Flag Day and a doctor called Sunrise

I have been both of these: the mother celebrating her 40th birthday; and the girl waiting for her fiancé in a restaurant.

These women were shot dead with two others when a couple of Palestinians opened fire on crowds in a popular Tel Aviv district. A tragedy in itself: the trashing of vibrant lives in a land whose history is riddled with events like these.

And now, for the Palestinians it's going to get harder. Events like this only tighten the noosehold on a population suffering collectively for every individual crime - whether it's a young girl running at a soldier with a pair of scissors, or two young men with guns killing civilians in a restaurant. Three days into the holy month of ramadan, and already Palestinians from all over the country have been refused permits to Jerusalem.  And it won't end here.

The Mayor of Tel Aviv admits: "Only if there is a terrorist attack here bigger than one we have ever known, then our leaders and the Israeli (people) will understand that we need to end the occupation and turn to peace."

But events like these reflect only a small truth when you look at the interlacing of cultures in our lives as temporary residents here.

I've always thought that the book-stops of community are children and the elderly. In this pop-up life, where you have to find your own community, so your life in a place can actually be called a life, before you have to pack it up and move on somewhere else, old people are the crucial book-stop that make everything more real.

I’d been feeling the strain of this pop-up life. Since J is going to be popping out of it quite a bit over the next year, and popping back for not very long stints. So I go to see my friend Zuli, who's a member of my temporary community, one of my finest, and in her late 70’s. She greets me warmly, dressed immaculately as always: long purple tunic, leggings and some wedge sandals. ‘Hello, it’s so good to see you, come in!’ she grins a huge grin, accepting my flowers saying: ‘Why? Really come on.’ Av her husband, in his 80s comes out of his study to say hi, glasses perched on his nose. ‘And tell me, how are your parents, we really have forged a strong friendship since their visits.’

Some of Zuli’s newly crafted pots sit in a neat stack on the kitchen sideboard: duck egg blues washed over a stony background. Every time she visits she brings me at least one, sometimes a stack and I have them all on a shelf. My shrine to Zuli.

We begin to talk properly. Av has a couple of questions. Though extremely informed about the monotheistic religions, he asks me modestly: ‘So tell me, does one give a gift to a Muslim at the beginning of Ramadan? What is the custom?'

Another question: ’I saw in the church when we came for your daughter's christening they have long white candles – do you know where they get them? I need them for our candlelight suppers on Shabbat. Zuli didn’t used to like to do these on Saturdays, but now she does.’

Then he laughs: ‘Don’t tell my Jewish friends I get the candles from the church.’

‘Better than the mosque?’ I laugh.

‘Well actually from the mosque they would also be kosher. Islam and Judaism have proximity to each other going a long way back. More so than with Christianity, historically.’

Zuli joins in, reminiscing about the Pea's christening which we held in East Jerusalem. She and Av came from the West, and the taxi dropped them a little short of the church because the driver didn't want to come all the way into the East side as he said it was dangerous. So Zee and Av got out and walked. A little lost they stopped and asked directions: 'We asked directions in English to an Arab guy. He replied to us in Hebrew. He knew immediately we were Israeli!’  Zuli is in stiches. 'So funny,' she says beginning to cut an avocado for lunch.

Av goes off to work at his computer. Zuli and I talk about belonging, or not belonging; this itinerant life, and the wonders of it. How you can belong without belonging. ‘I mean I don’t belong here,’ I say, ‘ And sometimes that can feel a bit strange. This life you know, which isn’t really our life.’

'I don’t feel I belong here either', says Zuli. 'I mean after traveling to Malawi and Rhodesia with Av's work, and then living in London for 43 years, then coming back here. Everything is different. My friends are mostly dead – so many of the good ones have died. And even the language I don’t feel I understand any more. I read Hebrew but it’s literred with words I don’t understand, like I was saying in my pottery place to my friends: ‘I read the word ‘d-o-u-c-h-e-b-a-g’ written phonetically in Hebrew, and I think: What is this? ‘ But the young girl in there says they use this word all the time.

Zuli and Av have just been on a trip to Galilee which she says they loved. ‘Israel is still a beautiful country. We had a lovely time, but there was such a fascist in the group. All this talk about the land being promised to us. It’s not right. Mrs Netanyahu using the excuse that she’s a child of the holocaust and that’s why she’s penny pinching. What has this become?'

I’d mistakenly arrived at lunchtime, and Zuli and I eat together. She’s a wonderful cook – always something interesting on the table – some slaw with delicate dressing, avocado, home made pesto. Some bread Av had made.

