Bloggers Note: I wanted to give you all a heads-up. I’ve decided that, for at least the next few weeks, and possibly permanently, I’m going to switch to publishing a post every two weeks, rather than every week. I don’t kid myself that this will mean I have the post ready to publish days before publication date, but at least my Mondays will be stressful only every other week. I realise this probably will make no difference to your life, but I wanted to avoid Bernice having to field a lot of questions next Tuesday about rumours of my demise.

For the benefit of the two or three people who may not know about it, I offer this week the ultimate in binge watching.

When the TV series I am about to recommend to you first came out, viewers were not able to binge watch; they had to wait patiently for the next episode. Normal practice, in these situations, was for the episodes to be screened a week apart. Whether it was Quatermass and the Pit in 1958, The Forsyte Saga in 1967 or Dallas in 1978, that week-long wait was an undeniable part of the enjoyment of the series.

However, in the series I am suggesting to you, you originally had to wait 365 times as long as seven days – a full seven years.

I am referring (as some of you may have guessed) to the Up series. This was originally conceived as a one-off programme – Seven Up! – looking at the individual lives of a number of seven-year-old English children in 1964 and interviewing each of them about their interests, ambitions, hopes and fears. The original director intended a programme about the beauty of childhood, but a researcher and interviewer on the programme, Michael Apted, had a much more aggressive social agenda: he ‘hijacked’ the project to demonstrate how entrenched the class system still was in English society. To quote from the original programme: “Why did we bring these children together? Because we wanted a glimpse of England in the year 2000. The union leader and the business executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old.”

At some point, someone had the brilliant idea of revisiting these children seven years later. Michael Apted was appointed the director… and the rest is history – a history that now spans 56 years and may not yet be finished (although Apted’s death in 2021 may actually mark the demise of the series). We will have to wait until 2026 to see.

If, by some chance, you do not know the series, then you have the ultimate 9-hour binge watch waiting for you. Three warnings. First, the original programme is a product of its time, and features ten boys and only four girls. Once they had started with that mix, the makers had it baked in, and this is a great pity. Having said that, the four girls/women punch way above their weight, in each episode.

Second: each episode, quite reasonably, reprises a lot of archive material from earlier episodes. I say ‘quite reasonably’, because without ‘the story so far’ you would have had to retain a detailed memory of the last episode for a period of seven years. So, if you are binge watching, you may find yourself fast-forwarding quite a bit.

The third warning is that I don’t advise you to follow this link to the Wikipaedia entry on the series. You will find there lots of spoilers which will significantly impact your enjoyment of a story which, in many cases, has all the unpredictability of real life (literally).

All of the above is actually just an aside. I was musing this week on our different experience of our grandsons in Portugal and our grandson in Israel. A month at a time three times a year – the binge watch – as opposed to one episode a week. One effect of the weekly visit to Zichron, in the last couple of months, has been the chance to see, on each visit, Raphael’s progress in language acquisition: both his comprehension and his speaking. Esther speaks to him exclusively in English, and Maayan exclusively in Hebrew, but it is noticeable that his choice of language (in what are still, at the moment, one-word utterances) is marked. In almost all cases, although he understands the word in both languages, he only uses one language for any given concept.

So, for example, ‘bath’ is always in English. Of course, I am tempted to say, ‘bath’ is much easier to pronounce than ‘ambatya’, However, he favours ‘kadur’ over the English equivalent ‘ball’. It doesn’t seem reasonable to claim that ‘kadur’ is easier to pronounce than ‘ball’, so I don’t think that explains his choice. It is possible that Maayan plays more ball with him than Esther. However, it is usually Maayan who baths Raphael, so I suspect it is best to avoid simplistic explanations.

Then, of course, there are the occasions when Raphael gives us a glimpse of his, and almost every other child’s, formidable intelligence, in fashioning his own use of language. So, for example, ‘doovdoov’, which is his word for cherry (properly ‘doovdoovan’), is also his generic word for fruit, despite his knowing very well the words for about a dozen fruits. (This is a child who, left to his own devices, could easily exist exclusively on a diet of fruit, despite thoroughly enjoying all of the wonderful meals his mother and nana cook for him, and also enjoying grandpa’s chopped herring and rye bread.)

An even more striking ‘coining’ is in the world of food preparation, which Raphael is really into. He loves helping Esther make bread, or muffins, and is particularly good at mixing dough or batter. (Tao, by now, is virtually a competent independent cook, since he has been eagerly helping his parents in the kitchen for all of the last three years.) As well as wanting to help in the grown-up kitchen, Raphael also enjoys toy kitchen play. He has his own whisk and is always asking for a ‘bowl’, and also pressing any vaguely concave object into service as a ‘bowl’. A box, a cup from his stacking tower, a plastic mug with a handle, a saucer: all can be a ‘bowl’. If, as they say, all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is a whisk…

Also remarkable, to me, is the way children near the beginning of their language journey discover how to use language not just to comment on, or categorise, the world, but also to make requests. Raphael now understands that he does not have to push away a spoon, or scatter food from his tray onto the floor. ‘Down’ is a more effective way of explaining that he has had enough to eat and would like to carry on playing. It is wonderful to see the civilising effects of language in action.

I find it impossible to remember when Tao was at this stage, despite it being such a relatively short time ago. The differences we hear in his language every time we fly to Portugal are, of course, still very striking. At this stage, this expresses itself in an ever-expanding vocabulary and an increasing complexity of sentence structure. Even though we speak every week, our calls tend to be more of a storytime and puppet show; chatting on a WhatsApp video call does not come all that easily to Tao, or, indeed, to me.

Tao and Olly are exposed to much more English than Hebrew, and Tslil knows that she has her work cut out to ensure that their Hebrew keeps up with their English. Raphael is in the opposite situation (and will be even more so when he starts going to gan every day next year – a situation I suspect he will adapt to more painlessly than his mother). Esther knows that she will have to work equally hard to maintain his English, and I suppose we will just have to resign ourselves to continuing selflessly dragging ourselves up to Zichron every week, just to point out the difference between a cup, a mug, a saucer and a bowl. It’s a miserable job, but someone has to do it.

Meanwhile, everybody is still enjoying the summer!

Blogger’s Note: I apologise to those of my readers who also follow another blog of a mutual friend who has, in recent weeks, been giving a blow-by-blow account of his middle-heavyweight bout with the Israel real estate market. I am not setting up in competition, but this week’s topic reflects how certain issues seem to be dominating my waking life at the moment.

It is now over two months since I casually dropped into the conversation that Bernice and I had taken the decision to move to Zichron Yaakov to be close to Esther and family, and one or two of you have been tentatively inquiring how our plans are going. So I thought this week I would bring you up to date.

There are two ways of doing this. The first is a one-sentence summary, which is, as it happens, fairly easy.

No progress has been made.

The second is rather more fraught, and complex, and, I hope, interesting, and will bring me closer to my magic 1500-word target, so why don’t I throw that in as a freebie?

Moving is, like everything in life, a process. It involves two distinct sub-processes: selling and buying. Or should that be buying and selling? Or perhaps we should be aiming for buyselling as a complex process that occupies a single moment in time.

We moved to our current home in Maale Adumim in the autumn of 1996, which the calendar tells me will imminently be 28 years ago. The fact that, for Bernice and myself, it seems like the day before yesterday apparently counts for nothing. However, the fact that it is so long ago means that I can no longer actually remember the emotions I assume I experienced throughout what is commonly described as a domestic experience more traumatic than any other except divorce. What I find myself asking every day is: Supposing we find the home we are looking for? How can we commit to buying before we have signed a contract to sell our home? At the same time, how can we accept an offer for our home before we have found our next home? It all seems very daunting.

As the spoiler a couple of paragraphs back already hinted, we are managing to live with this conundrum by, as of yet, failing to find either a prospective buyer or a prospective new home. Bernice and I have a couple of theories as to why this is.

Regarding our own home, the price we are asking reflects to some extent, and quite legitimately, the money we have invested in our three renovations over the years. As far as we are concerned, we have now brought the house to the point where we feel we have done everything that we need and want to do. However, Bernice’s theory, which seems to be backed up by what we see whenever a new family moves into a house in the area, is that Israelis don’t care what state a home is in, when they buy it they want, they need, to stamp their personality on it immediately: in other words, to gut it.

So, we have had viewers come in and discuss moving the front door a metre and half to one side (thereby gaining nothing, as far as I can see). Our estate agent (realtor) points out to prospective buyers that they can easily turn our snug (the extension back room that leads into the backyard) into a master bedroom and the adjacent utility room into an ensuite bathroom. So far, Bernice and I have resisted the temptation to scream: “But then, access to the backyard will be through the master bedroom! Unless you plan to knock an exit through the kitchen wall, and lose all of the impact of the design of the kitchen!”

In addition, Bernice is convinced that most viewers want a completely open-plan kitchen, dining and living area, whereas there is, chez nous, a load-bearing wall that partly divides the area in two.

Whatever the reason, we haven’t yet been made an offer that we can accept. However, as I (the Polyanna in this particular married situation) keep pointing out, selling a house is not a gradual process, where you make incremental gains that eventually reach a critical mass and topple into a sale. It is, rather, a light-switch situation: 19 people see the house and nobody makes an offer, then one day a couple walk in and half an hour later you have a buyer.

