R2BC - Memory Lane

The once private fields behind my Mum's place,
 although we always went there for walks,
has become an official Country Park.
It's on my list of first places to go when we can travel again. 

I wasn't going to write a Reasons 2B Cheerful post this week as I couldn't think of anything to write. We're cheerful enough but there's nothing happening. And then, suddenly, a few things happened.

1
Childhood Memories
I got a message from an old friend from my childhood community, telling me about some members who have sadly passed away from the coronavirus. I was particulalry shocked and upset by one of the names - a man not much younger than me who I remember as a young boy.

I wrote a facebook message including a number friends from the old days and we reminisced for a bit. Then Daniel came up with the idea of opening a facebook group for anyone who grew up in our synagogue in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Within a few hours we had over 100 members.

Stanmore Synagogue was the heart of our lives back then. We went there for services on Saturday, Hebrew classes on Sunday morning and after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Mondays we went there for Brownies and then Girl Guides. The only day I wasn't in the building was Wednesdays and Fridays (and I sometimes did go to the Friday night service). During the week more than half the children from synagogue went with us to the local primary school and after we left, my mother taught there for 20 years.

It's been a blast catching up and awakening old memories, remembering names and events. Turns out that every single one of us hated those Hebrew classes three times a week. But hey, we can all read Hebrew and sing the Hebrew prayers in synagogue.

Thank you Daniel.

2
I am going back to school next week.
Not only am I returning to school but the school year and my contract has been extended until July 13th (instead of June 30th) so I will be paid for six weeks that I had assumed wouldn't happen. I spoke to my head of department and some teachers are back, some are not, some children are not coming back because school is not compulsory atm, the original timetable doesn't exist as each class is working in a bubble scheduling their own breaks, etc... it's all a bit of a mess and very difficult for the subject teachers to schedule lessons. I'll fit in wherever needed and play it by ear. I'm glad to be going back though. I've missed them.

3
Hinterland
I found this detective series set in rural North Wales, on Netflix. I'm enjoying it very much and learning some Welsh along the way.

4
The Weather
After a week of 37-38C temperatures, the weather broke and today there was rain (not in my neighbourhood but close) and a massive wind storm. Loving the cold weather. (FYI it's 20C. In Israel in May we call this cold weather.)

That's it folks. The R2BC linky is with Becky on Lakes Single Mum, as usual. 
Have a good week and stay safe.

The Show Must Go On!

A quick post for whoever hasn't heard that Andrew Lloyd Weber with Universal is giving us a night of musical theatre every week. On Friday evenings at 7 pm BST (9pm Israel time) a movie of one of his musicals will be available on You Tube. Search: THE SHOW MUST GO ON. This week was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. You can still watch it until Sunday night. (Tomorrow is Sunday for those who've lost all track of time.)

We watched it tonight after Shabbat. It was so clever how they staged it as a school production because, of course that's how we were all introduced to Joseph back in the 1970s.

The cherry on the cake was Donny Osmond playing Joseph. They called it puppy love, but I had a poster of him in my bedroom way back when. Richard Attenborough as Jacob was fun to spot. And when Potiphar's wife appeared I thought, "doesn't she look like Joan Collins?" In fact it was Joan Collins.

DD was surprised by Joseph's character at the beginning: "Wow, he's so arrogant. That's not what they said about him in Bible lessons at school.

She got a kick out of Pharoah: "He sounds like that old rock and roll singer."
Me: "Elvis Presley."
DD; "Yeah him."
Me: "He's supposed to. That's the point."

I did see her giggle when Joseph told Pharoah, "All those things you saw in your pyjamas, Were a long range forecast for your farmers."

But when they sang, Those Canaan Days... DD: "Why do they all sound French?"
Me: *sigh*

Anyway, I loved it. I sang along to the whole show. I remembered every line and every harmony. Every bap shwaddywaddy and every ahh-a-a. Finally it came to an end. I was still singing, "May I return, to the beginning." DD said, "Can I go now?"
Me: *sigh*

Oh You'll Never Get To Heaven

Don't pick the flowers

Remember that old camp fire/road trip song? Oh you'll never get to heaven, in an old Ford car, coz an old Ford car, won't go that far (repeat at speed), I ain't gonna grieve my Lord (x3), no more.