Zuli carves the bread. I notice she's left handed. ‘The only time I’ve found it hard is when I was in the Israeli army and I had to shoot a rifle – load and pull trigger with my right hand. It was very difficult. Then I got a medal! For sharp shooting. I was nicknamed Captain Ricochet,' she's in stitches again.

I look at the stack of handcrafted pots.  From military training to creative essence. Something the Palestinians are not offered either of by their state and perhaps if the Palestinian Authority  were more insightful it would fund more of the arts and creative pursuits.

I hear about Zuli's parents from Lithuania/Poland who arrived in the 1930s. 'What was your mother like?' I ask ‘A practical, hard working woman.’ Her socialist parents made their living together - a printer and a bookbinder and built their lives from scratch 13 years before the state of Israel was established.

'They would be turning in their graves if they saw what the country they began building, has become. It’s better they didn’t live to see this', she says. ‘Though now we’re seeing it. And it's really not easy.'

Last Sunday was Jerusalem Day or Flag Day, commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and Israel gaining control over the Old City. So as Muslim populations in the city prepared themselves for the first day of Ramadan – bunches of Israeli settlers waving flags ran about through the city cheering and inciting rage – though this year, there was no violence reported.

It is illegal by Israeli law to fly a Palestinian flag in Jerusalem - so you can imagine how blue and white it becomes around here on flag day in a city which is already flapping with blue and white flags.

Some Palestinians fear Jerusalem's old city may become like Hebron: the only Palestinian city where settlers have populated the centre. The heart has been sucked out of it, leaving a ghost town with shuttered up shops, and deserted housing, patrolled by Israeli soldiers protecting the settlers there.

Ramadan has begun again - our fourth since we left London – and the night time turns into day as people celebrate the breaking of the daily fast at Iftar. The canon goes every day at dusk and the Ramadan lights twinkle around shops, and people are out and about with their children after Iftar.

St Grace has gone back to Sri Lanka for a wedding and to see her only son who is now 14. The Jordanian ministry of interior wouldn't allow her a visiting visa for Jordan from where she was supposed to fly. St Grace, who has scrubbed Jordanian floors, and cleaned off layers of desert dust in Amman's houses for 15 years of her life, is now no longer welcome. ‘If I was born in Europe, they let me in,’ she said shaking her head. ‘I feel angry and I feel sad.’

In the end we also felt a bit sad having to part with £400 for her to fly the 100 miles from Tel Aviv to Amman so she's in transit and can zip through visa-free. But she’s St Grace, she is our loyalest supporter and helper, and she had to go on this trip.

So the Glammy is with us for what is probably her last stay for a while. She’s heading to the USA again where she and her new husband are to re-begin their life. I see her outside Duty Free looking immaculate in a be-jewelled tshirt and designer shades. She kisses her Mum goodbye, grabs the Pea: 'Petra, habibti, anti HELWEH!' (dear you are SWEET) and jumps into my car. We have our car searched on the Jordanian side. Security has tightened because the Palestinian driver of the Norwegian consul general was  found smuggling antiquities – coins and other things – in the bottom of the diplomatic vehicle. The customs officials rifle around a bit, squidging the Pea’s cheeks as they look about. No coins in our car – just trails of biscuit crumbs, empty juice bottles and other detritus from sticky travelling dwarfs, at this point safely at school.

On the Israeli side the gang of customs women were rude and sour faced. The Glammy and I had been friendly and polite. (After a few years I've learned my lesson as J wisely pointed out that being rude and getting angry only makes things taste more bitter). They whisper and talk about us in Hebrew thinking we don't understand.  ‘Lo Lo.’ No no. 'As if she’s really American they were saying, pointing to the Glammy’s American passport), picking the split ends of each other’s ponytails. The Glammy and I get on with feeding the Pea her lentil lunch and pretend not to notice. There is strength in being two of us.

We never know how long they’ll keep us waiting. After about an hour they let us go after a man in a Jewish skull cap takes the Glammy off into a private room to ask her questions. They come out of the room, and he lets us go. I say: 'Shabbat shalom' to the guy, the Glammy and I high five each other and head out of the terminal. I notice she is shaking. 'That was by far the worst yet. He was shouting at me and trying to make me say I had Palestinian relations here. He shouted: 'You were deported from the UK - weren't you. You're muslim aren't you. Are you coming to Al Aqsa.' I actually said to him that I was a buddhist.'

I wished I could retract my greeting of a peaceful Sabbath to the man. I had a mental picture of him sitting calmly, guilt free with his family around the table with a glass of wine. Not caring about how much hurt he caused.

