Demonstrations, Frolicking in the Kinneret and a few musings
In case anyone has been living in a cave recently [or like me can go months without picking up a paper when life gets busy] the country is in uproar at the moment – lots of people considered to be “my generation” are setting up Tent Cities all over the country. There are lots of people jumping on the political bandwagon but the bottom line, in a nutshell is;
Everything
In
This
Country
Costs
Too
Much
Money.
That’s about the long and short of it. And the doctors are pissed that they have to work such crazy hours, which is fair enough because if I was wheeled into an operating room to be told that the person wielding a knife has had less sleep than me, I would ask to be wheeled straight back out again. Apparently the bus drivers here get more breaks than the surgeons.
I haven’t joined the tent city because I thank goodness am blessed with a reasonable landlady but I do sympathise with Israelis, many of whom have decent jobs, work long hours and have no hope of owning a house within reasonable distance of their work. If you are interested in my two-pennies worth, you can view my letter to the JPost entitled “DIY kids”. They are a ridiculously oversensitive paper as they decided to edit my comment on breastfeeding [the obvious way to save money, and an option for most women] and some new-sub Americanised all my English for some daft reason, but you get the gist.
For all the political turmoil we up here in the north have been experiencing glorious weather, nothing like the scorcher of last summer, so we decided to go swimming in the Kinneret. Our local pool is hideously overpriced when you consider that little kids don’t have much staying power for swimming and swimming lessons for kids in this region cost a bomb. So as usual we have chosen the cheaper path. Pop some arm bands on them, throw ’em in the lake and hope for the best. Its nice because its natural water, no yucky chlorine but no current so much safer for the kids. Some jobsworth tried to charge us FIFTY FIVE SHEKEL [!!!] just to park our car so we drove 2 minutes up the road to the freebie beach. Big signs up saying “No Swimming” and hundred of Israelis ignoring it. My take on this one is its fine if you don’t wade out so far and stay near people who look like they might be, er, buoyant. [Read: Fat People]. Lets hope my mum isn’t reading this she has a thing about lifeguards. I don’t really get it because i am sure nobody cared about this in the Old Days. Anyway Jojo and Roni loved it and despite there being a lot of news about environmental protection of the Kinneret, and people trashing it, it looked pretty clean to me. [Acid test is none of us had a stomach ache afterwards]. There were fish in it which is always a good sign.
Other than that we had a mildly exciting moment when we discovered that Shivuk actually sell HP sauce, so we can stop importing that one. Oh and my yoga teacher went to London and bought me a bag of Cadburys, god bless her. Still can’t bring myself to eat Israeli chocolate. You can take the girl out of England but you cant take the Cadburys out of the girl, or something like that.