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

Now read on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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