The Glammy and I swing by the school on our way back from horrible border experience to pick up the dwarfs. They drop their backpacks, waterbottles splooshing water, and run into her arms almost knocking her over. The Lozenge is almost her height now. I see Lulu, an Arab child psychologist whose son is in the Lozenge's class. I tell her I'd met the wonderful Israeli psychotherapist last week at Hadassah hospital and how surprised I was she was learning Arabic. Lulu just smiles: 'You need to meet more of the good Israelis! Most of the Israeli doctors and psychiatrists I work with – they are just phenomenal'.

With the Glammy in the house, it's as though I'm invisible. The dwarfs skip about after her like the children after the pied piper. She lives in make believe land with them. Over breakfast she says: 'So boys we're going to have one adventure every day for 2 weeks. And we're also going to catch the crow witch by collecting poison shells on the beach tomorrow, and colouring them so the crow-witch thinks they're berries.'

The dwarfs are transfixed, staring at her eyes and mouths wide. Rashimi with a Honey Nut Cheerio attached to his bottom lip. Then after breakfast she turns into Mary Poppins. The boys fold their clothes, make their beds. The toys fly into the boxes, as they talk about dragons and Egyptian kings who made a rock carving in a valley where the sun shines only twice a year. The Lozenge rushes off to get 'Henry the Tastic' hoover and all kinds of large ojects are sucked up making that vaccum 'sthhoop!' noise. Oh well, Henry the Tastic's been fixed once before on Salahdin st. I'm sure he'll be back there again with another acute burst of hoover-appendicitis.

The Pea sits and claps and squeaks at everything and before long the Glammy has taught her to high five, and say 'se se se!' 'me me me!'. She's only 9.5 months old.

The dwarfs are calling her Chicken Little because of her crazy hair do.

I wonder how I'm going to explain to J that I think I'm actually in LOVE with the Glammy.

J and I had a tearful (mostly me, admittedly) separation because all I could see was a long tube of being apart, with no chinks of light getting in. But thanks to St Grace's fortitude, we were able to leave her with the three small people for a weekend and escape to Jaffa - the Old Arab port, now home to a fabulous flea market. We bought some 1950s and 1970s furniture to cheer ourselves up. Amron, the guy who sold it to us heard we had a place in Camden and said: 'Oh there is a market! Yes, and you know it's owned by an Israeli'. We never knew that. But he's right.

Amron is half Syrian, half Russian married to a woman half Turkish, half Tunisian. 'So what do you think about Leiberman?' we ask referring to Netanyahu's appointment of a heavy duty bull-dog defence minister recently. 'Well, no I don't like,' Amron replies 'But they (Palestinians) will be quiet. They will have a little bit. Fear. You know. This what we need.'.

J and I get home and do a bit of feng shui about the house with our new furniture and it feels good. It improves our moods and in a brighter frame of mind I convince myself that next year without J around is going to be comparable to a diet: not particularly pleasant at times, but maybe some favourable results will come from it.

The Glammy and I have long conversations into the night. Although she was raised a Muslim she believes more in the messages of Buddhism at the moment. 'Well I knew a JewBu once,' I say, 'So maybe you could be a MuBu?'

We do some yoga following a DVD perched on the new 1970s formica table. It's so hot we leave the front doors open and we get the giggles when we do the position where you have to sit holding your feet with your legs apart and in the air. The ramadan cannon sounds: 'BOOOF!' We both jump, wobble and fall onto our sides. 'I hope it doesn't look like us saying: Welcome! Happy Iftar (breaking the fast). Come on in boys.' Perhaps better close the door.

Then she teaches me to medidate imagining we're sitting on a beach with the sun's rays coming down on our heads and spreading to every limb and expanse of skin.

I spend the rest of the evening killing low flying blue bottles which have been droning about my head. The Glammy won't help me out of respect for the life of insects. And afterwards she suggests she might like to get baptised into the Christian church as well. (Kid in a sweet shop of monotheistic religions? I ask myself). She suspects, but doesn't know, that her dad might have been a closet Christian. She read the bible he had on his shelf which she found after he died when she was 15, and watched his videos in a hidden drawer which were all about Jesus. 'He would never have told anyone, not even my Mum,' the Glammy explains, 'because you could be killed for that in Jordan.'

The following morning the Lozenge has a bad ear infection and is dodging breakfast - a sure sign of Lozenge ill health as normally not much comes between him and a slice of toast with honey. He looks up from under his fringe at the Glammy eating Cheerios. 'But, it's ramadan so that means you shouldn't be eating Batooli!'

The Glammy looks sheepish. Hard to shake Muslim guilt. Even as a buddhist.

I take the Lozenge to the doctor. She's a young Arab in a blue headscarf and is surprised I speak Arabic. 'Not enough,' I wail, 'Your language is just so so difficult.'