Other famous verses, in no particular order, included a Platex bra, a baked bean tin, a ping pong ball, roller skates, a jumbo jet, and a boy scout's knee. And the grande finale... if you get there before I do, just bore a hole and pull me through. Remember? Warning: don't google it, it's too sad. But even so, I admit that we sang it all across Europe more than once.

All this to introduce the concept of getting to Heaven because we watched the series, The Good Place on Netflix. Without giving the whole story away, a group of people find themselves on the way to The Bad Place (Hell) and they don't feel like they deserve to be there. So they try to get into the The Good Place (Heaven).

It all works on a point system. Throughout your life you get points for good deeds and are deducted points for bad behaviour. Try as they might, our group can't get a hold on how the point system works as so many good people are not making into The Good Place. It turns out that no one has got into The Good Place in over 200 years.

Eventually someone examines the files and finds out that in 1700 Tommy picked some flowers for his mother on his way home from work. He got 100 points. In 2015, Jonny brings his mother a bunch a flowers and is deducted 5000 points. What's going on here?

Jonny's flowers came from another country and used up an enormous amount of fossil fuel to get to the shop, they were grown using destructive pesticides which ruined the soil and poisoned surrounding crops, they came wrapped in plastic, he ordered them using his cheap mobile phone which had been made in a factory in China where the workers are exploited, etc... etc...

The whole series is quite good although it does get a bit tedious towards the middle. However, I found this little nugget of a scene fascinating. A brilliant observation that a simple good deed 300 years ago is now a complicated procedure affecting multitudes of people. There are so many factors and variables that it's almost impossible to do a good deed without it originating in sin.

Make your friend a cup of coffee - where did that coffee come from? Milk and sugar - where did the sugar come from and are you feeding her sugar addiction? What about the poor calves and cows who are brutally separated? What about the destructive methane gas from cattle? Give someone a ride - cars are polluting the air and using up fossil fuel. Buy a gift - what's it made of and were did it come from? Call for a chat - who made your mobile phone, in what factory, under what conditions? You can't win.

By the way, I know what you're thinking and though this may be possible in other countries, in Israel it's forbidden to pick wild flowers. We're doomed.

A Day At The Pool In 1982 - R2BC

This week's reasons 2B cheerful comes to you from 1976 - 1987, a swimming pool just outside Jerusalem, I was in Seventh Heaven, and we missed the final week of July R2BC linky so this one is with the August linky on Mich's Mummy from the Heart. So traversing time and space, lets go...

On Wednesday we went to the pool at Messilat Tzion, a village just outside Jerusalem. We went with friends who are early risers and movers so we left at 8.30 in the morning. Arriving as the place opens allows you a prime spot near the pool, but not too near. Our children can swim so we want to be able to see them but we don't have to be actually at the poolside. Also, at that time of the morning there are only a few children in the pool and two lifeguards on duty.

We found a shady spot on the grass under a tree and made ourselves at home. Then the music started. Blaring. It could have been a disaster. But as luck would have it they were playing my own personal favourite playlist. A medley of pop from the 1970s and 1980s.

It was all I could do to stop myself getting up and dancing. I did sing out loud though. Every song held a memory for me from 40 years ago.

Summer 1976 - the longest and hottest drought in the UK in my lifetime, so far (I was 14). The grass was yellow, some rural areas had standpipes for water at the end of the streets, washing your car and watering your garden was banned. We sang, "skyrockets in flight, afternoon delight." It's just as good now as it was then.

Summer 1978 the movie Grease came out and my sister and I and the girls next door, sat with our heads almost inside the cassette player singing "You're the one that I want," over and over again until we knew the words by heart.

There was the winter camp 1979, where my friend Mandy and I were the cooks. Ohoh ayay, I love you more than I can say. We changed the next lyric to "and if our food is hard to swallow, oh oh, we'll give you twice as much tomorrow."

Summer 1980, camping in Lanarkshire, Scotland. My baby takes the morning train, he works from 9 till 5 and then, he takes another home again... What they lacked in sophisticated lyrics they made up for with sing-along potential.

Come on Eileen, was the wet weekend in July that I spent with Sharon in Liverpool. It was 1982 and we'd just returned from our gap year on a Kibbutz in Israel.

They just kept on coming. I gazed out across the pool and the palm trees, towards the Jerusalem hills. The scenery and the music carried me back to the summer of 1987 spent in California. La Isla Bonita, and Yeh, I wanna dance with somebody, with somebody who loves me.

