Coming back into Ben Gurion airport after a couple of days, I saw the tactics of more seasoned visitors as they swapped from one passport queue to another, as if in a ski resort, trying to avoid standing for un-necessary hours while Israeli officials thumbed through document after document.
I resigned myself to an hour's wait and chatted to an Italian man with a shaved head next to me in the queue. 'It's crayzy. But in fact we coulda really do withabitta thisa in Eeeetaly. In Eeetaly they let eeeeeveryone in and this is a beeeg problem too. Then the rest of Europe tell us to vafanculo because we are to blame with opening the doors to a mass of 'umanity from Afreeca.'
A New Yorker coming to visit her family suggested I should always choose a male inspector not a female one. 'They kinda get really finnicky the women sometimes.'
The taxi drove me back from Tel Aviv, entering Jerusalem through the West side, whose inhabitants were preparing for Shabbat, when activities such as driving a car or turning on a light are forbidden. In the more orthodox areas there were no cars at all apart from ours and the Russian taxi driver looked a little nervous as he negotiated between Haredim men in white tights, black hats and coats and side-locks dancing jauntily in time to their stride.
I arrived back at the house and not even a couple of St Bernards could have offered a welcome like it. The dwarves' hugs and kisses the metaphorical brandy, I was right back into my life again after a couple of seconds. And I've had the pleasure of watching them over the last few days, as they munch their way ecstatically through 4 packets of hot cross buns and as many sausages.
The calm in our house under the unflappable watch of St Grace was soon smashed within a day of my return - our new non-school schedule meaning that I have to cram as much work into half the time. In an unattended moment, the dwarves broke into the washroom and used all the products and double as much water on the floors and developed their own rink. Then I found them shouting into each other's ears down the detached hoover tube, Rashimi's face covered in lipstick, the Lozenge's nails and hands glistening with wet nail polish.
Yesterday the Lozenge came to join me in my den while I did a bit of work and during a Skype call managed to take off two of the handles to my desk drawers with my screw driver. Then he stood by my desk chatting and chatting and chatting…until…I said: 'Look, you can be in here if you like, and you can unscrew any door or bit of furniture, but just don't talk, okay?'
The breathing by my ear got heavier and heavier as he concentrated on keeping silent, which made me shake with laughter at the volume of breath coming from and into his nostrils, that we agreed it was quieter when he talked. I shut my computer and we went to a music session with a lady on the west side. We were the only non-Jewish people there, and although we got a little lost with some of the music for Purim (next week's Jewish holiday which commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the Ancient Persian Empire where a plot had been formed to destroy them), it was great to sing, and the tunes were catchy, and the dwarves got to bang a triangle and clack some castanets which thoroughly exhausted them, allowing me to put them to bed and catch up on all of this.
I might start to fashion some instrumentals with the hoovertube and the Lozenge's nostrils later this week. In the continued absence of all our stuff, our place has some great acoustics.
I resigned myself to an hour's wait and chatted to an Italian man with a shaved head next to me in the queue. 'It's crayzy. But in fact we coulda really do withabitta thisa in Eeeetaly. In Eeetaly they let eeeeeveryone in and this is a beeeg problem too. Then the rest of Europe tell us to vafanculo because we are to blame with opening the doors to a mass of 'umanity from Afreeca.'
A New Yorker coming to visit her family suggested I should always choose a male inspector not a female one. 'They kinda get really finnicky the women sometimes.'
The taxi drove me back from Tel Aviv, entering Jerusalem through the West side, whose inhabitants were preparing for Shabbat, when activities such as driving a car or turning on a light are forbidden. In the more orthodox areas there were no cars at all apart from ours and the Russian taxi driver looked a little nervous as he negotiated between Haredim men in white tights, black hats and coats and side-locks dancing jauntily in time to their stride.
I arrived back at the house and not even a couple of St Bernards could have offered a welcome like it. The dwarves' hugs and kisses the metaphorical brandy, I was right back into my life again after a couple of seconds. And I've had the pleasure of watching them over the last few days, as they munch their way ecstatically through 4 packets of hot cross buns and as many sausages.
The calm in our house under the unflappable watch of St Grace was soon smashed within a day of my return - our new non-school schedule meaning that I have to cram as much work into half the time. In an unattended moment, the dwarves broke into the washroom and used all the products and double as much water on the floors and developed their own rink. Then I found them shouting into each other's ears down the detached hoover tube, Rashimi's face covered in lipstick, the Lozenge's nails and hands glistening with wet nail polish.
Yesterday the Lozenge came to join me in my den while I did a bit of work and during a Skype call managed to take off two of the handles to my desk drawers with my screw driver. Then he stood by my desk chatting and chatting and chatting…until…I said: 'Look, you can be in here if you like, and you can unscrew any door or bit of furniture, but just don't talk, okay?'
The breathing by my ear got heavier and heavier as he concentrated on keeping silent, which made me shake with laughter at the volume of breath coming from and into his nostrils, that we agreed it was quieter when he talked. I shut my computer and we went to a music session with a lady on the west side. We were the only non-Jewish people there, and although we got a little lost with some of the music for Purim (next week's Jewish holiday which commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the Ancient Persian Empire where a plot had been formed to destroy them), it was great to sing, and the tunes were catchy, and the dwarves got to bang a triangle and clack some castanets which thoroughly exhausted them, allowing me to put them to bed and catch up on all of this.
I might start to fashion some instrumentals with the hoovertube and the Lozenge's nostrils later this week. In the continued absence of all our stuff, our place has some great acoustics.
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