I like hard physical work! Not in the sense that Jerome K Jerome liked work. He famously said: ‘I like work; it fascinates me. I could watch it for hours.’ No, I actually enjoy working up a sweat and getting my hands dirty. The trouble is, that, over the years, various parts of me have started, with increasing frequency, begging to differ. This means that just as I am getting into the swing of sawing a thick branch, or emptying a cupboard to clean it for Pesach, or some such physical exertion, one of my knees, as it were, decides that, on the whole, it would rather be suspended between a rectum on a sofa and an ankle on a pouffe.

This can of course pose problems. When Bernice comes home two hours later and asks, not unreasonably, why both dinner services are stacked on the kitchen counter and the drawer they belong in is in four pieces on the floor, she doesn’t really want to hear that I just didn’t have the strength to put everything back, but I’ll get round to it in just a minute.

Which is one of the reasons I love going to Portugal. At some point during our month with the kids, Micha’el is bound to mention that he is just about to start some project or other, and I can eagerly volunteer to help. It feels very good to wave off his assurances that “You really don’t have to!” and “Are you sure that it won’t be too much?” It feels even better to know that when, as usually happens, my body tells me, with the end of the job still nowhere in sight, that it has put up with as much as it is prepared to for one day, Micha’el will be wildly appreciative of what I have done, and will be happy to finish off.

This last trip to Penamacor afforded two opportunities for this kind of workout. One involved the sandbox for Tao that Micha’el was setting up on their land, close to the tepee. One day towards the end of our visit, Micha’el drove with Tao to collect the sand: half a cubic metre, which more or less filled the back of the truck. Back at the house, Tslil and Tao took a couple of bucketfuls to replenish Tao’s sandtray in the backyard, then Michael, Lua and I drove down to the land to wheelbarrow the remaining sand from the path to the sandbox.

This was, to be honest, little more than a mild workout for me (and almost a stroll in the park for Micha’el), since the distance we needed to wheel the sand was only 50 metres, all of which was downhill, and I had the fully functioning wheelbarrow, while Micha’el wrestled with the one that has seen much better days. Old age carries some privileges, you know! We had estimated that the sand would fill more than ten and fewer than twenty barrows, and were delighted when it stretched to just over fourteen. I find it very heartening when I can kid myself that I have an instinct for these things, and am the kind of man who can judge the correct consistency of cement just by smelling it.

As you can see, it was a beautiful, even warm, winter day, and we returned to the house very satisfied with ourselves.

Let’s take a little rest before going on to the second bout of physical exertion, and talk about the title of this week’s post. It is, as many of you will not need telling, part of the lyric from Ol’ Man River, the song that offers a Greek-chorus-like commentary on the action in the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat. It is also, unusually for a Broadway musical, a bass solo, and is most closely associated with Paul Robeson, who was unable because of other commitments to appear in the original Broadway production, but did open the show in London, and appeared in the revival and second film of the musical.

The lyric is interesting for at least a couple of reasons. First, there is a section of the song (often omitted) whose lyrics have undergone numerous changes over the years. Kern originally wrote:
Niggers all work on de Mississippi,
Niggers all work while de white folks play…

This version survives in the 1929 film version, but, in the 1936 (Paul Robeson) film, ‘Niggers’ was changed to ‘Darkies’. Starting with the 1946 stage revival, and in most revivals since, ‘Darkies all work’ has become ‘Coloured folks work’. The Temptations, in their 1960s version, claimed that ‘We all work while the rich folks play’.

Taking liberties with the lyric in a completely other direction, Paul Robeson chose to reflect, in his adoption and adaptation of the song away from the musical it was born in, what he saw as the racial reality and aspirations of American blacks in his time. Here, side by side, is an extract from Kern’s original lyric, and Robeson’s eventual evolved lyric.

Original Lyrics	Robeson Changes
Dere’s an ol’ man called de Mississippi; Dat’s de ol’ man dat I’d like to be! What does he care if de world’s got troubles? What does he care if de land ain’t free? …Tote dat barge! Lif’ dat bale! Git a little drunk, An’ you land in jail… Ah gits weary An’ sick of tryin’; Ah’m tired of livin’ An skeered of dyin’, But Ol’ Man River, He jes’ keeps rollin’ along	There’s an ol’ man called de Mississippi; That’s the ol’ man I don’t like to be! What does he care if the world’s got troubles? What does he care if the land ain’t free? …Tote that barge Lif’ that bale! You show a little grit and you lands in jail… But I keeps laffin’ Instead of cryin’ I must keep fightin’; Until I’m dyin’ And Ol’ Man River, He just keeps rollin’ along

Which is all very well for ol’ man river, but some of us have to keep totin’ that barge. Shortly after we arrived in Portugal, Micha’el and Tslil took delivery of a load of firewood. Incidentally, when it looked as though their usual supplier was not going to return Tslil’s call, and she contacted another supplier, he asked her what quantity she wanted, in cubic metres. Since their usual supplier has never asked, but just delivers what he knows to be a reasonable quantity for one domestic stove in a small terraced house in the village, Tslil had no idea what to say, and asked my advice. This was where I was forced to admit that I can’t really judge the consistency of cement from its smell, and that ‘a quarter of a shedful’ is not an official EU measurement of volume.

In the end, the original supplier phoned back to announce that he would deliver that evening, and he indeed did. Unfortunately, his end-point service consists of dumping the wood (cut into more or less manageable firelog lengths) unceremoniously along one wall of the shed. If you have ever played Jenga, you will appreciate the problem that left us faced with. The wood had been stacked along the side wall of the shed, with the logs more or less parallel to that side wall, leaving a narrow path through the shed, This meant that every time a log was removed, there was a real danger of an avalanche into that narrow path. As Micha’el explained, what was needed was to completely restack the load, perpendicular to the side wall. Since Micha’el was busy with other, more demanding jobs, I volunteered myself for this, about three hours before Shabbat came in.

The first step was to remove a section of the logs, to create an empty space in which I could start stacking. The kid’s shed is accessed from the backyard by a door at one end and leads out to the street behind the kids’ house through a second door at the other end. So, I stacked a fair amount of firewood on the pavement immediately outside that door and started to stack wood into the space I had created. Eventually, I had stacked sufficient wood to have cleared another space against the wall, and so I was able to continue.

After about two hours, when I was little more than half finished, I had to stop because Shabbat was fast approaching. I stepped back to admire my work and then realised that I had been stacking parallel to, and not perpendicular to, the wall. This, of course, meant that on Sunday morning I had to virtually start again. However, I was at least restarting from a rather more ordered and stable pile.

This time, I managed to complete the whole job in about two hours, and the end result was, I must admit, very satisfying. You will have to take my word for it that the pile looked much bigger in the flesh – or, rather, the timber – than it does in the picture.

All of which may explain why, on my return to Israel, I found that I had lost two kilo in Portugal. Bernice, of course, achieved a similar result by a disciplined weights routine. What she will do when Ollie is too heavy to carry, I don’t know.

In other news, last Friday we celebrated Raphael’s first birthday in Zichron, with rather too much whipped cream, and a motorcycle ride with his big cousin on Maayan’s side, while Tao and his friends celebrated his fourth birthday in Penamacor, in true gan fashion, with them all being candles.

One year, so rumour has it, the two boys are going to celebrate their shared birthday together, in the same country. Easier said than done, I suspect.