Which brings us to the other end of this tango for two. Until two months ago, Bernice and I had a home-buying record of which we were fiercely proud. When we got engaged, in 1971, we originally planned to live in London, where I was at college and Bernice was working. A few weeks’ research revealed that we could just about afford half a derelict house in the rundown area where my college was situated. We couldn’t actually bring ourselves to view any of these slum houses.

During this period, we spent a weekend visiting a friend in South Wales, where Bernice had spent her childhood. Out of curiosity, we looked in estate agents’ windows, and discovered that in the market town she had grown up in, we could afford to buy a semi-detached bungalow on a brand-new estate. The following weekend we travelled down again, saw three properties, and bought one.

I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day, especially anyone who is just starting out and trying to get on the property ladder, but that two-bedroom bungalow cost us ₤5800, which was the equivalent of just under ₤96,000 (NLS 470,000) today. Just to twist the knife in the wound: we were able to secure a mortgage for over 90% of the value, and were required to pay a deposit of only ₤500, about ₤8,260 or NLS 40,300 today.

Seven years later, on a whim, we saw two large houses in villages up the valley from our home, and bought one of them. This was not a sound economic move, but we spent seven happy years there before deciding to come on aliya.

After 15 months on an absorption centre in Gilo, we felt ready to buy a flat in Jerusalem., Friends from the absorption centre had recently bought in East Talpiot, and when the flat across the hall from them went on the market, they told us about it. We viewed it the same day, and bought it.

Nine years later, when we felt Esther and Micha’el really deserved separate bedrooms, and 55 square metres wasn’t enough for four people and a dog, even a small one, we started looking around Jerusalem. We didn’t actually view any properties, because we could tell from the advertisements that, within our price-range, no reasonable-sized flat was in an area we would consider living in, and no flat in an area that we would consider living in was significantly larger than our existing home.

At this time, Bernice went to a house-warming for friends who had just moved from East Talpiot to Maale Adumim. I didn’t accompany her, because I was in mourning for my late father. She came home and could not stop enthusing about the house our friends had bought…and the price they had bought for. Shortly afterwards, we viewed two houses, and bought one of them.

So, our record, until a couple of months ago, was: Viewed: 8. Bought: 4.

The last two months have, sadly, destroyed that outstanding record. We have to date viewed 9 properties, and we are not going to buy any of them. It was only yesterday that I realised why this is so. Until now, every move we have made has been to a bigger, better property. That has made us much easier to please. In addition, we have never, previously, had any pre-conditions, other than wanting to upgrade. We were not really tied in terms of location or specific requirements.

This time, we are being considerably more fussy. We want to be in Zichron Yaakov, and, ideally, within walking distance of Esther and Maayan’s new flat, which they are due to move into on 1 September. We also want to be within walking distance of an Ashkenazi shul that we will be looking to to provide us with a ready-made community (as happened so handsomely both in East Talpiot and Maale Adumim).

We also require to be no more than two floors above (or indeed, below) street level, or, alternatively, to be in a building with a shabbat lift. Zichron, we have discovered, is not packed with buildings with shabbat lifts.

We also require either a garden apartment or an apartment with a sukkah balcony. (I have been astonished to discover that there are estate agents in Israel who are not sufficiently versed in the laws of sukkah to understand what actually constitutes a sukkah balcony.)

We spent a week flirting with a 14^th-floor mini-penthouse in Pardes Hanna. The 1-metre strip of the long balcony nearest the railing was not under the balcony of the penthouse on the floor above, and so we would have been able to set a long table and seat all the guests on one side, with everyone being in a kosher sukkah. However, the effect would have been less Sukkot, and more Seder night (as in da Vinci’s The Last Supper), which we eventually decided against. This was, I must say, to the great relief of almost everyone we spoke to – including family, and friends who lived for decades in Pardes Hanna – who were all convinced that we would not be able to make friends there. Indeed, just about the only person who thought the location and flat were ideal for us was the Pardes Hanna estate agent.

We are by no means certain that our family and friends are right, and we also have no unrealistic expectations of being able, at this stage in our life, to make friends anywhere as close as the friends we have in Maale Adumim. (This, of course, applies primarily to Bernice, who is the partner in this marriage principally responsible for HR. I handle things like working out whether Micha’el’s wardrobes will fit in the third bedroom, and largely leave people to her. This arrangement works for us.)

I don’t want you to think that viewing these nine properties has been a waste of time. We have a number of valuable takeaways. First is a much better understanding of the internal geography and neighbourhood variations within Zichron. This is particularly true since, these days, with Israel’s security agencies jamming GPS, Waze is liable to tell us at any moment that we are in downtown Beirut.

In addition, every place that we see that is not right makes it clearer to us what our requirements, and our priorities within those requirements, are.

Finally, if we hadn’t viewed properties this week, I wouldn’t have spotted, in one of the flats, the following box, packed ready for moving. Just one month exactly after the 30^th anniversary of the release of Forrest Gump, I couldn’t not include it here.

Somewhere out there, I am sure, is an almond praline of an apartment with our name on it. Perhaps we will, at some point, bite into it, and spend happy years in Zichron with the family, liberally sprinkled with month-long excursions to the other family in Portugal. Perhaps we won’t, and we’ll continue to enjoy the home and the friends that have, by now, had all the rough edges rubbed off them, and we will make do with a weekly trip to Zichron and still have Penamacor. We happen to believe this qualifies as a win-win situation, and we really do know just how lucky we are.

In my first year at teacher training college, in a piece of cutting-edge technology, one of our literature lecturers arranged the filming of a panel discussion of a poem, the panel consisting of three students. When we viewed and analysed the discussion afterwards, several of my fellow-students told me that I was a natural in front of the camera and should consider a career in television. I knew then that I lacked the particular kind of fluency, of quickness of response, that the camera loves, and so I begged to differ.

When, several years later, the GPO (General Post Office) was searching for a new voice for its speaking clock, the headmistress of the school where Bernice worked was convinced that I would be perfect for the job. While this certainly avoided the problem of constant spontaneity, I found the thought of spending twenty-four hours a day standing in front of a microphone, saying: ‘At the third stroke, it will be eight, forty-two, and thirty seconds’, and so on, less than appealing. (Yes, I know that’s not how they really do it!) So, in the end, it was Brian Cobby who took over in 1985. Incidentally, for those of you from Britain, and of a certain age (ten years younger than me), Brian Cobby had, in a previous life, been the voice that announced: ‘5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1… Thunderbirds are go!’

Incidentally, if you have spent the last minute or two wondering why the Post Office, of all institutions, should want a speaking clock, let me enlighten you. Before the beginning of the railway age in Britain, many towns still operated on local time. A village would set its clocks and watches by, usually, the church clock. Because of the limited accuracy of most mechanical clocks, over the years all of these local times started drifting apart. When it was midday in London it might have been only 11:49 a.m. in Bristol.

The introduction of rail travel, and of timetables, made it essential for everywhere to be operated on a standardised Greenwich Mean Time. To ensure this standardisation, when the mail train arrived and the villagers gathered around the postman to get the news from London, he would announce what the time was according to his timepiece, which had been set in London. This custom is thought to be where the phrase ‘passing the time of day’ originated.

(If you want to have a look at the various generations of technology used for the speaking clock in Britain (‘Just dial T-I-M!’), check it out here.)

Probably because I lack the inventive spontaneity needed for the job, I have great admiration for those who can carry off the job of TV presenter successfully…and even more, I think, the job of radio presenter, where no body language or facial expressions can fill the gaps; radio presenters have only their voices to rely on. I often listen to interview and discussion programmes on Israel’s Reshet Bet, and have found myself, in recent months, reflecting on the contrasting styles and talents of the various presenters.

For me, one of the pleasures of the best of these programmes is that they demonstrate that, even in an Israel that is very conflicted and divided internally, it is still possible for two people to argue and disagree in a civilised way, and to remain respectful of each other. I first heard this in action on a weekly program of the early 2000s, called ‘על ימין ועל שמאל‘, ‘On the Right and the Left’, in which two national figures sat down to discuss current affairs. The figures were: on my right (on almost everyone’s right) Geula Cohen and on my left (on many people’s left) Eli Amir.

Geula Cohen had been a member of Etzel (a mainly revisionist breakaway from the mainstream pre-State underground defence force Hagana, Etzel followed a stronger line of response to Arab terror) and Lechi (which acted principally against the British Mandate forces). Cohen was Lechi’s underground radio broadcaster. After the establishment of the State, she became a politician, eventually cofounding the right-wing political party Techiya in 1979, in opposition to Camp David. She supported Jewish settlement of all parts of Eretz Yisrael, and herself briefly moved to Kiryat Arba, which is about as deep in cowboy country as you can get. She was in later life a recipient of the Israel Prize.

Eli Amir is an author and social activist. Having served as Advisor on Arab Affairs to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, he was later appointed Director General of the Youth and Aliya Department of the Jewish Agency. He repeatedly met with literary and other figures in the Arab world and advocated for co-existence, campaigning for more Israeli books to be published in the Arab world, and asking: ‘How can there be peace without us knowing each other?’

Each week, these two, whose world views and the arcs of whose lives were so different, sat in a radio studio and discussed the events of the preceding week. They never, to the best of my memory, found any significant island of agreement between them, but they always listened to each other respectfully, responded to each other’s points seriously, and parted, every week, as adversaries who recognized the right of each to disagree with the other, and who also each recognised that the other cared deeply about the country they both loved.

