'Are we goin back to Jooslem, Mummmeeee? For more 'ventureth?' squawked Rashimi as we sat waiting for our flight to Tel Aviv to board. The tanoi piped, rather ironically, 'Losing my religion' by R.E.M. and I wondered about the term priority boarding, when the flight was 70 percent full of families with at least 3 children. Many of these were orthodox Haredim, and the Lozenge pointed a digit at two men dressed identically in black hats and coats with side-locks: 'Look Mummy, those men are twins.'
For me, holidays are often about new beginnings, as far from our lives, I plan how I could be doing things better when I return. Never too late to exercise more, come up with new ideas, change my working techniques, and so on. It's the positive side to leaving the people we love and the places that really are home to J and I. One of the worst bits about being away is that all the other expat mothers seem to communicate by Facebook, even though they're in the same city, to the extent that many have not even managed to meet - yet spend all day messaging each other and still call each other friends. As J succinctly put it: 'Life was already much too short before Facebook.' How I will manage to actually meet these women, who sound interesting and nice, without having to have a hundred conversations on Facebook first? It's a problem.
For the dwarves, things are perhaps simpler. And so they should be. While I looked around our house and the layers of dust which had accumulated over the 2 weeks we'd been away, and the sad, dead plants, the dwarves ripped into the toy box and we ended up having a happy first day re-tuning and re-routining, tidying, resuscitating the plants, swatting flies and throwing rotten calamantina oranges at the feral cats that creep around our garden. The Lozenge had begun the day in usual style by padding into the kitchen to do some cooking, and created a giant Scooby snack sandwich of about 20 layers of frozen bread containing morsels of dried fruit, and a courgette kebab, which he laid carefully in the centre of the table. I put on my gym kit in tune to one of my holiday resolutions and Rashimi looked me up and down. 'Whassaaaat Mummy?' A true sign it's time...
We had a couple of little boys around to play, and the Lozenge laid up the table for a party complete with Dora the Explorer napkins and straws. Perhaps this is a sign we should socialise more often - but how to do this without 80 Facebook conversations first?
On the way back from the supermarket we drove past a little demonstration which is often there at the corner of our neighbourhood on a Friday consisting of a small group of people holding Palestinian flags and signs saying things like: 'Stop the Occupation' and 'Stop the Ethnic Cleansing.' The Lozenge is getting into his flags, particularly after a visit to the UK where UKIP and SNP are ensuring we have to sign up to being blue or red and we are seemingly no longer allowed to be complex and interesting human beings of technicolour and multi shade.
The Lozenge also knows the blue and white one in these parts is the Israeli flag - as you can't really miss it, particularly just after Pesach. This time he asked, 'What are those people doing and what is that flag as it's not the Israeli one?' Here we go, I thought - feeling relieved we had only 2 minutes left in the car. I explained the signs and the flag. 'What is occupation?' I told him there were Palestinian people who lived here who have been pushed out and that this is still happening.
'Will those people come and push us out of our house too?'
For me, holidays are often about new beginnings, as far from our lives, I plan how I could be doing things better when I return. Never too late to exercise more, come up with new ideas, change my working techniques, and so on. It's the positive side to leaving the people we love and the places that really are home to J and I. One of the worst bits about being away is that all the other expat mothers seem to communicate by Facebook, even though they're in the same city, to the extent that many have not even managed to meet - yet spend all day messaging each other and still call each other friends. As J succinctly put it: 'Life was already much too short before Facebook.' How I will manage to actually meet these women, who sound interesting and nice, without having to have a hundred conversations on Facebook first? It's a problem.
For the dwarves, things are perhaps simpler. And so they should be. While I looked around our house and the layers of dust which had accumulated over the 2 weeks we'd been away, and the sad, dead plants, the dwarves ripped into the toy box and we ended up having a happy first day re-tuning and re-routining, tidying, resuscitating the plants, swatting flies and throwing rotten calamantina oranges at the feral cats that creep around our garden. The Lozenge had begun the day in usual style by padding into the kitchen to do some cooking, and created a giant Scooby snack sandwich of about 20 layers of frozen bread containing morsels of dried fruit, and a courgette kebab, which he laid carefully in the centre of the table. I put on my gym kit in tune to one of my holiday resolutions and Rashimi looked me up and down. 'Whassaaaat Mummy?' A true sign it's time...
We had a couple of little boys around to play, and the Lozenge laid up the table for a party complete with Dora the Explorer napkins and straws. Perhaps this is a sign we should socialise more often - but how to do this without 80 Facebook conversations first?
On the way back from the supermarket we drove past a little demonstration which is often there at the corner of our neighbourhood on a Friday consisting of a small group of people holding Palestinian flags and signs saying things like: 'Stop the Occupation' and 'Stop the Ethnic Cleansing.' The Lozenge is getting into his flags, particularly after a visit to the UK where UKIP and SNP are ensuring we have to sign up to being blue or red and we are seemingly no longer allowed to be complex and interesting human beings of technicolour and multi shade.
The Lozenge also knows the blue and white one in these parts is the Israeli flag - as you can't really miss it, particularly just after Pesach. This time he asked, 'What are those people doing and what is that flag as it's not the Israeli one?' Here we go, I thought - feeling relieved we had only 2 minutes left in the car. I explained the signs and the flag. 'What is occupation?' I told him there were Palestinian people who lived here who have been pushed out and that this is still happening.
'Will those people come and push us out of our house too?'
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