Her English is quite good.  She explains, 'I've worked a lot in the West Side, and I've had a lot of teaching from British doctors from Oxford,' she says putting the torch into the Lozenge's painful ear. 'Ow,' he wails.

She takes it out, and takes his hand instead - her fast just beginning which is always the hardest week for Muslims in ramadan - or so I'm told.

'What's your name?' I ask.

'Shorooq' she says, smiling at the Lozenge and stroking his hand.

‘So you know what my name means?’ she asks him.

'No,' says the Lozenge.

'It means Sunrise,' she says. 'Sharq is the word for East and my name comes from that because every morning, the sun rises in the East. One morning you should get up early, and watch it.'

He doesn't reply but I can tell he's thinking that is really quite a cool name.

And now it's Chicken Little with the chicken pox.

Finding the Overlap: Sculpting a tree and A and E

Nissim is half way up the olive tree on a step ladder chipping away at the plaster, then peeling off the silicone mould of the tree. They've spent the last two days painting on silicone, and now peeling it off to take back to the foundry, where they'll cast the bronze. He gestures the view towards the separation wall surrounding Bethlehem and laughs. 'It's a pity about that wall, isn't it,' I say. He shrugs and says

in a Hebrew lilt. 'Just politics and stupid things.'

Nissim is a Jewish Israeli - half Libyan and half Turkish. His parents came to Israel in 1950. His wife is also Jewish - half Uruguayan, half Polish. 'I'd love to see your kids,' I laugh. He has four.

He continues with his job, and mutters, gesturing to the Palestinians working on the building site beside. 'I've lived in Israel all my life, and I've never worked with these people before. And they are nice. We are polite - we drink coffee, we say hello, we shake hands. It's okay.'

He flatly refuses for me to film him saying that. The olive tree sculpture project is about tying up populations, and the people creating it are a total mix. In one of my shots I realise I have an Orthodox Christian Palestintian from Jerusalem; a Muslim Palestinian from Bethlehem; Nissim the Israeli and Mark the British sculptor. There are some load bangs from teargas cannisters near the separation wall behind us. The wind buffets my microphone causing a thumping sound in my earphones.

You have to look for an overlap - but when you find one, like all synchronicity, you find many in a week.

Being anywhere with small people means almost certain trips to A and E.  And Rashimi, living up to his name with an angry head to toe rash and 2 weeks of high temperatures, needed a trip there recently. It was my second trip to a hospital that day, as I'd been filming at the Eye Hospital all morning, with a little boy from Gaza, Yazan, who lives in a house of rubble, still not yet re-built after the 2014 summer war. He was playing outside, tripped and landed on a metal spike which went through his eye.

The week he comes to the Eye Hospital coincides with a visit from one of the top eye specialists from Moorfields in London. Yazan is wailing in the waiting room when I meet him, so I find Peppa Pig in Arabic on Youtube on my phone and hand it to him. He's transfixed - his one working eye zones onto the srcreen as oinks and giggles fill the hall. Pigs are not much of a common sight around here. Particularly not talking ones. His Grandma who's with him takes my hand and thanks me profusely for the distraction.

So later that evening in A and E with my own child, we talk to a friendly Israeli doctor who inspects Rashimi's rashy body - looking in his ears, and asking questions. 'Have you been walking in long grass? Could it be a tick? Is he allergic to anything?'

A and E at 1am is a social place to be, and unlike anything you read about the politics here - everyone is together. Ultra orthodox Jews are being tended by Arab nurses. Israeli doctors with a kippa (Jewish skull cap) talking quietly to headscarfed Muslim women waiting for their loved ones to be seen. The atmosphere is business like and caring. Humans who are accustomed to being divided by preconceptions and concrete, are separated at most by a thin plastic curtain.

As the doctor gets on with his inspection, an Israeli nurse looks desperate while trying to console a little Arab girl who is crying out and thumping her little feet on the bed. The noise is deafening and everyone in the ward looks troubled by it. I have 20 percent of battery on my phone, so I clock back into Peppa Pig in Arabic, and the dulcet tones of Miss 'Ernab (rabbit) soon pacify the little girl. The nurse is grateful. So am I, as the raucous tantrum abates.

No one can work out Sashimi's affliction but we go away feeling positive about a small bubble of overlap and politics-free place where a human body to be treated, is treated as just that.

As Dr. Joshua Schroeder, senior orthopedic surgeon at Hadassah Hospital said to one of the main newspapers recently, after a successful operation which prevented a 3-year-old boy from the Gaza Strip from becoming paralyzed. "We hope that when they go back to Gaza they will talk about the positive sides of Israeli society. There are no politics in a hospital, only people. Just yesterday we treated a girl from Ramallah. Everyone here is equal."