Something of the same spirit lives on, with, it must be said, a little less gravitas (but then we live in a very different age from the early 2000s, and certainly from the 1930s and 40s, Geula Cohen’s formative years, and even the 1950s and 60s, Eli Amir’s formative years). Currently on Reshet Bet, on Friday mornings, Emily Amrousi and Professor Yuval Elbashan jointly present a programme (‘Emily and the Professor’), in which they both discuss the week’s events and interview people in the news.

‘Emily’, a children’s author, journalist, and ex-spokesperson of the Yehuda and Shomron Council, lived for many years in Talmon, a yishuv close to Ramallah, and now lives in Jerusalem. In her childhood, her family became religious, and she grew up in a modern-orthodox, Bnei Akiva atmosphere. ‘The Professor’ is indeed a professor, of Law, and has been closely involved for 25 years with a non-profit organization advocating community and social rights for the weaker sectors in Israeli society.

Again, as with Geula Cohen and Eli Amir, Amrousi and Elbashan are (almost always) respectful of each other’s arguments, although it has to be said that the events of this year so far have put that tolerance to the test on more than one occasion. They are clearly friends, not only in the studio, and they welcome the opportunity to debate real issues in a civilized manner.

When I listen to programmes such as these, I find myself able to sustain some hope that Israeli society may be able to heal the fractures that threaten us.

This hope is nurtured in other ways as well. On Friday mornings, Omer Ben-Rubi presents a programme looking at the cultural news of the week. Ben-Rubi is not only a presenter; he is also an experienced administrator. He served as the founding manager of Reshet Bet, having previously run Galei Tzahal, the army radio station.

His culture programme is, I suspect, a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. In his introduction every week, he always gives the Hebrew calendar date, and mentions the Bible portion of the week. Last week, an unusual item could be found nestling between the segment where he invites three other observers of culture to give their recommendations for events of the forthcoming week (among them Barbie) and his playing of a recent pop release. On the day before the Shabbat when we begin reading the Book of Devarim (Deutoronomy), with Moses’ farewell speech to the nation, Ben-Rubi interviewed Micah Goodman, Israeli philosopher and a leading voice on Judaism, Zionism, the Bible, and the challenges and opportunities facing Israel and world Jewry. The subject of the interview was the message of that speech for our time, and what it teaches us about Moses as a political leader.

What is remarkable is not only that Ben-Rubi chose to include this item, but also that he gave no indication that he regarded it as anything other than a perfectly normal choice for a popular culture programme on a general public radio station in Israel.

Unfortunately, not every presenter on Reshet Bet has the same sensitivity, understanding, or knowledge. There is one particular presenter whose programme I am going to have to stop listening to, because she always makes my blood boil, and I end up shouting at the radio.

Rina Matzliach is, so I understand, a serious Israeli journalist, and presented ‘Meet the Press’ for 10 years. She has lived in Israel for over 65 years, since she was a year old. She has a BA in Israeli Literature and a Masters in Communications. She has been a broadcast journalist for 40 years. And yet…and yet.

In the last century, John Cleese made a series of management training videos which worked by demonstrating how not to do it. They are still very funny to watch, not least because they star John Cleese as the incompetent manager (in the days before he started taking himself too seriously). Every time I listen to Rina Matzliach, I find myself hoping that schools of radio journalism are recording her, so that lecturers can demonstrate to their students how not to do it.

Let me give a brief list of some of her most flagrant errors. When interviewing a guest, she constantly interrupts the guest’s answer to her last question, and frequently interrupts her co-presenter’s question with another question of her own. When interviewing a guest she knows personally, she always makes more than one personal reference, always of no relevance to the topic on which the interviewee has been invited to be interviewed. She appears never to filter her thoughts before expressing them out loud.

A couple of weeks ago, for example, she interviewed an Israeli who, with his wife, had been trapped by floods in a remote part of Nepal. They had walked a considerable distance to an area from where they were able to arrange transport back to civilization. This was so that they could return to their young children in Israel. They had, however, been forced to leave all but their essential possessions behind. He was on air to assure the listening public that the dozens of (mostly post-army) Israelis who were also trapped in the same area were well, had food and drink, and were in no danger. This must have been a tremendous comfort for parents who had lost contact with their children trapped in an area without mobile reception. Matzliach wasted a minute or two of this important interview ‘joking’ that, in their place, she would have stayed out of contact and enjoyed a longer holiday away from her children.

Matzliach frequently appears to forget that there is a radio audience of at least tens of thousands listening, and behaves as if she is at home alone. So, for example, she always sings along with the record chosen to break up the programme, despite her having, at best, a mediocre singing voice. To give another example, in a recent interview with someone she knew personally, she urged her co-presenter, on air, to ask the interviewee to send him a complimentary copy of the interviewee’s recent book (a book on a topic irrelevant to the interview).

However, what amazed me two weeks ago, was that, when her co-presenter, who is religious, mentioned that he would not be in the studio last Thursday because it was Tisha b’Av, she said: ‘Oh! Isn’t Tisha b’Av always in August?’ Maybe it is me that is being unreasonable, but it seems to me that an educated woman, with a BA in Israeli Literature, who has lived in Israel for over 60 years, should know that the Jewish religious calendar is not the same as the Gregorian solar calendar, that it includes leap-years in which an entire month is added, and that, in consequence, the timing of festivals and fast-days can vary from year to year by as much as 30 days, according to the Gregorian calendar. How can she not have noticed that Rosh Hashana is sometimes in early September and other times in early October?

It is difficult for me to escape the feeling that it is not that she does not know so much as that she has gone out of her way not to know, because she has convinced herself that there is nothing in the entirety of the Jewish religion that is worthy of her attention. She certainly makes a point of displaying her contempt for religion at every opportunity.

On the other hand, I find it very moving that this year a number of people who have never observed Tisha b’Av, and who, indeed, do not identify as religious, feel the threat of the country splitting apart is so strong that they decided to fast last Thursday.

Well, thank you for letting me get that off my chest.

All the kids and grandkids are back from their hols, but I can squeeze another week’s worth of pictures out of it. For Raphael, Storm the octopus seems to have overtaken Tiger as his constant companion, Ollie clearly loves his dad, and Tao has just been not-very-white-water rafting, taking all due precautions.

Clearly, there is only one topic to write about this week. As more and more of my friends line up on one or other side of the road with their Israeli flags and placards; as folk on the down escalators at Jerusalem railway station on their way to the pro-judicial-reform demonstration in Tel Aviv exchange friendly greetings (I kid you not) with folk on the up escalator on their way to the anti-judicial-revolution demonstration outside the Knesset in Jerusalem; as, inside the Knesset, legislators begin the day that will probably (possibly) end with the passing into law of the (Thin end of the wedge? First slice of salami? Or, just possibly, Only meagre scrap thrown by Bibi to placate his coalition lapdogs?); as eleven-and-three-quarterth-hour behind-the-scenes talks between representatives of the Prime Minister and the opposition possibly lead to a compromise; as said Prime Minister rushes from hospital, after a dizzy spell, a minor coronary event and the fitting of a pacemaker, to his office; as….

Enough, already. The chances that anything I write now, on Monday morning, will be at all relevant when you read it, at best at 9:01AM on Tuesday, are considerably less than the size of the majority of the voting public that voted for the bloc of parties identified as supporting Bibi as Prime Minister. Incidentally, if you want those figures, here they are, in a not-untimely reminder.

(If you don’t want the numbers, just be aware that the vote for and against the coalition parties was virtually split down the middle at the last general election. Much less than one per cent of the vote (under 30,000 votes) separated the two blocs. Now you can skip the next paragraph.)

Voter turnout was 70.6%. To put it another way, 29.4% of the electorate couldn’t get worked up enough to exercise their democratic right.
Of that 70.6% turnout, 1.49% voted either for parties that did not identify either with ‘Bibi’s’ bloc or with the ‘opposition’ bloc, or for parties that did not pass the electoral threshold and are, therefore, not represented in the Knesset.
Of the remainder, 50.32% of the votes were cast for parties that identified with ‘Bibi’s’ bloc and 49.68% of the votes were cast for parties that identified with the ‘opposition’ bloc.
In other words: only 29,951 more votes were cast for ‘Bibi’s’ bloc than for the ‘opposition’ bloc, out of an electorate of over 6,748,000, and out of a total number of votes cast of 5,110,927.

Whatever else you say about these figures, you cannot say that, as one letter writer did in the Jerusalem Post this morning, “…the only way our prime minister can save democracy is to go ahead with putting into effect the policies for which he was elected by a very comfortable majority of the voting public” [my emphasis]. 0.59% is not ‘a very comfortable majority’.

By the same token, over 100,000 turning out on the streets every week for over half a year are certainly demonstrating their own conviction and dedication, but they are not necessarily demonstrating the will of the vast majority of the country. They ‘only’ managed to muster 48.94% of the vote at the last election.

My particular position is that what all of these numbers show is that there is no way forward without finding common ground on which a majority of the population of the country can comfortably stand. We have a start: both sides rally round the flag. What we have to find now is a definition of what that flag stands for that all sides can sufficiently identify with to ensure that this Zionist project can continue.

