A word on fish and more on Israeli attitudes to kids. The mind boggles.

It’s hard to find fresh fish in Karmiel, we keep hearing about alleged fishmongers but have never actually found one.  The supermarket has a lot of frozen stuff but not much variety in the way of fresh. Anyway since I found out that omega-3 is the most important constituent of breastmilk (other than chocolate) I have had all the excuse I need to order in sushi 🙂 Only when I called up on motzei shabbat, the woman told me, in a totally serious voice;

“we don’t deliver in the rain.”

“I beg your pardon” I said, assuming I heard wrong.

“We don’t deliver in the rain.”

I repeated this to Husband, whilst trying to keep a straight face.  Husband opened front door and announced “It’s barely drizzling!”

I wasn’t sure how to say “drizzling” in ivrit so couldn’t argue it. From what I can see, Israelis are tough about everything under the sun except rain. So Husband went to pick it up and when we unwrapped our feast we were disappointed to notice the absence of any avocado in 3 of our rolls. It had, rather cheekily, been replaced with cucumber.

So of course I called up to have moan.

“We ran out.” The woman informs me  helpfully. “The chef had to replace it.”

“That’s great” I said, “but we paid for avocado.” (you can’t beat the salmon and avo combination). “And avocado costs more than cucumber.”

“No” she tells me “there’s not much difference”.

(well that’s wrong on a lot of levels but whatever, so I tried a different approach”)

“Well if you are going to replace things, you need to inform your customers. We may decide to adjust our orders. Cucumber is just not the same.”

She then repeated her previous 2 responses.  I repeated myself.  This went on for a while and she wasn’t getting the hint.

“Look lady,” I told her, “this is the bit where you are supposed to offer me a free salmon and avo roll next time I am passing. If you don’t get that, then I’m going to say cheerio and start my film.”

For goodness sake.

Other than that we had a rather lovely weekend.  We finally managed to use our free voucher for breakfast at HaMirpeset (one of the many kosher bli-teudah restaurants in the area – you think somebody somewhere would realise that the teudah fees are putting people off and do something about it, but no).  Anyway it was lovely, Jojo loves a good Israeli breakfast. They have a typical presentation system here where they lay all the cheeses and dips out in little pots so its good fun for kids to explore. Only they seem surprised when kids actually eat it. I will never get over what people feed kids here…. the country still has a generally healthy-food culture yet Israelis seem obsessed with feeding their kids rubbish out of little jars. I have no idea why but it does shed some light as to why half of them live below the supposed breadline.

We spent shabbat lunch with our lovely rabbi neighbour, who happily whisked Yaron out of my arms at the first opportunity for a cuddle (no charedi rabbi in London would dream of doing that) and made Husbands day by providing genuine home-made chopped liver.  His wife is also great company and their kids seem to regard Jojo as something of a family pet. Anyway the rabbi has decided to make it his mission to teach Husband hebrew, and has offered mini hebrew-and-sedrah sessions. We were rather touched by that seeing as he leads a rather busy life, rising at 4am on weekdays and 6am on shabbat having to somehow fit in the needs of his community and enormous family.

Jojo, meanwhile, has now reached the stage of “No! Jojo do.” That wonderful independance we have heard about. Contrary to many people’s cautions of “The Terrible Two’s” I am actually really enjoying it. It can be hard not to laugh though when he gets very serious. My response is to basically let him get on with it wherever possible, allow an extra 2 hours for every task and rejoice in his determined confidence. Surprisingly, Israelis don’t have the same response. They seem positively desperate when it comes to getting their kids to be independant (other than with food where they have a love affair with spoonfeeding), shipping kids off to gan even if mum doesn’t work and attempting to socialise them before they can even speak, but when it comes to respecting their newfound toddler independance, they don’t actually embrace it! The miserable security guard at homecentre today was a prime example. The entire shop seemed somewhat bemused by Jojo pushing our trolley-basket around (it was just the right height for him, and he really enjoyed being in charge of it whilst we got to shop) only when it came to leaving the brute of a man nastily barred Jojo’s exit with a broom handle. I looked at him, beseechingly, at least let the kid wheel it to the car or smile at him – what do you care??! But he was really rude to us and I had to prise a very indignant Jojo away from the trolley whilst a load of customers tried to enter. Totally unnecessary. Obviously this guy has so little control over his life he has decided to exercise it on kids. I pity his own children.

So it’s now time to buy Jojo his own little buggy. My neighbour has informed me that despite toy companies making these for girls, it’s really the boys that go for this one. Too right I say. Jojo has no dolls to push along but I’m sure his Gruffalo won’t object to a stroll in the buggy.