It’s not that I don’t want to write something profound about the situation, you understand. It’s just that I don’t feel I have anything useful to add to the mountains of commentary on Syria.

Is it a good thing that a sadistic and brutal tyrant has been forced out of office and into exile in a matter of days? Of course it is.

Is it a good thing that, overnight, the Syrian airforce, navy, and miliary capability were eliminated before they could fall from the wrong hands into potentially wronger hands? Another no brainer. (No need to thank us, world, but if you could avoid accusing us of genocide in Syria, we would appreciate it.)

Is who is going to replace Assad and what is going to replace his regime going to turn out to be an improvement? Ah, there you have me. You see, I think it’s still a tad early to be making predictions, especially, as they say, about the future. There’s a couple of big questions we need answers to first.

Can the Al-Qaida leopard change his spots? You will, I am sure, understand my scepticism.

Is the artificial construct known as Syria, sketched on a map in haste by a couple of outsiders, when the world was a very different place, a thing of the past? Are we looking at its breakup into several smaller states?

Just how far does Erdogan’s dream of the new Ottoman Empire stretch?

Whoa. Some heavy stuff there. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to wait for just a little more dust to settle before making a fool of myself. Safer all round, I reckon, to write about nothing in particular this week.

Take, for instance, the definition of the word “word”. My Oxford English Dictionary (admittedly vintage 1972, but I really don’t believe the definition of “word” has shifted significantly in the last 52 years) offers a definition which I shan’t bore you with in full, but which basically boils down to “a sequence of sounds constituting the basic unit of meaningful speech” and “represented in writing as a sequence of letters flanked by spaces”.

So, it’s rather a shame that the Oxford Dictionaries, as a body, did not consult the Oxford Dictionary, as a resource, before deciding that their word of the year was “brain rot”. Or, as we say in English, ‘their phrase of the year was “brain rot”’. Clearly, the “language experts” from Oxford who compiled the shortlist of six from which the public voted the winner not only proposed “brain rot” but also suffer from it. Words, dear reader, fail me… as they seem to do them.

Passing swiftly on. Men, as we all know, are from Mars, and women are from Venus. In conversations recently, I have been made aware that one of the fiercest battlegrounds of modern life on which that difference is thrashed out is the dishwasher. Apparently, I am not the only man who has a scientific method for arranging the dirty dishes in the washer, nor is Bernice the only woman who hasn’t the faintest idea what her husband is talking about.

It’s beyond my wit how she can’t see what is perfectly obvious from the topography of the space and the array of the racks. It is beyond her wit why I attach any importance to this. I’m now trying to decide whether I find this reassuring or disturbing. On balance, I think, despite momentary petty frustrations, vive la difference! I am reassured by the knowledge that it will all come out in the wash.

While we’re on the subject of diverse opinions within a marriage, one of those questions that never seem to appear on the questionnaires prospective couples are sometimes encouraged to fill out before pledging their troth, in order to determine their compatibility is the question of the temperature of fruit. Nothing, to my mind, compares with the first refreshingly chill bite of an apple or orange straight from the refrigerator. Bernice, however, prefers her fruit chambré (with the room, as the word suggests, preferably being in the South of France, rather than the South of Wales).

To complicate matters further, Bernice enjoys summer fruits when they are not yet fully ripe (or ‘rock hard’, as I put it), whereas I prefer them ripe (or ‘edible’). In the brief peach season, to take one example, this can prove taxing, since I have to hide some of the fruit, so that Bernice doesn’t eat it all before I have even started.

Of course, I can’t hide it in the fridge, because that is the first place she will look. This means that, when it is, to my taste, ripe, it is at room temperature. What we need, I have come to realise, is a microantiwave, that can bring a piece of fruit from room temperature to 6^oC in 30 seconds. Yes, I know it is a first-world problem, but that’s where, most of the time, I happen to believe I live.

While I’m feeling not particularly gruntled, let me vent about another of the world’s petty injustices. Several months ago, while Esther’s car was parked outside their house, a neighbour smashed into it. (This, incidentally, had the wholly positive effect of pushing the girls over into seriously looking to move, which quickly yielded a wonderful result. It is, as they don’t say, an ill wind that has no silver lining.) While the insurance claim was being processed, Esther, following the insurer’s instructions, had the car repaired at her own expense and submitted the receipts with her claim.

Negotiations with the insurance company were rather protracted. In fairness, this was in part due to the fact that the insurance company customer is myself, rather than Esther. (Esther’s car was originally ours, and the insurance premium stayed lower if we kept the policy as part of my package of policies with the same company.) This meant that there was a certain amount of juggling, explaining, and passing on of codes sent to phones to be done every time Esther tried to expedite the claim.

Eventually, the insurance company was ready to settle. This happened while we were in Portugal. We transferred to Esther the amount of the payment that we were due to receive from the insurance company. (No need for her to wait while they dragged their heels.) Meanwhile, I checked our account every day for the transfer from the insurance company. About a week later, I received an email from the company, informing me that they would be sending a cheque to me within a day or two. Those of my readers who are of a certain age may remember cheques from the last century.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have fumed at the weaselly method of posting a cheque (through Israel’s decrepit postal service) rather than electronic transfer. As we all know, the extra few days’ interest that the insurance companies enjoy on the millions of shekels they delay paying out cumulatively fund their annual bonuses. However, in this case, I was much more furious at the fact that, when the cheque did arrive in our postbox in Maale Adumim, it would sit there for days or weeks while we languished helpless in Penamacor.

When we did return home, I nipped down to our local mall to pay the cheque in through our bank’s ATM. (To pay in across the counter, you need to make an appointment in advance, and you are charged for the transaction.) I wasted 20 minutes, attempting to pay in the cheque by machine, at two different machines, but each time the display informed me that it was unable to read the details. This was, needless to say, a cheque filled entirely by machine; the print was as crisp as it could possibly be.

It was only after we returned home that Bernice remembered that cheques can also be paid in online through the bank’s app. This proved ludicrously quick and simple. In my defence, I will say that I cannot remember the last time I received a cheque, so this all seemed like very new territory to me.

A couple of days later, the insurance company wrote to ask me to complete a customer satisfaction survey. I must admit I derived a certain satisfaction from venting my wrath at their antiquated and devious reimbursement method, even though I knew my rage would crash against some completely unsympathetic manifestation of AI   If they were really smart, the insurers would write and ask me to complete a survey stating how satisfied I was to complete the customer survey. It was very much a therapeutic exercise.

Well, thank you. I feel a lot better having got all that off my chest. You will gather that there are ways in which life here sometimes seems to be returning to something that occasionally feels close to normal, although, of course, it can’t really.

It can’t, while 100 hostages, dead and alive (many, one fears, barely alive) languish in Gaza. It can’t, while tens of thousands have still not returned to their homes in the North or the South. It can’t, while a whole population of schoolchildren have still barely known a normal educational experience. It can’t, while thousands of family men (and some women) are only now beginning to be able to focus on attempting to rescue their stalled businesses and careers, and find again the rhythm of their family life. It can’t, while some ten thousand are still undergoing physical rehabilitation of some form or other, and who knows how many thousands are receiving, or should be receiving, psychological rehabilitation.

And then, of course, we read the International section of the paper, and know that we couldn’t possibly live anywhere else.