In truth, this has always been the monumental challenge facing the Zionist endeavour, from its earliest days, through the foundation of the State, and in the 75 years since. The task has been easier in those periods when the external challenges facing us made us focus on standing shoulder to shoulder and temporarily putting aside our differences. However, even at its inception, when Israel was fighting an existential war even before it existed as a state, as the drafters of the Declaration of Independence wrestled with its wording, they struggled to find a formula that all 37 signatories would be able, in all conscience, to sign off on.

Hence the delicately ambiguous metaphorical language of the Declaration. The two signatory rabbis wished to include the phrase: “and placing our trust in the Almighty”. The secularist Mapam signatory strongly opposed this. The eventual wording used the phrase “the Rock of Israel”. which could be interpreted as referring either to God, or to the land and concept of Eretz Israel. Ben-Gurion said: “Each of us, in his own way, believes in the ‘Rock of Israel’ as he conceives it. I should like to make one request: Don’t let me put this phrase to a vote.”

We could do with some Ben-Gurionic fudging pragmatism today. Today is not a day for laying down your life on the battlements, but for co-existing in the stronghold. It is a day for reaching out, finding the common ground and building on that. If either side in this current struggle ‘wins’, then the country loses, and loses about half of the population. That cannot be a result that anyone wants to see.

As I say, anything I write now will, by the time you read it, only be useful for wrapping virtual phish, so I have decided not to write about what is happening in Israel today. And yet, somehow, that appears to be what I have done. All that remains is for me to explain today’s title.

The ostrich was what I thought I was going to be, burying my head in the sand of something whimsical, in order to avoid having to look at the political reality, thereby enabling me to pretend it doesn’t exist. That didn’t exactly work, did it?

The anchorman is what I planned to write about. What that means, you will have to wait a week to find out.

The good news (for me at least) is that I now have a ready-made topic, already completely plotted out in my head, for next week. Which means that I am looking forward to a stress-free week. (I told you to stop laughing at the back!)

And then we really do still need to talk about the cricket.

Until next week, may I wish all of those who are planning to fast from Wednesday night that there will be no need, because, by then, the Messiah will have come and the Temple will have been rebuilt; failing that, I wish you an easy and a meaningful fast; and finally, my fervent wish is that all of the House of Israel, both those who are fasting and those who are not, may find, in the commemoration of the fall of the Temple and of the end of Jewish sovereignty over the land, meaningful lessons for our current troubled times.

Meanwhile, everybody else seems to have escaped from Israel (some permanently, some temporarily), and to be having a wonderful time.

Ed Note: The Declaration of Independence (both in its original Hebrew and in English translation) is a fascinating subject, which can teach us a great deal about, among other things, the history of Zionism, the vision of Israel’s founders, and Israel’s relationship with world Jewry. Since it, like the flag, is both being invoked by the protestors against the judicial reforms, and being counter-invoked by the protestors in favour, it is worth revisiting at this time.
You can read the full text in Hebrew here and in English here.
A comprehensive overview and analysis by an emeritus professor of political science at Hebrew University can be read here.
Daniel Gordis writes a brief but fascinating article on it here.
The authors of an exhaustive and authoritative book on the Declaration also wrote an extended article giving the ‘biography’ of the Declaration, which you can read here.

Let me first describe how we got down from the cliff I left us hanging from last week. In the event, our journey home from Portugal was uneventfully smooth. As I write that, I am struck by just how low our expectations of air travel have sunk. What ‘uneventfully smooth’ means, in 2023, is that our drive to Lisbon was easy, as was returning the car and transferring by shuttle bus to the airport. Because everything was so hitch-free, we actually arrived at the airport over four hours before our flight was scheduled. All of the waiting for the check-in to open, queuing and processing took about two hours, so we had another two hours to kill in the airport departure lounge.

We boarded on time and then sat on the tarmac. After 15 minutes, the pilot announced that we were not being given clearance to fly yet, because of ‘heavy air traffic over Europe’. (In Hebrew, he actually said: ‘…over France and Iran’, but I assumed, and very sincerely hoped, that was a slip of the tongue and he meant Italy. ‘Heavy air traffic over Europe’? If only they had asked me, I could have advised them that air traffic is, indeed, heavy over Europe in mid-July. It is slightly disconcerting that this appeared to come as a surprise to air traffic control at Lisbon airport.

We sat on the tarmac for an hour, and then, after taxiing to the runway, sat for another ten minutes while two other flights landed. Thankfully, the air conditioning was working throughout this time. The result, unsurprisingly, was that we landed almost an hour late. So, there you have your answer. Spending four hours in an airport, then experiencing a 70-minute delay in departure, resulting in an arrival time an hour later than scheduled, is what constitutes ‘uneventfully smooth’ air travel in 2023.

Our last few days in Penamacor were low-key, but very enjoyable, although we all spent most of the time wandering around saying: ‘I don’t know where these four weeks have gone?!! We only just arrived!!’ In our last week, Lua seemed to have recovered from her lack of discipline when walking off the lead with me. Bernice cleverly worked out what had caused it.

One morning, on our walk, we had encountered a woman with two dogs, one a very friendly and lively dalmatian. Lua, who was traumatised as a puppy by a very cruel owner, is very much of a nervous disposition; when this dalmatian, off the lead, came loping towards her, she fled; the dalmatian, thinking this was a game, gave chase. Eventually, Lua ran all the way home, and my troubles with her began there.

However, as I say, I tried to take her for a walk again during our last week, and she behaved as beautifully as she usually does. On the Sunday and Monday morning, Tao decided that he wanted to join us on our morning walk. This represented, for Lua and myself, a trade-off. We both enjoy a vigorous walk of several kilometres in the morning, which, obviously, wasn’t possible with Tao. However, what we did get was an endless string of adventures. First, I got to stand lookout on the stretch of lawn in front of the sports hall, which, I discovered, is actually Tao’s pirate ship in disguise, complete with main mast (flagpole) and crow’s nest (retaining wall) from which I was required to keep an eagle eye open for any passing giant octopus.

We were also required to run races (me, with my two artificial hips, took inspiration from Andy Murray) to the tree at the side of the sports hall. Lua, unsurprisingly, won these races convincingly. We were then able to cool off by swimming in the lagoon, which I had previously heedlessly walked over every day, labouring under the delusion that it was a concrete platform. We even managed to work in some nature study, discussing the variety of shape and colouration of different trees’ leaves, and the way lichen always favours the same side of the tree.

A good walk with Lua is a great way to start the day, but a good walk around Tao’s ever-bubbling mind is a large part of the reason why we continue to put ourselves through these ‘uneventfully smooth’ journeys two or three times a year.

And then, all too soon, it was Tuesday, which was Ollie’s first birthday. We had a family celebration that included music and bubbles and decorations and individual frozen yoghourt cupcakes and blessings and wishes. Ollie was largely unmoved, although he gave his absolutely undivided attention to everyone’s blessings to him. He spends a lot of his time focussing with intensity on what others, especially his big brother, are doing. He is definitely taking it all in.

Then, there we were, saying our goodbyes, and then it was Wednesday, and we were unpacking in Maale Adumim, and then it was Sunday, and we were off to Zichron to catch up with Raphael, Esther and Maayan. Initially, Raphael was just a little wary of us in the flesh, rather than on the phone, but very, very soon we were back to our usual relationship.

He, of course, has changed while we have been in Portugal. His progress in walking and talking over the month were very noticeable. These Portugal trips involve a curious kind of not-really-catch-up, where, over the course of our month abroad, we watch Ollie ostensibly closing the gap between Raphael and himself, and then, when we return, we discover that Raphael is not where he was when we last saw him.

So now we switch back to the more normal routine of weekly visits to Raphael in person and a weekly video chat and story-time and puppet-show with Tao and, we hope, increasingly with Ollie.

Micha’el and family are, God willing, planning to come to Israel in the late autumn. We then plan to go to Portugal next in February–March, where, because it is a Jewish leap year, we will be able to stay later into March and, for the first time ever, celebrate Tao’s birthday with him. That’s something very special to look forward to.

Here’s Tao, enjoying Ollie’s birthday frozen yoghourt and fruit,

Raphael, enjoying a walk,

and Ollie, rejecting Tao’s doctor’s scissors in favour of one of his best-loved dance tunes.

A mixed bag of vignettes this week, all designed with the sole purpose of taking my mind off the elephant in the room this week, and all failing miserably in their purpose.

The elephant, in case you haven’t realised already, is almost certain to be let out of the bag (if you can have a cow elephant, I don’t see why you can’t have a cat elephant), later today (Monday). If the Israeli parliamentary opposition’s expected filibuster is particularly effective, that may be much, much later today, indeed in the early hours of tomorrow (Tuesday). The item in question is the first reading of a bill covering one (theoretically less controversial) element of the Israeli government’s proposed judicial reform: namely, the reform of the reasonableness standard. I really don’t wish to antagonise any of my regular readers, who range from the looniest of lefts to the most raging of rights. (How am I doing so far in not antagonising them?)

