ganoush to die for.

By the way, we have a coat cupboard in the downstairs hall of our home in Israel, and, although Bernice and I never put anything in there but coats and the occasional hat, nevertheless sometimes, when we are fast asleep upstairs, all sorts of objects make their way to the cupboard and set up home there (in much the same way as street cats do in our garden). So, you will suddenly discover, one morning, that a colony of handbags has moved in, or a small family of empty jam jars, or a close-knit community of useful pieces of string. Why am I telling you this? Because I sometimes open the cupboard door, and am reminded somehow of what the inside of my mind must look like.

(I was going to write here: ‘But I digress’. However, on reflection, it seems a little superfluous to point that out.)

And so to this post’s real subject – open fires. The traditional, and still the main, method of heating homes in Penamacor is the wood fire, and every house boasts a generously-proportioned open fireplace, with a fine chimney breast sweeping up to the ceiling.

Trees in the forestry around the village are regularly felled, sawn into logs and transported away, all by huge combined felling and logging equipment on caterpillar tracks, shattering the peace of the forest and causing the only traffic jam we encountered in Portugal, when they blocked the track to the kids’ land one day.

Now, Bernice and I both grew up with open coal fires. In London, my family made its contribution to the London smog of the 1950s (see Series 1, Episode 4 of The Crown, which is not guilty of exaggeration). In South Wales, Bernice’s family lived in a market town at the foot of a coal-mining valley. So, we both know about going out to the coalshed in the garden on a freezing-cold winter’s day and shovelling coal into the scuttle. We in London had all mod cons, including a mains gas point by the fire and a gas poker we used to light the fire. Bernice’s family, on the other hand, used the traditional twists of paper, on top of which a mound of coal was stacked (leaving plenty of gaps in the structure for air to feed the flames).

Well, it transpires that there are differences between burning coal and burning wood. First of all, consider the volumes required. When Micha’el and Tslil took delivery of mimosa logs at the beginning of the winter, they expected this batch to see them through the winter. Their latest calculation is that they will need three times that quantity. Fortunately, we have a large woodshed, with, so far, nothing nasty in it.

(If you haven’t read the quintessentially English Cold Comfort Farm, from which that last reference is taken, you can read about it here. As a parody of the ‘loam and lovechild’ genre, it is, without a doubt, not to everyone’s taste, and so very un-21^st Century as to be surely due for a revival, but, if you have read any of the doom-laden, dark-family-secret, rural novels that came out of Britain in the 1920s and 30s and that it gently mocks, then you should enjoy it.)

The second difference, which arises directly from the first, is that any given quantity of wood burns much more quickly than the same quantity of coal. In real terms, this means that maintaining a roaring fire requires taking on two extra staff – a porter and a stoker. The alternative is to devote your entire day to tending the fire. This is particularly true because wood burns more idiosyncratically than coal.

In addition, because the units of wood (the technical term is logs) are considerably larger and more unwieldy than the units of coal (the technical term is lumps), building a wood fire requires a much more comprehensive education in civil engineering than building a coal fire does.

Finally, initially lighting a wood fire is a lengthier and more nerve-wracking experience. When, after several failed attempts, with long-handled matches, spills of paper, candles, cardboard and bark, you finally manage to get the bloody thing to light, you need to watch it like a hawk. If it is true that a watched pot never boils, then it is equally true, in my experience, that an unwatched fire never stays alight. I managed to light one fire successfully during our month-long stay, but, on the whole, I preferred to delegate, to Micha’el and Bernice, the wood-fetching duties, the edifice building, and the ignition.

On the positive side, a wood fire leaves much less ash than a coal fire. Riddling, shovelling and disposing of ash are not the time-consuming tasks that they are with a coal fire.

A word about fire-lighting materials. We could have bought, in the supermarket, firelighters – those cubes that feel like polystyrene foam, look like giant sugar lumps, and smell disgusting. However, since Micha’el and Tslil want to save the (very little) ash that the wood fire leaves, to do something mysterious with it on their land, we did not want to pollute it with chemical firelighters.