The kids (what kids? Oh yes, we had three kids with us) frolicked in the pool. They had ice-creams and later hot dogs and chips for lunch. We left at 2.30 pm just before the heat of the day and the afternoon crowds arrived.

It was the best pool day ever. Except for maybe the pool days back in the real 1970s and 80s.

Dusting Off The Descant

With all the shenanigans over DD's clarinet and me requesting a recorder group instead, I got all nostalgic about my recorder. A few years ago, before DD was born, I bought myself a new descant recorder and got out my old recorder books from school (circa 1973). I started to play again but, as with a lot of things, I didn't get very far. DD now has that recorder for school.

While I was trying to persuade DD that the recorder is just as good as the clarinet (and failed), we watched You Tube videos of recorder ensembles and they are beautiful. So when we went to buy the reeds for the clarinet, I bought myself a new recorder. It cost less than the reeds for the clarinet despite being a Yamaha.

At the weekend I got out my old books - the black one (book 1) and the blue one (book 2), and started to play. I began at the beginning, going over the notes - B, A, G, upper C, upper D, F#, E and lower D. It went surprisingly fast. My fingers seemed to remember of their own accord. I got to page 30 in less than an hour, and playing fluently, reading the music an' all.

Something was missing though. There were tunes I remembered that just weren't there. So went back to the box and found the recorder book from my primary school, the red one. And there it was, nestled somewhere between Go and Tell Aunt Nancy and London's Burning - Tallis. I loved playing that when I was 10. It felt like a proper piece of music rather than a folk song, which of course it is.

Then DD came in and said she wanted a go. So she took the black book and worked her way through the notes B, A and G. (Don't ask me what they have been doing in school for a year.) She got all excited about it. Later in the day she went back to practise it again.

I proclaimed Saturday morning to be music practice morning. I am determined to get to the end of the blue book this time. Did you notice what good condition it's in compared to the black book? There's a reason for that.

Minimalism shminimalism, there is also a reason why despite being an Olympic level declutterer, there are some things I've held on to for 45 years and not sorry.

The Eagle Of The Ninth

In English Literature for each term of each year in secondary school, we had to read and study one novel, one play, and a set of poems.

Some of the literature was great - not like lessons at all. Reading The Chrysalids started a life long (metaphorical) love affair with science fiction in general and with John Wyndham in particular. I never fell in love with Shakespeare but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's not hard to understand. (Only in adulthood did I come to understand the genius of Shakespeare.) I unexpectedly enjoyed Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Less so The Mill on the Floss but I read it nevertheless. (George Eliot - I had to google it just now as I'd forgotten). I will always remember The Admirable Chrichton (though I never made the connection with Peter Pan at the time). And I was very relieved to be in the class doing To Kill A Mockingbird for O'level rather than Far From the Madding Crowd.

We read Jane Eyre and I'd forgotten the whole of her life before going to be the governess at Mr Rochester's place. It was only when watching a tv drama years later that I realized there was so much more to the book.

I thought The Importance of Being Ernest a bit silly and I refused to read The Trumpet Major - I don't remember who it was by and I don't care. A soon as I found out that our end of term exam was on the play not the novel I stopped even pretending I was reading it. (I couldn't resist googling it and what do you know? Thomas Hardy again! I'm surprised.)

The very first novel we were given to read in the Lower Fourth (Year 7) was The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. It was the sort of novel I would never have chosen to read in a million years. It was, in my opinion, a boys' book. It was about the Romans in Britain and one particular Roman on a quest to the Highlands of Scotland to find the Eagle mascot/banner of the Ninth Legion that had mysteriously disappeared. Why they had chosen it in a girls' school was beyond me.

The first week's homework was to read the first three chapters. It was the weekend and I was finding it heavy going. We had English Lit. on Monday and I was still new enough and young enough in my school career to know think that it had to be done. I remember going across the road to play with my neighbour, Naomi, and my mother told me to take the book with me. At some point, Naomi went to watch something on television with her parents and I sat at their kitchen table and forced myself to read.

A miraculous thing happened during the course of that book. I got into it. By the middle I suddenly wanted to know how it ended. And the language wasn't too heavy or complicated. It was actually a pleasant read.

