My friend Galit, who lives in Israel with her footballing goalkeeper husband, Ran, was exchanging texts with me yesterday ( by the wa, her and her husband’s exercise videos almost made me want to give up my puny efforts although I did manage to do a kilometer in well under twenty minutes this morning! ) and said that she wanted to know when this would all end ( she does have small children so a reasonable question being asked by all mothers of small children who want it to end before their kids are of marriageable age ) I did point out to her that Noah, when floating around on his Ark accompanied by all the animals making one hell of a racket and pooing and weeing all over the place and his children probably doing exactly the same, probably asked the same question. So, start sending out doves and see if they come back with olive branches in their mouths and you may get the answer.
Talking of rain I forgot to mention the torrential downpour the day before yesterday. It soaked my grandson when he was out for a walk and it also mercifully brought to an end the annoying antics of The Noisy People at the back of my house. Then the temperature dropped and that also stopped them dead in their tracks. It also meant I couldn’t get outside yesterday either but I had to move the car back to open the garage for today’s refuse collection so I decided to drive around the block to try to revive the battery. Can you imagine the number of flat batteries when the dove does return with the branch showing the green roots on it? And the pressure on the RAC and the AA and Green Flag ( I don’t know anybody who uses Green Flag, by the way ) I once had a screaming row with the AA when they refused to come to get my car started claiming that they couldn’t find my membership. It was only when I checked inside the house that I realized I was actually a member of the RAC ( an easy mistake to make ) For foreign readers these are all organisations who come to rescue you when your car breaks down or you have a flat tyre. And no, I can’t change a tyre myself. That’s a job for a real man. .
I’ve never read my car handbook ( it’s very big and full of diagrams that have little or nothing to do with what shows on the dashboard ). My dashboard is incomprehensible anyway and has so many dials that it looks like that of a Jumbo Jet. I mean do I really need to know how many feet I am above sea-level ? Yet, with all that technology it still doesn’t reset its clock to British Summer Time and that’s something I forget how to do from year to year. I’ve just realized that I have to do that now as the clocks went forward the other week so might try that later to take an hour or so out of my day, literally, metaphorically and philosophically.
I said right at the start of these blogs that I’d anticipated the wrong crisis and filled up with petrol. Over a month later the tank is still full. And the price of oil has plummeted and so, I assume, has the price of petrol although I can’t get into a garage to test that out. Speaking of tests my wife can’t get her car MOT’d and her driving licence runs out in May and she doesn’t have a suitable photo to use on an application. She has stubbornly been using the old paper licence without a picture for many years. I think she truly believes it has antique value, but all I know is that every time we rent a car abroad and she has to produce it the hire company ( usually Herz…. will save my current dispute with them for another day .. ) unfolds this delicate piece of creased and fading paper as if they had discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, Anyway we are working on a solution to both problems.
Talking of cars my late friend Stuart Brummer not only drove a car that had a million dials on the dashboard but also drove it extremely fast. Stirling Moss died this week ( younger readers… if I have any apart from my Grandson …. please note he was the Jensen Button of his time. ) The Jewish community claimed him as their own although there was no mention of that in his obituary in The Times. Most male Jewish drivers of a certain age ( me included) own and drive cars that are totally unsuitable. Fast cars where their balding pates just peep over the steering wheels. A lot of the women ( not my wife I hasten to add as I am reliant on her for food and laundry for the next few months…. In fact I am always reliant on her for food and laundry and anything technical… she changed some light bulbs yesterday whilst I held the ladder ) ) drive huge 4x4’s particularly in Edgware and Golders Green and can’t park them for dear life, but they are good for ferrying around their children and their shopping.
I digress from Stuart though. He would often be stopped by the police and be asked who he thought he was, Sitrling Moss? He would take off on one sleeping policeman and land on the next. On one famous occasion he was driving back from Bournemouth leading a convoy of cars and inevitably speeding ( he had been in the RAF and drove his car as if it were a fighter plane ) The police pulled in the second driver in the convoy and when he asked why they hadn’t stopped Stuart, the copper admitted with some embarrassment that Stuart had been driving so fast that he hadn’t been able to catch him. A dear friend sadly missed.
Despite all the government police warnings there were loads of cars on the roads yesterday particularly parking up near the park. Unbelievable. The lady who gives the traffic report on Chris Evans Show in the morning always starts by saying that people are advised not to use their cars unless the journey is absolutely necessary. Then today she went on to say that the A19 was blocked because of a accident. That’s one driver who wishes he’d listened, I reckon.
Had a lovely video chat with three old friends from school yesterday, Colin Mortimer Alan Neaigus and Jeff Gold and we were joined by my oldest school buddy Jeff Caine from Ireland. Jeff G lived in the same road as me on the Woodberry Down Estate ( we lived in Woodberry Grove and Rowley Gardens respectively, which were the posh bits of it, if you can have a posh bit of a Council Estate ) He helped me limp over the line in ‘O’ level Latin which I had to retake. We reminisced a bit and then I brought to their attention ( Alan lives in the States ) an article in the ‘ The Times “ about the old, long departed and barely missed kosher restaurant, Blooms in the East End. Micky Bloom who was a grandson of the founder owned a tenth of a racehorse with me back in the 70’s and we always joked it would end up on a plate in his restuarant if it didn’t start winning ( in fact it won ten races for us so thank you Aztec Star ) It might well have been an improvement on some of the food Blooms served.
We once got a ‘ doggy ‘ bag of meatballs for our cat ( suppose should have been a ‘ catty bag ‘ We put them into her bowl and found she had gently kicked them out during the night. The waiters at Blooms were an amazing bunch. The article told the story of two customers having finished their meal. One orders some hot water with a lemon in it. The other says I will have the same and make sure the glass is clean. The waiter brings them over and asks before putting them down which one of them wanted the drink with the clean glass . That was nothing compared to a meal I had there when my dining companion’s salt beef failed to arrive. I made the mistake of complaining and the waiter returned holding two steaming bowls of chicken soup ( not for us ) then balanced them and reached into the pocket of his white coat ( well, it was white once ) and produced the salt-beef wrapped in grease proof paper before dumping it on the plate. Some things you just cannot make up.
So, another day, another dollar. I continues to garner new readers so thanks for that, Several suggestions to turn this into a book when the dove finally appears so will consider that.
Meanwhile , it’s the last two days of Passover coming up ( hurrah ! ) so no blogs tomorrow or Thursday. Normal service to be resumed on Friday so stay safe until then and if we are spared I will be back.