So, instead, we used the materials we had at hand. You may remember from an earlier post that we ordered a lot of goods from Amazon, and this meant that, by the time it grew cold enough for a fire, we had an impressive store of cardboard from the various boxes that the goods were transported in. Even better as a firelighting material is wood bark, and so Bernice and I were always on the lookout for bark debris, every time we took Tao for a walk in his buggy. I must say that the wood bark burned strong and long, and was really good for starting the fire. Bark-gathering soon became second nature, so much so that, after our return to Israel, when a particularly windy night had left the pavement strewn with debris from the palm tree at the corner of our street, I had to resist the temptation to pick it all up to take home.

Sadly, our wood hearth is not the most efficient method for heating the house. A lot of the heat escapes up the chimney, and, since the open staircase leads directly from the salon/living room/lounge, more heat escapes upstairs. We will need to think about long-term solutions to this, probably starting by installing a significantly more efficient wood-burning stove in the existing fireplace.

Meanwhile, we have all been reminded of just how spellbinding are the dancing flames of an open fire…. even if there are no chestnuts roasting on it.

If you would like to see more of our home in Portugal, and our adorable grandson (though not necessarily in that order), Micha’el and Tslil have posted a new video devoted to Tao on their youtube channel this week. Who knows? You might even want to subscribe, like and spread the word.

One of the beneficial, but disturbing, effects of moving to another country is the discovery that a huge number of things that you always assumed were true all over the world…aren’t. Growing up in England (Have I mentioned before that I grew up in England?), I always thought I had a fairly good general knowledge. Good grief, I was even selected as one of the four members of my school team to compete on TV’s Top of the Form. And then we came on aliya, and I discovered that what I had always assumed was general knowledge was not only Bourgeoisie-centric, and mid-20^th-Century-centric, but also Occidento-centric, and even Anglo-centric. Very humbling, let me tell you.

But, of course, this phenomenon is not confined to general knowledge. The shock of my discovering that there are countries in the world where they drive on the right was immense. OK, I exaggerate, but you get the idea. In rather the same way as young children tend to regard their family, however dysfunctional, as normal, so we – or at least I – tended to think of the way things were done in England as not only the way they should be done (obviously), but also as the way they are done around the world.

Well, let me tell you: it ain’t necessarily so. We have now lived in Israel for over 33 years, and I long ago reached the point where not only do I fail to understand any of the British cultural references I read and see in the media, but I am also no longer certain which of my ways of doing things come from England and which from Israel.

So, I was prepared for the culture shock of Portugal, and I thought that, in this post, I would share with you just three of the surprising, and sometimes impressive, ways they do things in Portugal.

Let me start with the first one I discovered, on my initial drive from Lisbon to Penamacor. The last leg of the journey is along a country road with a 90 kph speed limit. The road passes through several villages, and the speed limit comes down to 70 kph on approaching a village, and then 50 kph within the village. As I drove through the first village I came to, the traffic light ahead of me turned red. When I stopped at the light, I wondered why the authorities had bothered to put a light there at all, because there was no cross street or pedestrian crossing. After half a minute, the light turned green and I carried on.

When the same thing happened at the next village, I was even more puzzled. Once again, the light turned red as I approached, and I cursed my bad luck.

At the third village, the penny dropped. A speed camera had detected that I was driving at slightly over the 50kph limit, and automatically triggered the traffic light to turn red. The traffic light had been erected solely to penalise speeding drivers, and to deter them from speeding.

What a wonderful system! I suspect I am not alone in feeling that if I travel at 52 kph in a 50 kph zone, I am only 4% guilty, whereas if I drive through a red light, I am 100% guilty. The effect on me was exactly what the authorities intended. Knowing that if I tried to gain a few extra seconds, I would pay for them in waiting time further down the road, I kept dutifully to the speed limit throughout my time in Portugal.