I'm back at Hadassah Hospital a week later to film one of the top Israeli child psychotherapists for a fundraising initiative. Hadassah hospitals are in the red and the need for child mental health services for families on both sides has soared since the second intifada, and again since the latest wave of stabbing attacks.

We begin to talk in her tiny office filled with teddy bears on shelves and whole wall of Playmobil figures - colourful drawings and posters on the walls. She interrupts herself and says: 'I'm sorry I don't have time to ask you any questions.' I shrug it off saying that's not why I'm here, and the interview begins. I realise soon that I've walked into another haven of hope in this dark political climate. Her ranks of social workers and psychotherapists reflect the society of Israel: from Ultra Orthodox Jewish to Eritrean and Arab. She's learning Arabic herself though tears her hair out over it (I relate) and bemoans she can't work in it yet. She's recently widowed and speaks fondly of trips to England and her children who are at university studying art or medicine here and Europe.

As I take my leave after an hour, she says, 'Please it would be so nice to see you again. I'm really in despair about the politics in this country. We need to restore our social values and from this little room in the main hospital here, it feels like a long uphill struggle.'

But it feels a long way from all that in this little room - a sanctuary from the politics below.

I get home and Rashimi has another rash.

This time it's chicken pox. No need for A and E at least as the pox pictures on the internet are very clear.

The Lozenge explains that his friends in his class won't catch it because their Mum took them to a chicken festival once back in London.

Chasing Swifts

I've never been much of a twitcher. We used to have this family joke whenever a big bird flew over, and we'd ask: 'What's that Dad?' and he'd say: 'Oh, I dunno, maybe a shitehawk?' Dad was better at flying things with engines, and Mum better at mammals.

The Holy Land is a very enticing place for bird enthusiasts - sandwiched between river and sea - a stopping point for birds on their way to Europe for the summer. And amongst these, the swift: short legs and large span of wing in a kind of sickle shape, with a pointed tail. The legs are short as they're barely on the ground, doing almost everything on the wing inlcuding eating and mating.

But this spring I've been the untrained observer and filmer of swifts for a film I'm making about a highly creative and enthusiastic scultpor, Mark, who's been invited to sculpt a bronze in Mursitan - the crusader hospital complex in the Old City of Jerusalem. The premise is to encapsulate all people of Jerusalem - and the movement of pilgrims and patients. No big deal when you're Mark. The bright idea comes to him: the olive tree, in bronze, will be the symbol of everything that ties Jerusalem together. And the canopy of leaves will be swifts cast in bronze, swooping and soaring above the robust trunk of the tree, suggesting pilgrims and movement and the itinerant nature of people in this place.

I've been on the swift path for days. Climbing the ancient roofs overlooking the Dome of the Rock to get a good view of the swifts - who are only in Jerusalem for a couple of months before heading north. They're nesting in the Wailing Wall, squeaking and swooping above the nodding, black-hatted heads below. The wailing wall is full of little tails and nests and the air is filled with cheeping. eeekeekeeiekeieekieekieeekeeieek it sounds like. Shit - I struggle - camera swerving and diving trying to catch them for part of the film. I can't make a good job of it. I creep out at daybreak and dusk to try and catch them. One day I get the wrong time - there are no swifts - just a Jewish wedding taking place - the bride's shoes catching the golden hue of the Dome

It's a challenge. From the bouncing the Pea and her brothers and their and homework and cooking and editing, man flu and other ailments, being woken up at night by the smaller men of the house and their problems, a few other films.

And now chasing birds.

I'm exhausted and a little disillusioned by the swifts and wonder if they're doing it on purpose. I miss my normal subjects: people - though they of course come with other issues despite their longer legs and more stationary nature. But there is Iona, my 21 year old cousin and week-long wing woman, who comes along with me everywhere. I feel like we are doing everything on the wing, a bit like the swifts. But she helps me with my heavy bags and my heavy children. I decide we should climb the city wall becuase at least from there we'll be nearer the sky where the swifts seem to spend most of their time. She gets some great pictures. I get some less good footage.

At the kitchen table the following day, the Lozenge stretches over a bowl of honeynut cheerios, one of which I have stuck to my foot. 'Stretching is cool Mummy, becuase when you stretch, all the tired comes up out of your arms and into the sky. And then the tired goes up to the moon, which is just about going to sleep while the sun takes over. And all the tired from everyone stretching goes INTO the moon as it goes to sleep. It's just so cool.'

The dwarfs have two days off school to celebrate Israeli independence day.  'Independence from who?' Iona asks. 'Well, us, I guess', I say shaking my head at the duplicitous and indelible British thumbprint in these parts. Before and during the British mandate the British had promised a slice of land to the Jews, promised the Arab people they'd get their rightful Arab lands back if they helped us fight the Ottomans, and then behind everyone's backs had also carved up the land between us and the French in the Sykes Picot agreement. A mess then. And messier now.

