Goodness me, what a hectic few days we currently find ourselves in the middle of. We had just about reconciled ourselves to not getting out to Portugal, when Israel last week moved Portugal, together with a generous handful of other European countries, as well as the whole of Africa, from the group of Covid red countries to the group of orange countries.

Fairly soon afterwards, Israel removed even the US and the UK from the red list – in effect, cancelling the red list. This sounds like good news to start the week, doesn’t it?

(For those of you who think this actually is good news, let me point out that all it actually means is that Israel is just as red as these countries, and there is therefore little point in closing our borders to them.

For those of you who think that is actually bad news, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that the whole world catching the Omicron variant may be the best outcome at this stage. Please feel free to tell me I don’t know my as-ymptomatic from my ebola. But I don’t believe the free world can sustain this level of alert for a lot longer.

There was an interesting article in The Times (ToL, not NYT, but you’d guessed that) last week that suggested the pandemic will be over when we decide we’ve had enough of it dominating the news. You probably can’t read the article here, because The Times guards its articles for subscribers, but here’s a brief extract:

“We are on the next stage now,” Krastev says. “Which means trying to understand a world where we are not focused so much on the pandemic. It doesn’t mean that nobody is going to be infected, nobody is going to die, but suddenly your life is not dominated by this fear.

“I think this is how pandemics fade away. It is partly about disease statistics, but not simply that. Suddenly the experience of the pandemic loses centrality. There was a moment when people met, the only questions they asked were, ‘Have you been infected? How are you affected?’ That’s not the case any more. Even when you talk to people that are sick at this very moment you don’t have that kind of urgency. Fear is a very intense emotion, it can’t go on for too long.”)

Anyway, immediately after Portugal was taken off Israel’s red list, family and friends started WhatsApping us with the good news. We slept on it, and, the following morning, we discussed whether we wanted to book again and risk another disruption (even before feeling in our sweaty palms the full cash refund from TAP for our cancelled trip – hold that image). It didn’t take us long to realise that the answer was a fairly resounding ‘Yes!’

Esther then sent me a link to a string of short break return flights to Lisbon from El Al, priced as if they had fallen off the back of a 707. Needless to say, when I actually went online, there was no way to negotiate a longer trip at the same kind of price. Nevertheless, I was able to book. We are due to depart next Sunday, as planned, and return a few days earlier than originally planned.

In the space of a couple of hours, I was able to do everything. I booked the flights. I then took out travel and medical insurance, which thankfully did not involve any long phone interrogations, or declarations from our doctor, because our last trip was recent enough for all the approvals to still be valid.

Finally, I booked a car. After our experience with a puncture last time, I was looking for an alternative to Europcar, and found one that was a little cheaper, had an even better customer rating, and also offered pickup from the airport. The company is not a name I recognized, and I won’t be surprised if, when we arrive in Lisbon, the desk handling this company’s reservations will, in fact, be the desk of one of the big boys – Europcar, Sixt and the rest.

My suspicion is that the rental car setup in Lisbon is the same as what I am convinced is true of the stonemasons at the main cemetery in Jerusalem. As you drive towards the main cemetery gates, you pass a parade of 10 or 12 stonemason’s yards, offering a wide choice. I am prepared to bet that, if you were allowed to walk through the reception area of one of these, and out the back door, you would find that there is just one stonemason’s yard, and all of the dfferent shopfronts are, indeed, just a front. See the Beatles film Help for another example.

As I was booking our flight, I discovered that TAP and El Al appear to have, eminently sensibly, merged their flights. We are, in fact, booked on TAP, which, of course, means that we could have requested a voucher from TAP rather than a cash refund. Heigh-ho! Oh! While we’re speaking of that, let me bring you up to date on the cash refund.

A couple of days after a rep on the phone had opened the refund request for me, I searched online, using the Case ID he had given me. However, I was unable to locate the request. So I phoned TAP to clarify. After 20 minutes waiting on the phone, I got through to another rep, who was able to confirm that the previous rep had not, in fact, submitted the refund request! (No, I don’t know why, either.) While I waited on the phone, this second rep created a new case, with a new Case ID. The following day, after 20 minutes waiting on the phone, I got through to yet another rep, who was able to confirm that the second rep had, this time, submitted the refund request!

Then, last Thursday, just a day after I had made the booking, two emails from TAP arrived in my Inbox: one for my ticket and other for Bernice’s. The message heading in each case was: TAP Reembolso/Refund – Voucher. I immediately started composing in my mind the enraged conversation I was going to have with the TAP rep (who, I already knew, would be unable either to help me or to pass me on to a supervisor who could help me). ‘I have an email from you expressly stating that I can request a full cash refund, not just a voucher!’ (As my brother later pointed out, they stated that I could request it, not that they would grant the request.)

However, when I read the actual email message, I found it contained, in each case, a voucher for ₤56.14. (Please don’t ask why a Euro-based company selling a ticket to a shekel-based customer prices the ticket in sterling. I do know the answer, but your time is too precious.) ₤56.14? Where on earth did they get that figure from?

After a couple of minutes, the penny (or, in this case, 11,228 pennies) dropped. After our June 2020 flight was cancelled, TAP gave us each a voucher for 110% of the cost of the ticket. We redeemed those vouchers against our October 2021 ticket purchase, and there was a remaining credit balance of ₤56.14 on each voucher. When we booked our original January 2022 tickets, we redeemed that balance. (Don’t worry; I have a slide for this that will make it clearer.)

Now, TAP have astutely said: ‘Wait a minute. We’re not going to cash that voucher in for you. Do you think we were born yesterday? We’ll give you back the voucher!’ I hope and believe that they will refund the balance in cash. Bernice, who is becoming, with regard to TAP, Eeyorier the longer this saga goes on, thinks we’ll never see the money. I’m decidedly Pigleter in this regard.

So, we’re booked and now desperately getting ready to go. This involves a certain amount of scrambling. Bernice has been conducting her grand tour of Maale Adumim toyshops, and has tracked down everything, including little people and picture dominoes. She has also gathered together the disparate items on our food shopping list to go, which includes items Tslil misses and items I want for baking, and Bernice for cooking, that are either unobtainable or of unclear kashrut status in Portugal: vacuum-packed dates, caraway seeds, balsamic vinegar, yeast; that kind of thing.

In her brief spells at home to rest from this running around, Bernice has been clicking away with the needles, in order to finish the sleeveless sweater she is knitting for Tao.

And what, you ask, have I been doing while Bernice is engaged in all this activity? Well, I’m glad you asked. Last time we were in Portugal, Tao and I spent a lot of time on the floor, devising increasingly complex structures from Magnetiles and Duplo. Just before our flight, we built an airport, with an immigration desk, luggage carousel, passenger steps, luggage van and trailer, and a magnificent aeroplane with passenger and luggage compartments.

When we first arrived, as this was the first time I had ever seen Magnatiles, Tao was much better at this than I was. By the time we left, I was starting to realise the impressive versatility of Magnatiles, and I was able to more than keep up with Tao. I do realise that it’s not a competition, and I do know that there is something pathetic about a grandfather in his 70s comparing his performance with that of his grandson who is not yet three years old.

So, I’m spending my time sketching out some ideas on paper, and practising getting down onto, and back up from, the floor, with the minimum of moans and creaks. What with that, and counting the hours until we fly, I’ve barely had time to write this post!