All this was in 1974. Jump forward 20 years and I came across a copy of the book in a clearance sale at The British Council Library in Jerusalem. I bought it because I remembered that I'd enjoyed it. I thought it would be fun to read it again, especially as I'd forgotten the ending, and most of the beginning and the middle. That was in 1994. Can you see where I'm going with this? It's now 2017 - 23 years later and I'd still not reread The Eagle of the Ninth.

However, I'd not removed it from my bookcase even after a number of book culls - some of them quite ruthless. So there was some commitment there in theory if not in practice.

Reader, this summer I reread it. It did not disappoint. I understand now why it was considered an educational novel for 11/12 year old girls in an all girls school with a ethos of academic and career achievement. Now I will pass the book on. I won't be needing to reread it again.

The Weather, The Wedding, And The Sleepover

Today it was 37 degrees C in Jerusalem. That's 98.6 in old money. The day before it was 36 and tomorrow they are forecasting a blessed relief of only 35 degrees. I hate the heat more than most and we don't have air conditioning in our apartment. So this is how I cope:

I leave home with DD at 8 am. She goes to her Summer School program and I go into my college (both are down the road). I sit in the cool A/Ced teachers' room or in the library, and do my work. Then I collect DD at 1 pm and we come home to basically do nothing until the weather breaks at about 6 pm. That's the thing about Jerusalem, it gets cooler in the evening, unlike in other places in Israel where you can be sweltering in high humidity all night. I guess then you do need to have air conditioning. I'm happy to rest during the day and get up at night.

It's now 11.15 and DD has just gone to sleep as, like me, she's a night owl. We both slept for over an hour in the afternoon so I'm now wide awake. I like this informal chatty style of blogging but I do need to catch up on the events of last week.

The Sunday before last I was invited to a wedding on Kibbutz Shluchot just south of Tiberius and the Sea of Gallilee. To cut a long story short, the groom's little sister had her Bat Mitzva on the Shabbat before the wedding and lots of people joined them for the whole weekend for the double celebration. Most of our mutual friends are close family or close friends with the groom's family so it was going to be hard to find someone driving up to the wedding on the Sunday from Jerusalem. I've also come to the conclusion that sometimes it's easier to just take public transport and be your own boss. I was actually looking forward to travelling on my own without having to entertain DD on the journey.

The bus traveled up the valley road that follows the Jordan River. We left Jerusalem on the east side and drove towards The Dead Sea. Then, with a view of The Dead Sea to our right which I was on the wrong side of the bus to get a photo of, we turned left towards Jericho. Passing the turnoff to the Alemby Bridge Crossing on our right, we continued north towards Bet She'an. The mountains rose out of the dessert landscape and were spectacular in the late afternoon sun. I took photos from the bus like a crazy tourist. I was mesmerized. You know I go for greenery rather than deserts, so I don't quite know what came over me.

Friends (a couple and another friend who also happens to be my brother-in-law who came for the celebrations) had spent the day at a guest house near the kibbutz and they met me from the bus so that I could go back and change at their place. We then went to the wedding together.

There were about a dozen of us who'd been teenage friends back in the UK and had been living in Israel for now 30 years or more. We get all nostalgic and it's as if no time at all has passed. Except that many of them are now passing round photos of their grandchildren on their smartphones. As a young mother myself, I indulge them and they indulge me talking about DD.

After the chupa (literally the wedding canopy) I phoned DD to see how she was getting on at her first sleepover that wasn't at my sister's with her cousins. She gave me a whole speech on the phone about how she doesn't miss me at all and she doesn't know what's happened to her because she's very happy to sleep there.... "and it's not just because I don't have a choice!" Hooray! We have entered a new era. What's more, my friend had her hairwashed and in bed by 9 pm. I must find out how she did that.

I came back south after the wedding in the car with friends and my b-i-l and the two of us stayed overnight with them in their house just outside Jerusalem, coming into Jerusalem for work with them in the morning. Apart from the fact that I had to then spend the day in school teaching, I felt like I'd had a mini holiday. Reconnected and relaxed.

Thanks Sarit for having DD to stay. Thank you Julie and Boaz for taking me and bringing me back and having me to stay overnight. Thanks Jonny and Sari for a wonderful wedding. Mazal Tov to Rebecca on your Bat Mitzva. And Mazal Tov to Ben and Tehilla on your marriage. I hope that in 30 years time you will be celebrating weddings with the same friends you danced with at yours - like we are.