That morning I'd been at the money changer talking to an elderly and characterful man, Nabil, on Salahdin Street. 'May 15?' I asked as I wrote the cheque. Of course. Nakba Day (Nakba is the Arabic name for 'catastrophe' marking the day in 1948 when700,000 were forced from their homeland). The same week as Israeli independence day.  As one state was established, another people were forced to leave. 'I feel bad about being British around here.' I said. Nabil laughed, his glasses going a bit crooked on his face as he counted out my notes: 'Well, at LEAST! At LEAST you are sensitive to  that my dear. 'Even if', he belly laughed, 'you can do nothing about it.'

We walk towards the wall with the dwarfs beneath even more flapping Israeli flags. Jets flying overhead to commemorate this independence - the boys whisper: 'WOW'. If only they knew, I think. All this bravado and show of strength. And the flag. These flags - all these flags I think as an Orthodox woman turns towards me: blue headscarf Jewish orthodox style, white tshirt with a huge Star of David, long blue skirt, and reflected in her sunglasses are the mirror image of the blue and white flags flapping proudly above us: 'WOW'. I think. Can they be masking a niggling knowingness that this place isn't really 100 percent theirs? Is this a defensive show of nationalism - trying to paper over some rather unsightly cracks? An right wing defence minister, Lieberman has joined Netanyahu's gang. There is very little sensible or sensitive debate on the political level. Palestinians have never had as little hope - even with their new Palestine Museum just inaugurated near Ramallah. There needs to be a record somewhere of these lands. Even if its in the clouds. A new film: The Settlers, just showed at Cannes - depicting the 'hilltop youth' a pugnatious brand of young Israeli settlers blamed for extreme violence against Arabs, and an equal threat to their own governement.

So there they are: Independence day, and Nakba day. Squished into the same week. One a celebration and one a lament. Do we remember only the story we want to remember? We are self-delusionists, we humans, of the utmost dexterity.

The dwarfs love the Old City wall - they say it's like climbing a castle battlements.

Rashimi insists on taking a backpack so we can put our picnic in it, and also he slips in a Bon Maman jam jar, its plaid lid with tiny holes he's pierced - with the ant and the woodlouse he captured that morning - and a stale piece of bread for them to eat. We can see Jordan from up there, the domes of the Old City, barking dogs and flapping washing on flat rooftops. Then we have a picnic on their favourite grassy slope below the cinematheque, and run underneath the canopy of enormous mulberry trees. By the time we get home the ant and the woodlouse are dead and curled in little balls under the bread. Rashimi shrugs it off. 'But at least we didn't leave them alone at home.'

Then Mark the sculptor arrives, we visit the foundry near Netanya where his bronze tree and swifts will be cast: an Israeli of Russian descent called Yossi wearing pink glasses matching his cheeks looks at Mark and me. I'm sure he thinks we're crazy, but he plays along with it. Then I film Mark racing about the Old City, and it rekindles my love for this place. I chase him around as he had his idea; as he finds his prototype olive tree in a beautiful grove which once would have looked out over Bethlehem but now runs up against the unsightly grey slabs of the separation wall cutting people off from each other, and with it understanding and commonality.

Spring Visitors

Then a string of spring visitors to remind us why we chose to live in these lands between river and sea - and to take our minds away from all the tragedy around.

Lucy the painter and I scrambled our way up a rocky mountain-side between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea. The Kidron valley was quiet but for the gurgling of the stream and the cheeps of 'catcoot' nested chicks in the crevice of rock above us. We turned and gazed:

 A 5th century Christian Orthodox monastery setteld in the rock face - a clutter of domes, and bricks and windows and crucifixes.  Our impromptu guides were two young Bedouin boys: Agab and Sagr - names in Arabic for birds of prey, who accompanied us up the hill pointing things out and explaining them to us in Arabic. Agab laughed, pointing out two beetles - one on top of the other, tumbling about in the dust. 'Bijowaz!' he laughed. 'They're getting married.' Then he asked me what the time was. 10 o'clock, I said, then he shouted to his brother the other side of the valley: 'Ashra!' 'Ten!' Bedouin timekeeping. 'Can't they tell from the sun?' asked Lucy. I looked at Agab's skinny stonewashed jeans and wondered about conflicting cultures.

Lucy painted while I photographed. We were calmed and soothed by this remote monastery, where men have lived solitarily in solidarity with the rock. As solid and unflinching in form as in their statement to the world. A message to us all: study the peace, let your mind run free towards greater more mysterious things. It spoke to us both, as much as the young boys who eagerly chatted and posed for photographs.