We discovered another creative solution to a widespread problem when we went to Castelo Branco, the provincial capital, to transfer the electricity contract from the old owners of the house we had bought. The offices of EDP (Energias de Portugal, formerly Electricidade de Portugal – Who said Portuguese is a difficult language?). are very plush, and the staff are dressed in smart uniforms that make them look like flight attendants. In Penamacor, and even in Castelo Branco, while all the office staff and bank officials dress very smartly, the customers are in jeans and casual shirts. Perhaps the man in the street dresses more smartly in Lisbon, and the contrast is less striking.

Anyway, after a fairly short wait, we were seen by a very helpful lady, and the bureaucracy was handled swiftly and painlessly. At one point, she asked me whether we wanted to increase the electrical capacity in the house from 3.45 kW to 6.90 kW. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what these figures represent in terms of average domestic consumption. I’m sure there are people who can recite their peak consumption over each of the last three years, but I don’t believe I know any of them. Anyway, Micha’el told me that he had encountered no problems with fuses being tripped, and I suspected that any increase would require rewiring, possibly installing triple-phase, and, doubtless, considerable expense. In my head I could hear Flanders and Swann singing The Gasman Cometh (If you know them, you don’t need me to tell you that it doesn’t get more English than Flanders and Swann; if you don’t know them, follow the link above to complete your education.) In short, we both agreed that we really didn’t need to increase the capacity. There is, I find, tremendous, if short-lived, satisfaction in coming swiftly and confidently to a decision on a matter about which you know nothing. In retrospect, I wish we had flipped a coin, and had a 50% chance of being right.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering why Bernice wasn’t involved in this decision, it’s because she was three doors down, looking in a shoe shop. No surprises there, as some of you may already know. (I thought about adding here that I have always suspected her middle name might be Imelda, but I have grown too fond of living with her to risk writing that.)

Only a few days later, when we had bought a couple of heaters for the house, did we discover that there were combinations of appliances that did indeed trip the fuse, and we spent a couple of days discovering just what our possible simultaneous combinations of washing machine, oven, kettle, heater and so on were. It started to feel a little like the puzzle about the farmer/merchant with a small rowing boat/raft, a cabbage, a rabbit/goat and a fox/wolf. (How interesting that the cabbage seems to be the only constant in this ménage à cinq!)

We then discovered, by means too tortuous to go into here, that, if we chose to increase our capacity, this would simply involve a clerk in the electricity company changing one value in their central computer system. No rewiring, not even a technician call-out to the house; just a couple of keystrokes at a terminal. However, our monthly fixed charge would be increased as a result, though not by very much. Needless to say, we chose this option.

My understanding of this system is that it makes it possible for EDP to avoid the peak-consumption-period power cuts that Israel, for example, occasionally suffers. During a spell of particularly hot weather in Israel, the surge of demand (principally to run air conditioners) may be more than the electricity company can meet, resulting in a power cut, sometimes over a significant area. In Portugal, EDP knows what the maximum possible demand is (the sum of each customer’s capacity) and can ensure that the infrastructure can meet this demand. The higher charge paid by customers who want greater capacity can contribute toward the cost of providing the infrastructure that will satisfy that demand. This seems to me a very equitable system.

Which brings me to this week’s third contestant – the humble front-door key. I grew up with Yale locks, the standard in England, with a spring mechanism that locks the door automatically when you close it. This is intended to be remarkably convenient – you don’t need to remember to lock the door when you leave the house, and, if your hands are full, you don’t need to fumble with the key on your way out. It can seems less convenient at 6 AM, when you are shinning halfway up the drainpipe in your pyjamas and slippers, hoping you can still fit through that bathroom quarterlight, because you just stepped onto the porch to pick up the delivered milk bottles, and heard that suddenly less than reassuring clunk of the Yale slipping solidly back into place.

In Israel, the standard is more like a bank safe door, with sliding cylindrical bolts that do not lock until you turn the key.