I’m not sure I can walk the tightrope of explaining this legislation without inflaming someone, but let me try. Broadly speaking, decades ago, the Supreme Court gave itself the right to apply judicial review against any adminstrative decision taken by the government on the grounds of it not being reasonable. Before you ask: ‘What did they mean by reasonable?’, let me ask you: ‘How long is a piece of string?’ The justices did not see fit to attempt to define reasonableness. So (back to Humpty Dumpty) a decision is unreasonable if a majority of the sitting Supreme Court justices deem it unreasonable.

A large segment of the population sees in the government’s total package of planned judicial reform a genuine threat to Israel’s democracy. For many of them, this first piece of legislation is the thin end of the wedge. They are therefore planning a National Day of Disruption tomorrow. The principal target of that protest will be the international airport, Ben Gurion. A similar, but smaller-scale, protest last week disrupted the smooth running of the airport but did not cause flight delays. At least one of the leaders of the protest has stated that it is not the object of this week’s protest to disrupt flights. However, it seems likely that there will be flight delays.

Technically, we land at Ben Gurion not on Tuesday, but in the early hours of Wednesday. In addition, disruption is likely to be caused to departures from and not arrivals at Ben Gurion airport. However, an El Al flight is due to depart from Ben Gurion at 11AM tomorrow morning and land in Lisbon at 3PM. I am assuming that this plane is scheduled to turn around and fly us back to Israel, departing at 10:25PM.

My expectation is that this flight from Israel will be disrupted and our flight will be delayed until Wednesday morning or cancelled and we will have to hope to get onto the following evening’s flight. My hope is that we will find out about the change of plan early enough to be able to change our arrangements without stress. Since Bernice will be reading this, I won’t tell you what my expectation is.

In either event (delay or cancellation), we will not be insured for the extension, since, in common with all travel insurance, we are nor covered for any of the actual reasons why flights are delayed in the real world. We will therefore incur additional costs in extending our travel insurance. An extension of our car rental will also incur an additional charge, which, the small print informs me, is not required to be at the additional daily rate. I will probably suggest to Bernice that we leave Penamacor as planned, return the car on time, and, if necessary, stay overnight in a hotel near the airport.

And after the elephant, we have the vignettes.

First, I have to update you on the neighbourhood supplies front. The neighbour who has been dropping round bags of fruit outdid herself last week. First, she brought about two-and-a-half kilo of plums, assuring Tslil that these were the last of her crop. The following day, she brought a second bag of plums, of equal weight, and a slightly smaller bag of peaches. All of this fruit, I have to say, was deliciously ripe and juicy. The plums were mouth-wateringly tart, and the peaches were sublimely sweet.

Tslil and I spent an hour or so pitting plums and making jam. By the time the jam was ready to pour into jars, the neighbour had brought yet another two kilos of plums round. Tslil has an electric fruit dehydrator, which she put to good use, and the following morning she and Tao went round handing parcels of dried fruit to neighbours. Having brought silan to Portugal, we will now be taking a jar of plum jam back from Portugal.

Next, another quick supermarket story that occurred this last week, and that is a typical foreigner experience. There is a local cheese that Micha’el is very fond of, called Castelões. Before we left for the super last week, I checked the pronunciation with Micha’el. At the cheese counter in the super, I thought I saw the cheese at the back, but the label was obscured by a price stake. When my turn came to be served, I pointed to the cheese wheel and asked ‘Castelões?’ in an almost perfect reproduction (you’ll have to trust me on this) of what Micha’el had said.

The assistant hesitated, looked at me questioningly, and, I presume, asked me what I had said. I pointed again and repeated the name. After three times, I leant as far as I could over the counter and pointed unmistakably at the specific wheel. “Ah! Castelões!!” the assistant declared triumphantly, pronouncing it, I promise you, exactly as I had. My every encounter with this language seems to bring its own humiliation.

In other news: While the Portuguese heath service is highly spoken of, it is probably true to say that it is more efficient in the large cities than the rural backwaters. Several months ago, Micha’el trod on a branch, and it seems that there may still be some foreign matter in his foot. The doctor has told him to have a CT at the hospital in Castelo Branco, for which he expects there to be a three-month waiting list. The other day, he phoned the hospital to make an appointment. After a fairly lengthy call, he reported to us that, in order to make an appointment, he has to physically bring the necessary papers to the hospital, which is, of course, 40 minutes’ drive away. Presumably, the documents exist in the health service’s computer system. However, he is still required to present them. He cannot email the documents, or upload them to the hospital website, or fax them; he has to bring them in person.

And finally this week, a car story. When I was growing up, the joke that did the rounds was of a friend who had applied to join the police force, but was rejected because they discovered that his parents were married. (This joke represents more or less the extent of my teenage rebelliousness. Pathetic, I know.) Well, we think we have discovered another ‘profession’ that has the same entrance requirement: vehicle road test examiner. The kids’ experiences in Portugal have been about the same as ours in Israel.

The examiners, who clearly relish the power they wield, appear to assume that every driver both understands car mechanics and has mastered the entire arcane vocabulary of the subject in (in our case) Hebrew or (for the kids) Portuguese. They also assume that every driver already knows the procedure for the test, and that when a mechanic who does not enunciate clearly, and who is standing in an inspection pit directly under the car, shouts a command that can barely be heard above other shouts, and revving of engines, and whirring of power tools, then the driver will hear and understand the command. When the driver makes a not unintelligent but mistaken guess at what he is being asked to do, the mechanic becomes either sarcastic or belligerent.

Tslil had to take their truck for its annual road test last week. In preparation, Micha’el replaced a damaged headlight cover and their mechanic (a near-neighbour) checked the truck, finding no reason why the vehicle should fail. On the day, more in hope than expectation, we all awaited the result. The truck failed the test, for the following, most aggravating, of reasons. When Tslil took the truck last year, it passed; she returned home triumphant, with the green certificate and the disc to display on the windscreen.

This year, when she arrived at the test centre with last year’s green certificate, the examiner tested the truck and then asked why none of the repairs required last year had been carried out. ‘What repairs?’ asked Tslil. “These four’, the mechanic replied, pointed to four clauses on last year’s green certificate that neither Tslil nor Micha’el had read.

In their defence, they took the truck to be tested last year and they got a green certificate, meaning that the truck had passed. Nobody pointed out to them at the time the list of repairs that had to be carried out before the next year’s test. If someone were to ask the mechanic why this wasn’t pointed out, he would probably reply that ‘everyone knows about it’. So now the kids have a week’s grace to carry out these repairs, and, in this part of the world, there is no such thing as a garage mechanic who will carry out repairs within a week. Time moves much more slowly here. All very frustrating!

To end on a happier note. Tao and Ollie enjoyed a day at the pool last week, and Raphael enjoyed a morning at the supermarket!

Ed Note: When Bernice read this post, she commented that it all sounded as though I wasn’t very happy with the world. I hereby undertake that next week, whether I am writing from the comfort of our own home office, or the discomfort of Lisbon Airport, I will endeavour to be less Eeyore and more Piglet.

By the time you read this, we will have been in Portugal for three weeks, which is a lot of book-reading, nursery-rhyme singing, rocking to sleep, playing in the park, magnetile construction (and destruction), puppet shows, craft projects, serving on pirate ships, and not a huge amount else. (Not that we are here for a huge amount else, to be honest.)

 I haven’t even managed to get my regular daily walk with Lua, who seems to have lost her enthusiasm for walking with me. On several days, after I let her off the lead at the start of the path off the road into the forest, she refused to go any further, whereas normally she relishes her walk. I must admit that the weather, even relatively early in the morning, has been oppressively hot, so I can’t completely blame her.

On the last couple of days she has spent a few minutes just standing looking at me walking on. She is completely unmoved by any amount of calling or whistling. When I gave up and attempted to walk back towards her to put her on the lead again, she simply turned around and trotted back home. So, I have lost the external incentive for my morning walk, and now it is a question of whether I have the discipline to go out anyway, by myself. I might try one more day with Lua, much earlier in the morning, although, to be honest, on the one morning I suggested that, she gave me one of her: ‘Have you completely lost your mind? It’s the middle of the night’ looks.

We did all go last Sunday, en famille, to a dammed-river reservoir ‘beach’ about a 35 minute drive away, which was very uncrowded (it did not officially open until 1 July), quite beautiful and great fun. There was a small children’s playground, a sand mini-football pitch, a huge clean sandpit, grass and vegetation, picnic tables, and a very pebbly beach, as well as a cafe-kiosk (that was not open yet) and clean toilets (that were). The river bed was equally pebbly, but the water was clear and cool. We all thoroughly enjoyed two or three late afternoon and early evening hours there, including a delicious picnic, until the sun set and we headed for home.

Apart from that, it’s been the usual cycle of playing, shopping and cooking. A week after arriving, we did our second big shop, going to Castelo Branco this time. This actually qualified as a day out for Bernice and myself, without the kids. We combined it with a couple of other errands – a guitar string for Micha’el (which we got right), a phone cover for Tslil (which we got wrong), and lunch at our favourite vegan restaurant, which every day offers a full set meal at lunchtime, including a main course comprising a tasting platter of four small portions.

This time, since the waitress spoke no English, the chef came out to explain the dishes. One of them was what he described as a traditional Portuguese dish comprising a cooked leaf in a dressing. He did not know the name of the leaf in English, but he explained that it is, in itself, quite bland, and the dressing makes the dish. The Portuguese name he gave sounded to me like ‘shparkosh’, and I tentatively asked if it was asparagus, but he assured me it was not. When it arrived, Bernice thought it looked like spinach or kale. In the dressing, it was very tasty.