It was a welcome respite from the trouble around.

The problem with living here, or for that matter anywhere else in the world, is the news. As Caitlin Moran says in her fabulous new book, Moranifesto: We need a new news. All it shows is the black and if you don't watch out it shows you only the end of hope. 'It is screwing us up and crushing us', she says. You can end up believing hope is dead.

Last week a supermarket attendant in Tel Aviv was assaulted in broad daylight by plain clothed Israeli border police, just because he was Arab. As one of the Knesset members Dov Khenin pointed out: the ill spirit of racisism communicated by the ministers and members of the leadership is being translated into an intolerable reality of violence.

So the best bit about spring and with it, this year, a string of visitors, means you have an excuse to be a resident tourist, and whilst discussing the very evidently wrong things going on around us, get out and muse and wonder the magical things too. My aunt Ariane and John bravely joined a family of five's week long holiday from school.

There's not much hopeful news in relation to Islam right now. But living ten minutes walk from the third most holy place in this religion merits a proper look. J got permission from the Waqf, or custodians of the Muslim holy sites, for us to go inside Al Aqsa mosque, dating from 1133. The calm exterior space around the two buildings, archways framing the famous golden dome of the rock,  a relief from the Old City's narrow streets.

The holy feeling was not encouraged by our twitchy, elderly guide, evidently bored of showing people like us around the structure: 'Welcom-hurry up!' he said, rushing us around. As if the 'welcom' somehow excused the hurrying. But we took our time, pacing the carpeted floor of Al Aqsa, the geometric carpet moving off into the distance as if all the way to Mecca itself. The archways inside reminiscent of a Church. The bullet hole, supposedly the one that killed King Abdullah 1 of Jordan but spared King Hussein. We meandered amongst the saturated colours, the geometric lines pointing East, enjoying the peace and the friendly looks from Muslims welcoming us into their holy place.

Prayer times

'Will we be having dinner at the hotelle?' asked the Lozenge with a faint lilt of an Arab accent. The dwarfs both have it - despite only knowing about ten words each in Arabic. The Lozenge has a special relationship with his tummy, and often relays conversations he's had with it.

'No, at a restaurant', I replied already looking forward to the Uri Buri visit that evening myself - a mouthwatering Israeli culinary experience overlooking Acre's crusader wall and beyond it the Mediterranean Sea.  Our chosen destination for the trip before Ariane and John left.

'Ooh. One excitement with another excitement inside it,' the Lozenge squeaked, rubbing his tummy bouncing on the bed in the mezzanine floor which is like being on the set of being John Malcovkitch and the 9 and a half'th floor which means someone my height has to crawl.

Rashimi joined in, also slightly stooping: 'The only thing the hotelle doesn't have is a playroom.'

'But the whole worlde is a playroom - it is completely full of exciting things,' said the Lozenge.

'Yeah,' on reflection Rashimi agreed: 'becauthe God made it. and God...And God...Mummy, (making sure I was really listening more to him than to his brother) Is STRONGer than GOLIATH.'

Together they wolfed a plate of porcini gnocci, with calamari rings on the side. The Lozenge asked: 'what's for pudding?' a calamari ring still lodged in one cheek. And after it they slurped pistaccio ice cream and passion fruit sorbet. 'It lookth like tadpoles'. said Rashimi.

Acre is on Israel's Mediterranean coast and this restaurant is run by a well known Israeli chef and developer who is famed and also criticised for his smartening up of the centre of the crusader town. He came to talk to us as we ate, twiddling his long grey beard with a rugged hand explaining his motivation for joining up Arab and Israeli communities in his ventures.

My telephone pinged. 'Aby Aestar!' from Nasser a friendly muslim local taxi driver. There is no 'P' in the Arabic language so Petra is pronounced Bitra, and therefore Happy: Aby.  Back in Jerusalem orthodox christians, were celebrating the day before Easter with the 'Holy Fire: ' an annual miracle in which a blue light emanates from Jesus' tomb in the Holy Sepulchre, forming a column of fire from which candles are lit, and the fire spontaneously lights other lamps and candles around the church. Pilgrims and clergy claim the Holy Fire doesn't burn them. Though Nasser is Muslim he is always congratulating me on my Christian festivals, even though as a non-orthodox I had celebrated Easter a few weeks before.

As we delivered Ariane and John back to the airport after a fabulous week they waved as we cruised up the escalator. On the top floor of the airport I noticed all the helium balloons, stuck on the ceiling. I wondered to myself about this symbol of barricaded freedoms. Israel barricading itself in from its own freedom by securitisation: as the Palestinians are also trapped from the occupation and their own political failings. The little helium balloons stuck up there, ribbons dangling, separated from the freedom of the clear blue sky, by a thick metal slab.