In Penamacor, the mechanism is mounted on the inside of the door, the house side rather than the street side. This means that the key has to reach through the entire width of the door and then some, to engage with the locking mechanism. This means that front-door keys need to be very long: indeed, inconveniently long, if you carry the key in a trouser pocket. And so, in a fit of Iberian ingenuity, the Portuguese have devised the telescopic doorkey. You slide the key closed to fit it into a trouser pocket, then expand it to insert into the lock.

However, it is advisable to explain to foreigners how the key works, rather than just handing them a shortened key. The mechanism is discreet enough to be unnoticeable, and there is much fun to be had watching a newcomer struggling to open the door with a key that does not reach far enough to engage the lock.

Believe me, it only takes a couple of weeks to transition from ‘How on earth are we supposed to work that out?!’ to ‘Of course; everybody knows that!’ It’s just another small step in our adjustment to life in Portugal.

If you want to follow Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s journey of adjustment to life in Portugal, you can take a look at their youtube channel, where they seem to be posting a new video every week. (You might even get the urge to subscribe, like, and spread the word.)

Okay. I think you’ve waited long enough. Today we get serious, as I attempt to explain to you what brought Micha’el and Tslil and the most fabulous grandson in the world (so far) to Portugal, and, what’s more, to one of the more remote parts of Portugal, 270 kilometres from Lisbon, almost as far from Porto, and further still from the Algarve. And all of this, let me point out, in a country that is only 218 km wide and 561 km long.

Given the nature of the subject-matter, there’s just a chance you won’t find this as scintillating as my usual writing. Apologies if that’s the case, but rest assured: even this week’s post won’t be in the test, so feel free to skip if you couldn’t care less.

However, I know some of you are interested. I have identified three groups of you so far. First, there are the handful of people who assure me (with just a soupçon of what I detect as relish) that the kids are bound to fail, and who catalogue all the things that can go wrong  (you know who you are). Then, there are those who regard not only the kids’ adventure, but even the one Bernice and I are on, as wildly exciting, totally crazy and absolutely fascinating. This is very flattering, although I assure you that, in the modern world and the internet age, the journey Bernice and I are on seems fairly routine most of the time, except for those moments when we suddenly turn to each other and ask ourselves how the hell we got here. And finally, there are those who get it, who understand what has motivated Micha’el and Tslil to embark on this new life.

So, for all of you out there, a little background.

Like much of the rest of Europe, Portugal is experiencing negative population growth, largely because of a falling birthrate. In addition, in the last few decades there has been a transmigration of young adults from rural Portugal to the big cities, mainly on the coast, so that now, only 2% of the settlements (cities, towns, villages) in Portugal have a population greater than 2000, and about 60% of the population live in that 2%.

Most of the underpopulated interior is agricultural (including forestry), and those agricultural lands are increasingly underfarmed or abandoned. The average age of Portuguese farmers is now about 65; it is not difficult to envisage what the situation might be by 2050.

In addition, in very many of these rural communities, the ageing index (the relation between the percentage of the population who are 65 or older, and those who are 15 or younger) makes demographic regeneration very difficult. Since the 1960s, the population in Portugal has aged at a higher rate than that in the remaining European countries and their fertility rate is one of the lowest in Europe.

Apart from the direct economic and demographic dangers of this situation, the weather in recent summers has highlighted another, more immediate, danger. In 2018, Portugal experienced a summer drought and temperatures that reached 46^o C.

This resulted in devastating forest fires, particularly in many unharvested and untended forest areas, where undergrowth had not been controlled. With no prospect of this land being kept under control, and with a dwindling and aging population that will become increasingly unable to prevent or fight the forest fires, the prospect is frightening.

The Portuguese government’s most creative response to these challenges has been to encourage resettlement of these rural areas and the regeneration of agriculture, by making it relatively easy for foreigners to buy land in the rural areas, build homes on the land and farm it. The bureaucracy has been simplified (although, as everywhere, it is still relatively slow, unwieldy and tortuous) and efforts have been made to offer foreigners a more attractive legal status in Portugal.