A few days later, the kids’ near-neighbour, a very sweet, elderly lady who constantly brings them produce from her land, arrived with a huge bag of shredded leaf, which we realised was what we had been served at the restaurant. She explained that she has a special machine for shredding it very fine, since the leaves are very tough, and that it is cooked by boiling in water and used as the basis for a national dish, caldo verde, a soup or ‘green broth’ that often includes, in addition to onion, garlic and potato, a spicy pork sausage. Some research online convinced us that what we had was collard greens, which I see made their way to the Southern states where they were originally boiled in a broth and eaten by African-American slaves.

What is puzzling is that online, the Portuguese translation is given as ‘couve’, which is a (semantic) root that is used in cauliflower (couve-flor), brussels sprouts (couve de bruxelas) kohlrabi (couve-rábano) and so forth. I cannot find anything that sounds like what the chef told me was the name. I can only assume that it is a regional name.

The same neighbour who brought the collard greens, incidentally, has been plying us with figs (as well as plums and a couple of aubergines) since we arrived: large, ripe, sweet, bursting figs. Since only Tslil, myself and, we discover, Ollie, enjoy them, I am having a field day. They certainly add another layer of flavour and texture to my morning fruit salad and granola.

Back to our Castelo day. At the supermarket, Bernice and I divided, as usual. I shopped for the fresh fruit and vegetables, the nuts and dried fruits I use in making granola, and the fresh fish, while Bernice took on everything else. She covers more mileage than I do, but my cart is more fully laden at the end. Not that it’s a competition, you understand!

Just as I was finishing, Bernice came over to remind me that the last time (the first time) we had used this super, we had discovered at the checkout that we should have weighed, and printed out labels for, all of the items that we bought from dispensers (the loose nuts and dried fruit). It was quite embarrassing when we discovered this, and had to wait in mid-checkout while an assistant took these items and weighed and priced them, as the queue grew inexorably behind us.

Warned by Bernice, I now had to dig out these items, which were, of course, at the bottom of my very full cart. I then had to retrace my steps to the dispensers, and, for each item, find its particular dispenser, memorise the four-digit item code displayed there, go to the electronic scales (one on each counter), place the bag on the scale, punch in the code, then take the price-tag printout and stick it to the bag.

As I was finishing this for the six relevant items, I noticed, on the next counter, that all of the loose fruit and veg needed to be priced in the same way. This meant that I now had to juggle 90% of the items in my cart, praying that I didn’t miss anything buried under a mound of produce, then remember where the tray was that I had chosen the produce from, memorise the four-digit number, find the nearest electronic….you get the picture.

At some point in this process, I started musing whether the supermarket was offering its customers a service in this way, or exploiting us as unpaid labour. On the one hand, this method allows you to keep track of just how much each item is going to cost you. In addition, your checkout time is significantly reduced, and cashiers do not need to memorise dozens of codes.

On the other hand, even if you remember to weigh your items as you buy them, printing out your own price tags takes some time and effort. I genuinely cannot decide whether I regard it as a cunning ploy or a reasonable business policy. I will probably have to wait until our next trip, when, I hope, I will remember to weigh as I buy, to see how much of a bother it actually is, if you get it right the first time.

One way in which our shopping has been made easier is that I have discovered a list of kosher fish with their names in various European languages, produced by the KLBD (Kosher London Beth Din). Until now, I have had to google translate all of the names written (often barely legibly) on price stakes at the fish counter. This has often proved frustrating, for example when I do not recognise the name in English.

Bizarrely, the KLBD list is printed in alphabetical order of the English names, which is not much use for looking up Portuguese names. However, it was the work of only a few minutes to copy the list, paste into Excel, sort by Portuguese name alphabetical order, scale down the font and print out a list of 28 kosher fish that I can carry in my wallet. Of course, we have never seen more than four or five of them in any supermarket in this part of Portugal; however, we are now ready for any contingency. (If it is of interest to you, the list offers names for most European countries, and some destinations further afield from Britain.)

Which brings us more or less up to date. Meanwhile, our video chats are now with Raphael, for a change (and Esther). We see that his walking has come on, he is getting taller, and he says “Bye bye” when he’s had enough. All healthy developments.

And one more thing. All three of the boys enjoyed the sunshine and water in their garden(s) this week.

Last week I promised two examples of what can go wrong when you travel…and then had time to tell you about only one. So, this week, let’s start with the second.

There are, I am told, some people who, when tackling a jigsaw puzzle, just put their hand into the box, pull out a piece, look at the picture on the box-lid and decide where the piece goes. I’m very pleased to say that I’ve never actually met any of these people, but I suppose I have to believe that they exist, in much the same way as I believe in pygmies, despite never having met one.

Any truly civilised person knows that the correct way to tackle a jigsaw is to sift through the pieces, sorting out all of those with straight lines, and then to sift through the straight-line pieces, sorting out the four corner pieces. Once you have those four, you can put them in place; then you are free to continue to complete the frame, and then, and only then, can you tackle the middle.

Preparing to come to Portugal is rather like tackling a jigsaw. Every time we plan our next trip, we start with the four corner pieces, which allow us to set our dates. The first corner is checking with the kids, to ensure that our visit will not clash with a visit from Tslil’s parents, or other family or friends. Next is checking the Hebrew calendar, to see what constraints there are regarding any Jewish holidays. Next is our personal calendar, to see whether we have any unbreakable commitments. These days, these are more likely to be medical appointments than family celebrations. Finally, armed with all of this information, we see what our flight options are and make a firm booking, based on price and convenience.

The next set of tasks involves finding and putting in place all the jigsaw pieces with one straight side. There is a clear division of labour here. I deal with all of the ancillary arrangements: car hire, transportation to the airport in Israel, travel insurance, transferring money to our Portuguese account. Bernice, meanwhile, finds and puts in place far more pieces. She solicits from Tslil (and, these days, also Tao) a shopping list, and starts acquiring whatever clothes, food items, pieces of household equipment the kids need or would like. This trip, for example, included silan, shorts and a telescope: included, but was not remotely confined to, these items.

As we draw closer to our departure date, scarcely a day passes when Bernice doesn’t return from the mall with something. Ritual requires that she then make a declaration that “It really doesn’t matter if we don’t have enough room for this. It isn’t vital. We can take it next time.” I am required to reply: “Don’t worry! We’ve got plenty of room. We’ll manage easily.” This dialogue continues with little variation until the morning before we leave, when we start filling in the middle pieces of the jigsaw. This involves gathering from the four corners of the house everything we are taking and bringing down the suitcases.

Once everything is laid out on the sofas in the salon, I divide each pile into two, so that if one suitcase is lost in transit Tao will at least have some t-shirts, Micha’el will have at least one pair of sharwalim, we will have one bottle of grape juice for Tao and Tslil, and so on. At some point during the morning, I introduce a brief variation on our dialogue: “You know, I’m not 100% sure we’re going to be able to take everything.” However, in the end, through some alchemical process, everything we want to take is distributed between the pieces of luggage in such a way that the El Al clerk will let it pass, and, so far, we have never had to leave anything behind.

Apart from the flight, the only other preparation that I make very early is car rental, which almost always offers cancellation with full refund up to a day or two before the rental begins. This trip was no exception: I actually booked a car, through an online booking company (VIP Cars), three full calendar months before we flew. It is always a very reassuring feeling to print out the rental voucher and know that a second corner-piece of our trip is firmly in place. Or so I used to think, before this trip.

Picture my reaction when the following happened. On the day of our trip, we arrived at the airport in good time after a smooth trip by taxi and train. Checking in took a very long time, but everything went smoothly., We then made our way to Aroma in the departure lounge for a salad, while we waited for our flight to be called.

While I was sitting waiting for Bernice to bring our order, I received an email from VIP Cars, and was, by turns, puzzled, then horrified, then outraged, to read that (sic): “We have got an urgent update from the supplier, due to some technical issues Keddy car rental cant honor the booking, hence, instead of Keddy we will be providing you FREE UPGRADE car from Klass Wagen car rental from the same location in Lisbon airport and at the same price…Please acknowledge this email” (Puzzled, because Klass Wagen sounded to me like a joke; horrified, obviously, by the very sloppy punctuation; outraged, that our agreement was being broken so cavalierly at such short notice.)

I immediately acknowledged receipt of the email and sought further clarification. The key question was whether the pick-up point was still at the airport terminal. This is a big factor for us; since we have a lot of luggage and a three-hour drive from the airport, having to take a shuttle bus to an off-airport location is a major drawback, costing us effort and time. At Lisbon airport, car pickup is a level four-minute walk from the Arrivals terminal.

An exchange of emails followed, the upshot of which was that VIP were unable to provide me with any car from the airport. I assured them that I did not want an upgrade; negotiating the narrow, cobbled streets of Penamacor is enough of a challenge in a budget car. Even so, they claimed there was not a single car available at the airport. They assured me that Klass Wagen’s office was only a four-minute ride by shuttle bus from right outside the terminal, and sent me what seemed like clear details of where to pick up the shuttle bus, and the phone number of Klass Wagen in case anything went wrong, “but,” they assured me, “nothing will go wrong.” (Stop sniggering at the back.)

