This week’s offering is, of necessity, rather short, and you may judge it to be remarkably thin on content. Those of us more inclined to view the world through a glass half full are celebrating the fact that it has arrived in your inbox at all. Let me explain.

You almost certainly won’t need me to tell you that Pesach begins this coming Saturday evening.

Do I really need to say more? Alright, then. At the risk of stating the obvious…

What this means in practical terms is that we need to be ready for Pesach this coming Friday evening, and being ready, of course, means having Shabbat and Chag meals ready for two days.

This means (you can see the Gantt chart forming before your eyes) that Bernice needs Thursday and Friday to cook and prepare. Fortunately, I have a long-standing medical appointment on Thursday, so I will be out of the way and she will be able to get on.

Since Thursday and Friday are needed by Bernice, this means that I must do my Pesach biscuit and cake baking on Wednesday. Fortunately(!), Bernice has a medical appointment on Wednesday, so she will be out of the way and I will be able to get on.

Tuesday is, of course, Zichron day, and we will be (are) collecting Raphael from gan early, as usual, for a day of grandparenting.

All of which means that we had to schedule the big changeover for Monday. We have this down to a pretty fine art, these days. Over the years, a number of factors have aligned to make our Pesach changeover more and more manageable.

First, we renovated our kitchen, increasing our cupboard space to enable us to keep a lot of Pesach ware in the kitchen all year. Then we stopped eating meat at home, freeing up more cupboard space so that all of our, now reduced, Pesach ware could stay in the kitchen all year round. Then we got rid of a lot of Pesach ware that we never used, especially now that our entertaining is a lot more modest.

As a result, our preparations for the changeover are in two phases these days. Spaced out over an increasing amount of time as we slow down with the years, we tackle the cleaning of the kitchen cupboards, and the overflow fridge and freezer, over a couple of weeks. (This year, Esther and Raphael helicoptering in for a day had been a huge help. They may not realise it yet, but they may well have set a precedent.)

Then, the day before changeover, Bernice and I work as a team, tackling the kitchen appliances: fridge, freezer, oven, hob, coffee machine, toaster and so forth. This we completed on Sunday, as scheduled, and even found the energy to pack away and condense all the dishes and pots and pans, and even to do our big supermarket shop, before collapsing into bed.

Finally, on Monday, after breakfast, we cleared up and put away the final few items, then cleaned the kitchen surfaces and floor, sinks and so on. I covered the work surfaces, and we had all the Pesach ware removed from its less accessible cupboards and packed away at a convenient height, all the food unpacked and put away, in time for a light lunch.

So far, so good. In fact, we were pretty smug about the fact that we had managed to keep to our tight schedule, and, yet again, had proved that “No, we’re still not too old for this!” The plan had been for me to write my blog once all that was done. However, I had needed to schedule an unexpected medical test, and, when I phoned to make an appointment on Sunday morning, I was offered a slot in an hour and a half. Unfortunately, that was not enough time to arrange the necessary paperwork and drive to the other side of Jerusalem. I was then offered a slot on Monday afternoon, which was too good to turn down. So, soon after lunch, off I went.

By the time I returned from the test, which, needless to say, took far longer than anticipated, involving as it did the usual ‘hurrying up to wait’ time, I was feeling pretty exhausted. After supper, I fell asleep over the crossword, and, by the time I woke up, it was time for bed. Bernice suggested that I give the blog a pass for this week, which I reluctantly planned to do, offering as an excuse that our non-existent dog had eaten my homework. However, on what is proving to be a very warm night, I find myself unable to sleep. Instead, I have been lying awake composing this post in my mind. Eventually, around 00:20, I gave in, and got up to creep into the office where I am now just coming to the end of the post, at what I am pleased to see is no later than 01:18.

So, some kind of minor victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, if you will.

Next week, I’d like to promise 3,000 words of geopolitical analysis, but, you know me: it’s just as likely to be pointing out that, incredible as it may seem, Britney Spears (who I confess I would’t be able to pick out in a police line-up) is an anagram of Presbyterians. (Hands up all those who didn’t believe me and had to check it for themselves.)

By the time we meet again, we will be well and truly into Pesach, so let me wish you Chag Sameach. However you are marking the season, may it be meaningful. And, as we approach the festival of freedom, and pass the awful landmark of one-and-a-half years since October 7, may we see all the hostages, alive and no longer alive, returned to their families.