The hope is that this foreign influx will cut back the overgrown brush, steward the land by farming it, and thereby provide a free fire prevention, early reporting and control service. This all sounds to me suspiciously like a win-win situation.

As a result, Portugal in general, and several rural provinces in particular (including Castelo Branco – the province where the kids have bought land) have been attracting a motley crew of: youngish idealists, seeking a simpler, more fundamental life; would-be escapees from the rat race; aging retiree veterans of Woodstock; and so on, all flocking to a new Jerusalem from many corners of Europe and America, as well as from Israel.

Portugal is proving a popular choice with many Israelis. With a climate that offers summer sunshine to make Israelis feel at home, a relaxed lifestyle among a friendly local population, a fairly relaxed attitude* to recreational marijuana (a part of me hopes that I sound like I know what I’m talking about there….and another part hopes that I don’t), and an attractive food and drink culture (at least for the non-kosher-keeping meat- and seafood-eater), Portugal has a lot going for it.

In addition, Portugal, like Spain, has, in recent years, introduced naturalization laws, which have been described as aimed to atone for the state-led campaigns of persecution against the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions from the 16th Century on. Under these laws, Jews who can provide evidence that they are the descendants of Portuguese Jews can apply for citizenship. Naturally, many Israelis find the prospect of an EU passport attractive, and, although few of them contemplate moving to Portugal, these laws have brought Portugal into the consciousness of more Israelis. (Post-Brexit, there will undoubtedly be an upsurge in the number of British Jews applying, as well.)

The fact is that Micha’el and Tslil spent almost two years exploring possible ways of living their dream in Israel. However, the authorities make this virtually impossible. To give just one example: all rainwater in Israel is classified as government property, and collecting rainwater for private use is illegal. (You may feel the need to read that sentence again.) There are many stories of official harassment of communities trying to live off the grid (literally and figuratively). In addition, a population density of around 400 people per km² makes Israel the 30^th most crowded country on Earth, and, as a result, land prices, even in less populated areas, are prohibitively high. (Portugal, incidentally, is the 100^th most crowded country in the world, with a density three and a half times lower than Israel’s.)

In the end, the kids gave up, and started looking elsewhere. Imagine our delight when they chose Portugal rather than their other short-listed destination, which was much further away, and seemed considerably less safe, in South America.

So, that’s why Portugal. As for why Penamacor, the kids, on their first pilot trip, and Micha’el, when he flew over alone (Tslil being, at the time, too close to her due date for Tao) looked at various possible plots in various areas of Portugal. The reason they chose the land they finally bought was because the size and topography of the plot matched what they were looking for, rather than because of the specific area of Portugal it is located in. They had a limited budget, and their money certainly went further just outside Penamacor than it would have done in the flatter, lower-lying, lusher lands of the Portuguese heartland.

Well, I hope you now feel not only older but also wiser. If you are interested in learning more about Micha’el and Tslil’s journey, as it unfolds, please consider following their YouTube channel. It would be wonderful if you subscribed to it, because they are hoping to monetise the channel. (I can almost talk the talk, but I assure you I can’t even limp the walk.) Apparently, to qualify for monetisation, they have to reach a minimum threshold of hours of viewing time, and also (to forestall Bernice, who runs each video on an endless loop) a minimum threshold of subscribers. So, please, if you are at all interested, watch, subscribe, and spread the word to anyone else you know who might enjoy it.

Similarly, feel free to recommend my blog to any of your friends. I have found the warmth of your feedback surprising, and immensely flattering, and I seem to be starting to get a taste for this.

* In case you’re interested, Portugal has decriminalised all personal drug use – including cocaine. However, personal use is still illegal, being now an administrative rather than a criminal offence. Offenders are defined as patients rather than criminals. If you are caught in possession of an amount of cannabis commensurate with personal use, you will not be prosecuted for a first offence. However, second and subsequent offences may lead to compulsory attendance at a support group or payment of a fee.