53 years (and counting) is not a short time to have been married. It’s fair to say that, at this stage, opportunities for Bernice and I to surprise each other by our actions or words arise with ever-decreasing frequency. I should then, I suppose, embrace today’s exchange more enthusiastically. I was surprised to hear Bernice ask me, not long after I returned from my second supermarket outing of the day (it’s a long and boring story): “Is there a reason why you put the bananas in the fridge?”, just as Bernice had been surprised, a little time earlier, to discover them there. She was kind enough to speculate whether I had read something online about refrigeration enhancing the flavour of bananas, but she didn’t really believe that to be the case,

In my defence, let me say that, as soon as she asked the question, I recognised that it was a legitimate question, to which there was no truthful and sensible answer. Slightly more worryingly, as I recalled unpacking the bananas into the fridge, I remembered that, at the time, it had seemed a perfectly logical act. I was unpacking all the fruit into the fridge, after all.

However, I’m not really concerned that this may be a tell-tale sign of incipient Alzheimers. I take it, rather, as a function of my feeling particularly exhausted today. It has been a long and action-packed day, following yesterday’s 3-hour drive from Lisbon to Penamacor, and I am feeling pretty whacked, to be honest.

All of which is an elaborate way of building up to apologising for the fact that this is going to a brief, and rather tame, post. I did, in fact, write a fuller one, but I knew even before Bernice read it and confirmed the fact, that it was a real ‘What I did in my summer holidays’ piece. What follows is nothing more, I’m afraid, than the best that I can manage in my current state.

I participated in an interesting and, for me, enjoyable, experiment this last week, totally unexpectedly. On Monday afternoon, having shut up the house and driven up to Zichron, we picked Raphael up from his gan in Binyamina, and, at his request, spent what turned out to a couple of hours playing in what he calls Binyamina Park. The park has several areas that interest him, including a very good adventure playground, a small pond with fish, and a decommissioned field gun from, I suspect, the War of Independence. I really hope Raphael isn’t reading this, because he firmly believes that it is, in fact, not an artillery piece, but rather a tractor. Every time he visits the park, the ‘tractor’ has broken down, and he loves nothing better than mending it, which sometimes takes ‘days’.

Last Monday, we started at the ‘tractor’, and then made our way to the adventure park, which includes a climbing frame, incorporating a rope ladder, a fireman’s pole, a platform and a slide, together forming the shape of a boat. We spent quite a long time on the boat, engaging in play, of which more later.

Wednesday morning found Bernice and myself, together with Micha’el and family, in King Edward VII Park in central Lisbon, and a good part of our time was spent playing on a similarly equipped boat. What I found fascinating was the different approaches that our Zichron grandson and our Portuguese grandsons had to their respective boats.

Raphael is, as far as we are concerned, remarkably well travelled. At his age, neither of us had been further than the seaside close to our respective homes. He has already holidayed in Sri Lanka and Montenegro, and is currently planning, unprompted by his parents, a trip that he claims we are going to be taking to Thailand. Apparently, Nana and Grandpa will sit in one row on the aeroplane, with Raphael sitting between us, and Mummy and Ima will sit in the row behind. I can’t speak for the girls, but I can assure you that Bernice has no intention of going to Thailand, and, having been there a couple of times on business, I don’t have it on my bucket list, either.

I mention all of this because, as soon as Raphael climbed aboard the adventure playground ship on Monday, he urged us to join him because we were sailing to Thailand. For the next 15 minutes, we enjoyed a delightful cruise to South-East Asia, dining on fresh fish caught by Captain Raphael himself.

On Wednesday, by contrast, we were all pressganged into serving as the crew of Captain Tao’s pirate ship, and spent considerably longer firing cannon at rival buccaneers’ vessels and capsizing them, taking no prisoners, while intermittently hoisting mainsails and raising anchors. Two different children, offered a very similar stimulus, each made the experience their own by engaging their vivid, individual, imaginations.

I count the opportunity to watch both of those imaginations at play at close, if sometimes less than comfortable, quarters, and all in the space of 40 hours, a rare and precious privilege, even allowing for just how tight a ship Captain Tao runs. If I am to stand any chance of keeping up tomorrow, I need my full night’s sleep, so, if, you will excuse me, I am going to stop here for this week.