Basically, we had no choice but to accept. They sent me a new voucher and instructed me to print it out and present it at the desk. I pointed out, as my patience ebbed away, that I was already at the airport and hadn’t brought my printer with me. They quickly assured me that would not be a problem, as I could show the voucher to the company on my phone.

Our flight went smoothly (apart, of course, from the fact that I was worrying the whole time that picking up the car would prove a nightmare). Lisbon airport is in the middle of renovations, which meant that our walk from passport control to baggage pick-up was not the direct three-minute affair it usually is, but rather a twelve-minute trek against the traffic through the gate area and then the duty-free area for departures.

Despite the longer walk (which, to be honest, is never unwelcome after several hours in economy), we still arrived at the carousel some time before our luggage. However, both cases arrived safely, and we made our way out, as per instruction, through Exit 4, opposite the Vodafone shop, and the shuttle stop is in the second traffic lane.

There was, you may not be entirely surprised to learn, no shuttle bus waiting, and, indeed, no shuttle bus-stop waiting. Or, more precisely, there was a shuttle bus-stop, but it was a little too far from the Vodafone shop to be accurately described as “opposite”, and it gave no indication that it served “Klass Wagen” (although, to be honest, if I served a company called “Klass Wagen”, I’m not sure I would advertise it). I decided it would be wise to phone the rental company.

When I did so, I got an automated multi-option system. I had great difficulty hearing it, because we were standing in the middle of a four-lane drop-off and pick-up area. When I managed to tune my ear in, I realised that all of the instructions were in Portuguese, rendering it useless for me.

There was a taxi rank 50 metres away, and I was armed with the address of the rental company, so we trundled our cases over there to take a taxi, which I fully intended to charge to VIP Cars (a name that was acquiring a more ironic ring by the minute). The taxi dispatcher was very pleasant but too busy to really listen to our pathetic story and simply confirmed where the shuttle bus-stop was.

While we were attempting to make progress with him, a shuttle bus pulled up at the bus-stop and Bernice (who had just one case) raced to ask the driver to wait while I (who had a case and a carry-on case) lurched behind, expressing, at every kerb, amazement that the architects had not thought to provide ramps.

By the time I arrived, Bernice had established that, as I had suspected, this bus was an internal airport transfer bus. However, the delightful driver agreed to listen to the Portuguese menu on the rental company’s phone number, and to put me through to the right extension. I dialled the number, and heard the first message (the one I had missed when I phoned because of the ambient noise): “For English, press 1.”  The driver was kind enough not to look at me as if wondering whether I was allowed out alone, and wished us luck, while I got through to an English-speaking receptionist, who assured me that the shuttle-bus had already left their office for the airport, and that although there was, indeed, no bus-stop, he would stop opposite Vodafone.

So, it’s a four-minute ride, and the driver has already left. You do the maths. When did he arrive? That’s right, ten minutes later, which, in case you’re wondering, is just a little more than long enough for a couple of septuagenarians who started their journey 12 hours previously to start wondering whether they are going to be spending the night at the airport.

In fairness, from the moment the shuttle-bus arrived, everything went very smoothly…apart from the fact that the driver had obviously agreed to drop off his colleague who was going off-duty on the way. It actually did not seem to take us out of our way, and the entire drive was only about 12 minutes. The driver spoke very good English. He loaded and unloaded our cases, without being asked. The clerk who processed us was efficient and pleasant.

There was one small further twist when for some reason I couldn’t retrieve the voucher on my phone and the clerk couldn’t find our order on his printout, but everything was resolved in a minute or two (which, in case you’re wondering, is just a little more than long enough for a couple of septuagenarians who started their journey 12½ hours previously to start wondering whether they are going to be spending the night at the car rental office).

We eventually drove off in our Opel Corsa about half-an-hour later than we probably would have done if we had picked the car up at the airport. Incidentally, the clerk was in shock when I rejected the larger and more luxurious Skoda. I didn’t tell him that, if you drive a Kia Picanto – a car we really love – then a Corsa seems like a luxury car.

Fortunately, the rental office was only five minutes’ drive from the motorway that we take out of Lisbon, and we enjoyed an untroubled night-time drive, over three-quarters of which was on cruise control, which makes concentrating on the road so much easier and driving so much simpler.

Next week, I will endeavour to tell you something about what we have actually been doing here in the first half of our stay. Where did those two weeks go?!

Meanwhile, here’s something to tide you over.

Let’s start with the good news. We arrived safely in Penamacor after a very long day last Tuesday. I had woken at 4AM on Tuesday and been unable to get back to sleep. It appears that, as I get older, I worry more about travel arrangements not working out. We didn’t reach the house in Penamacor until 1:45AM. after a very easy drive: easy, but still almost three hours. Lua, taking her duties as guard dog very seriously, chose to bark warningly as I fumbled with the front-door key. (The door has always been temperamental. Sometimes I manage to catch it just right, and the key actually works, but Tuesday night was not, it is fair to say, one of those times.) This meant that we disturbed Micha’el’s sleep, which was not an entirely bad thing from our point of view since he took care of shlepping in the heavier luggage.

Everyone very kindly allowed us a lie-in on Wednesday morning…until 6:30. Bernice, of course, went straight into Nana mode, entering into all of Tao’s games, and offering a shoulder to Ollie which she was delighted that he took to almost immediately. It is no longer a surprise that Tao is very comfortable with us, but it was a delight to rediscover what a friendly, sunny and trusting soul Ollie is. We really are made to feel very very welcome by everybody (even Lua, once she had established that we weren’t breaking and entering),

Late morning we went to the excellent supermarket 30-minutes’ drive away. The boys had taken it in turns to come down with colds in the week before we arrived, and so Micha’el and Tslil hadn’t managed to do a big shop. We actually broke our Portuguese supermarket bill record this time, ably assisted by Tao. I am by now used to the fact that cashiers ask me whether I need a tax bill, because they assume we are buying for a modest hotel. Small-town Portuguese tend, so Micha’el tells us, to shop daily, buying small amounts each time. We seem to buy enormous quantities, and still seem to need to shop almost every day.

I just about managed the drive back from the supermarket before crashing for a three-hour nap, which made up for my twenty-two-and-a-half-hour Tuesday. Bernice, on the other hand, didn’t manage to catch up with herself until Shabbat, when she actually slept until 9AM. I think we are now both recovered from the exertions and stress of the journey, and are into Portugal mode.

The non-stop thunderstorms that Micha’el had warned us of disappeared just before we landed, and our weather has been hot (mid-high 30s) and sunny ever since. Fortunately, the house seems to enjoy its own mini ecosystem: the narrow street at the front is shaded by the houses on both sides, and is therefore significantly cooler than the backyard. The result is that, with the front windows, the glazed double doors between the living room and the kitchen, and the back doors all wide open, there is a cooling breeze blowing through the house for most of the day. This suits us.

The open windows and doors, unfortunately, also suit the house flies, but we choose to regard them as a necessary evil. It is remarkable what one can adjust to when there is no alternative. Lua devotes quite a lot of time to attempting to catch them in her mouth, but has yet to succeed.

Returning to the “exertions and stress of the journey”, I never fail to be surprised by the creative ingenuity of the unappeasable god of air travel. He always seems to be coming up with new ideas for things that can go wrong. This time he excelled himself in the stress stakes, with two original ideas.

When we come out to Portugal, we take an ‘overseas package’ of data and local calls and SMSs through our mobile provider. This is a very straightforward arrangement, in theory. (My more sensitive readers may have picked up on the fact that behind that casual phrase (“in theory”) lies a whole world of possibilities of practice deviating from theory.

To repeat: this is a very straightforward arrangement, in theory. I simply go online, log in to our account, select the package (available in a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer, so that Bernice can take the offer as well) and click Approve. So, on the Thursday before we flew (over four days before our departure) I went online. (My more sensitive readers may have picked up on the fact that behind that casual parenthetic phrase (“over four days before our departure”) lies an entire animated discussion with Bernice about the appropriate amount of time in advance that I should have arranged the overseas package.)

To repeat: I went online, then I logged in to our account, selected the package (available in a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer, so that Bernice could take the offer as well), and clicked Approve. At which point, up popped a message saying how excited out provider was that we were buying this package, explaining that we needed to speak to them directly to complete the process, and inviting me to WhatsApp them. I naturally retrieved my heart from the bottom of whatever hearts sink into when they sink, and WhatsApped a short message explaining the situation.

It is true that the more modern AI chatbots are uncanny in their impersonation of a human being. It is, sadly, equally true that the kind of automated messages that most service providers use gives themselves away as soon as they don’t open their non-mouths. This one responded to my message, in the cheery tone they all effect:

Hi! Thanks for contacting us on WhatsApp (smiley face icon)
We’re doing everything to respond just as quickly as possible. Meanwhile you can carry on with what you’re doing and we’ll be in touch soon. (smug smiley face icon)
You can also go into your personal zone on our webite and carry out all sorts of activities easily, quickly, and without waiting for a rep.

Pausing only to explain icily to the phone that “Actually, no, I can’t, because you won’t let me”, I carried on with what I had been doing (which was, you will remember, discussing ever more animatedly with Bernice what the ideal time would have been to order the package).