Tectonic plates are shifting in our life: J will be spending a lot of time away next year. But we think we can stay in our house. Our landlady waved to us from the balcony as we came in: nearly 90 years old and often sitting up there in her housecoat sucking on a fag and pinging it onto tour stone patio below. The geraniums have a grey tinge to their furry leaves. She's fiercely independent - having accepted no offers of help the 2.5 years we've been here. She seems happy for us to remain below.

Iona my 21 year old cousin arrived. A photography student and subsequently my right hand woman. She got stuck in right away, coming with me film Ian the icon painter - another road leading back to Bethlehem - carrying my kit and helping me by photographing the wall while I filmed.

All her questions were spot on:

-So is that a gated community then? Looking at an Israeli settlement across from Bethlehem on part of the West Bank

- So is Palestine a state or what is it? How does that all work?

- So what stance does Britain take with all this?

- And if a Palestinian wants to get to the Mediterranean coast, how do they do that?

We took a break at Mahne Yeuda market. 'Judaica' fluttered in a stall behind her: Hamzeh hands, multicoloured kappa hats, little menorah seven pronged candlesticks twinkling in the sunlight. We chatted and I studied here as we sat there, lovely pale skin, pale blue eyes and blonde hair, talking about her German Grandmother who was one of the dancing girls for Hitler, who shook his hand as she danced past. 'And she still has things she says that are quite anti semitic which she blames on all the indoctrination she got at school,' said Iona.

Not all that long ago. We were startled at the thought of how close it was, even to us - two generations on.

Springing into Spring

This year, all my roads lead to Bethlehem. I stood surrounded by the crowds filling Manger Square: music pumping as lycra-clad Palestinians and others from all over the world limbered up for the 2016 Bethlehem Marathon. We were all shapes and sizes. I hadn't trained, but the worst I could do was stick my 12 year old running shoes on the bottom of my 40 year old legs and join the gang.

'Don't be put off by the young Palestinian sprinters. They sprint for the first few kilometres and then you see them gasping for breath on their knees by the side of the road,' a friend warned.

I'd set out at 6 in the morning with a Norwegian friend under bars of sunshine illuminating the morning, the air was moving with birds and bugs and full of song. All of us springing into spring together. At 40 years old you can swing your legs out of bed and wish you didn't have a little patch of veins here, some cellulite there, or just get out and use the damn things. Rashimi and J were home sick with manflu, the Lozenge had read me one of his school books about the seahorse the night before, his head on the pillow and a breadstick next to it: 'It's my emergency snack Mummy. In case I get hungry in the night'.

My emergency snack was a little three-pack of Jericho dates advertising the Right to Movement an organisation to get everyone moving, and to highlight just how far you can't move in Bethlehem, before reaching the giant slabs of concrete separating Israel from the West Bank.

We were three groups of runners: the full marathon, the half, and the 10kms like me.  I lolled over the starting line and began at a pace reminiscent of an elderly woman in L.A. without the nugget dog on a lead or the designer sweat suit.

When you run, your head runs also, with snatches of conversation or song on permanent repeat. The Lozenge reading about the seahorse was the beginning of the refrain: 'The male sea horse carries the eggs for the female, and gives birth to the baby sea horses for her.' So unfair, I thought as I stopped for a wee at a kebab shop just opening its metal slats for the day's trade.

I pictured the elegant shape of the female seahorse floating free while her mate struggled with the tummyload of eggs and wondered if maybe, just, in the next life...?

We ran up to the graffiti covered wall and flanked it for a while, before running up the main street, past the hospital where the Pea was born seven months before (will Bethlehem always be the location for physical endurance?) back to the wall again, around and through the 10k finish. It sounds easy, and wouldn't have been even achievable but for the tunes and the buoyancy aid of other people running along the road with me. The atmosphere was light and carefree, all people part of a positive gathering for which the West Bank is rarely known. No tear gas today.

The Pea was silhouetted in the doorway when I returned.  She flapped her arms up and down and emitted a high-pitched squeak when she saw me, putting down the fly swat she'd been chewing on. The follwing weekend her big day:

The baptism of the Pea. P.E.R.L Petra Edith Rosie. A raft of family and friends swept in bringing with them 4 days of joy and rather a lot of champagne, joining us for trekking in the West Bank near Ramallah, noisy dinners, big family lunch, and an enormous hug of support for a radiant pea, who thought being dunked in Queen Victoria's font at our local cathedral was the funniest thing ever.

April 10th - a baptism of a new human, and the celebration of spring.