Astonishingly, not another minute had passed before a living, breathing rep WhatsApped me. It took just a little longer to explain the situation to him than I was prepared to allow him without wondering about his general intelligence, but, once we were on the same wavelength, he was soon able to clarify that the problem was that my current SIM card did not support the overseas package (although it had supported it three months previously, when it was in my old phone). All I needed to do (he informed me, employing even more smiling and heart-eyed icons than his bot colleague) was to collect a SIM card, free of charge, from any branch of a national chain of electrical retailers or an alternative chain of mobile shops, and then contact the provider to associate the new SIM to my mobile number.

I pointed out that we were flying on the following Tuesday and asked whether the whole process could be postponed until our return, but he regretted that that was not possible. He assured me there were several branches in Jerusalem, but I had already established that there was one only six kilometres from us, in Mishor Adumim. He was delighted to hear this, and we parted in very good humour.

On the morrow, I made my way to Mishor Adumim, and was given a new SIM with very little fuss. When I returned home, I phoned the provider, and spoke to a delightful rep who established, in just a couple of minutes, that I had been given a 4G SIM, whereas I needed a 5G one. I pointed out that it would have been useful to have had that explained to me in the first place. To her credit, she agreed. She asked where I had obtained it from, and, when I told her, she explained that that particular branch did not stock 5G SIMs, I mentioned, almost as an aside, how useful it would have been if her colleague of the previous afternoon had known that. To her credit, she agreed.

More than that. She seemed genuinely mortified, and assured me that she would instruct her Jerusalem office to courier the SIM to my house. Since this was now Friday noon, she explained that the office wouldn’t be able to process the request until Sunday, and the SIM would arrive only on Monday. She told me that if it had not arrived by 3PM on Monday, I should contact her again, so that there would still be time to deliver it.

In the event, the courier company made contact early on Monday, the SIM was delivered in the early afternoon, and it was associated to my mobile number in a matter of minutes. To our great surprise, our package worked as soon as we arrived in Portugal, both on my phone and on Bernice’s, even though she had not been told that she needed a new SIM. She had, indeed, been told (and I clarified this several times, believe me) that she did not need a new SIM, and this proved to be true.

So this first instance of exertion and stress was all in the days leading up to our departure…unlike the second instance, which, my word count tells me, I will have to leave for next week.

Just time for a reminder of what we come to Portugal for, and what we leave behind.

The world, they say, is divided into two groups of people. (Ed. Note: ‘They’, in that sentence, can be translated as ‘I’, as so often. Last week I invented friends to illustrate a point I wanted to make. Today, I’ve invented an entire swathe of society. Next week, the world!)

The world, they say, is divided into two groups of people: those who have one or more dirty little secrets that they don’t care to share with others, and – depending on which particular group of ‘they’ I am favouring today – either those who don’t, or those who pretend to themselves that they don’t.

I thought today I would remove another of Salome’s seven veils and share one of my dirty little secrets with you. When I read articles in The Times online, I am addicted to reading the comments from readers. Most people are shocked and horrified when I admit this, but let me attempt to justify my habit.

 A couple of different factors feed this addiction. First, it is always interesting to see how many comments it takes until two or more readers descend to personal abuse. Despite The Times’ algorithm for filtering and blocking comments based on the language used, creative readers are still quite able to be very unpleasantly abusive. Clearly, some of these readers come with a prior agenda. However, in other cases, it is simply part of the social media phenomenon that allows otherwise civilised individuals to feel no restraint in engaging in the kind of insulting exchanges that they would be horrified to witness, let alone to instigate, in a face-to-face encounter.

A second factor that draws me to these comments is that sometimes readers are able to contribute a personal anecdote that confirms, contradicts, or otherwise sheds more light on, the news story, op-ed article or obituary they are commenting on. These personal insights often add another dimension to my appreciation of the original story.

And then there are the serendipitous moments, one of which arose last week. A casual comment from a reader led me on a Google trail that uncovered a story that I found fascinating, and that I hope will tickle your fancy as well. It is a tale of tragic loss, hubris, irony, urban development and popular culture, and it begins on the Obituary pages of The Times.

On June 1, less than two weeks ago, Cynthia Weil died. I readily confess to wondering who she was when I first saw the obituary. However, experience has taught me that the Obituary pages are often the most interesting, and sometimes the most enlightening, in the paper, and certainly consistently contain the most uplifting stories in the paper – not that the bar is set very high in that regard.

I soon learnt that Cynthia Weil was the lyricist, and her husband Barry Mann the tunesmith, of an astonishing and wide-ranging collection of popular songs from the early 60s. Together, they wrote, inter tin-pan-alia, You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ for the Righteous Brothers, On Broadway for the Drifters and We Gotta Get out of This Place, recorded by the Animals. I felt less embarrassed by my ignorance when I learnt that when Mann and Weil, staged, in 2004, a musical revue based on their songs, they named the show, ironically, They Wrote That?

The obituary made reference to the couple sharing a cubbyhole in New York’s Brill Building in the 1960s, a building that boasted many such upright-piano-equipped cubbyholes.

One of the commenters on the obit asked: ‘Who was Brill?’ For some reason, I found the question intriguing, and so I did some research. This is the story I uncovered.

A property on the corner of Broadway and 49^th Street was leased early in the last century to a men’s clothing store, Brill Brothers. In 1929, the Brills sublet to property developer Abraham Lefcourt, with the requirement that he build a structure to be completed no later than November 1931. Lefcourt, whose ambition exceeded his practicality, announced plans for the tallest building in the world at 1050 feet, with a $30 million price tag. This was a deliberate attempt to upstage both the Chrysler building, on which work had started, and the Empire State building, on which work was about to start.

Two factors made Lefcourt’s plans unrealistically grandiose. The first, for which he must take responsibility, was that the site he had sublet was a third of the area of the Chrysler lot, and a seventh of the size of the Empire State lot. Such a small area could not reasonably be expected to support so tall a building.

The second unfortunate fact, which Lefcourt, like many others, failed to foresee, was that, 25 days after he announced his plans on October 3, 1929, the New York Stock Market crash would begin. Ever an enterprising businessman, Lefcourt calculated that investors who survived the crash would prefer to put their money in bricks and mortar, and he started rethinking.

Then, just four months after his initial announcement, Lefcourt’s 17-year-old son Alan, who was the apple of his father’s eye, died of anaemia. Within a month, Lefcourt had filed plans with the authorities for a 10-storey office structure on the site, to be named the Alan E. Lefcourt Building, in his son’s memory.

The building was completed, in art deco style, in the spring of 1931. In a niche just below the parapet, 10 storeys above the main entrance to the building, sits a recessed plaster bust. In a second, lower, niche, just 20 feet above street level, and directly above the main entrance, is a much more prominent bronze bust. Both busts are believed to be of Alan Lefcourt.

Within a year of the building being completed, Abraham Lefcourt defaulted on his sublease, and the building reverted to the Brill Brothers, who reopened their store there. As early as 1932, the building became known as the Brill Building, and the only reference to Alan’s memory was the busts, which bear no plaque.

When Lefcourt Sr died, in December 1932, his net worth, which had stood at over $100 million in 1928, was declared as being $2,500, none of it in real estate.

Originally, the office floors above the store were leased by the Brills to a variety of ordinary businesses. However, by the 1940s, the building was already full of musicians. The composer Johnny Marks, who wrote Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1949, had space in the Brill no later than 1950, and his firm, St. Nicholas Music, (don’t you love the name!) still has offices there. Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole were among others who rented office space in the building.

By 1962, the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses. A musician could find a publisher and printer, cut a demo, promote the record and cut a deal with radio promoters, all within this one building. The creative culture of the independent music companies in the Brill Building and the nearby 1650 Broadway came to define the influential “Brill Building Sound” and the style of popular song writing and recording created by its writers and producers.

Composers and lyricists who worked in the Brill Building in its heyday included (deep breath): Burt Bacharach, Jeff Barry, Bert Berns, Bobby Darin, Hal David, Neil Diamond, Luther Dixon, Sherman Edwards, Buddy Feyne, Gerry Goffin, Howard Greenfield, Ellie Greenwich, Jack Keller, Carole King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Barry Mann, Johnny Mercer, Rose Marie McCoy, Van McCoy, Irving Mills, Fred Neil, Laura Nyro, Tony Orlando, Doc Pomus, Jerry Ragovoy, Ben Raleigh, Teddy Randazzo, Billy Rose, Neil Sedaka, Mort Shuman, Paul Simon, Cynthia Weil.

Here’s Carole King describing the atmosphere in the building:

Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You’d sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song exactly like yours. The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific—because Donny (Kirshner) would play one songwriter against another. He’d say: “We need a new smash hit”—and we’d all go back and write a song and the next day we’d each audition for Bobby Vee’s producer.

These days, the building houses more offices related to the film-making than to the music-making industry, but in 2017 (the latest reference I could find) Paul Simon still had offices there.

In 2010, in recognition of its art deco design, its impressive facade and its contribution to the cultural history of the city, the Brill Building was officially designated a New York City landmark.

And yet who now remembers Abraham Lefcourt or (which would probably have grieved him more) his son, Alan?

Now, can you blame me for reading the comments following the articles in The Times? You really never know what you are going to turn up next.

Unlike readers of my blog, who always know what (or, rather, who) is going to turn up next. And here they are, right on cue: the lyricist, the performer and the tunesmith. Take your pick.