October 7, a year later

 At this time last year we were not living in our house. We'd abandoned it to the plumbers, renting a  3-bedroom house in Petone for 2 or 3 weeks, until new toilets had been installed and better still, the new shower. I read about the murders in Israel on my phone. I went to the bedroom, closed the door, and stayed there for the rest of the day. I didn't want my grandson to see me upset, to have to explain. At eight he was still too young. No one checked on me. It would have been nice if they had. 

That evening, instead of a weekly conversation on zoom, one hemisphere talking to the other, my son and my sister had a row, a shouting match. She was beside herself and he couldn't bear it. They haven't talked since. She always acted as if Israel didn't matter to her. But maybe it's not Israel's fate which has upset her, but the fact of the pogrom, a growing risk worldwide.

I can't bring myself to do anything much today (which is why I'm writing). I spent an hour on the news, particularly from Israel. I've weeded a patch of the patio, on my knees, on a contraption my daughter gave me, surprisingly comfortable. Then I gave up. No chance of working in the garden itself, it rained and everything is muddy now. I have to get through this day on my own, except for an Israeli event tonight, which will be upsetting, but maybe also a relief. The embassy have not yet announced where it will be held.

I finished Daniel Finkelstein's Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad (2023). He sometimes surprised me, developing a thought beyond my expectation, pursuing it in a paragraph's final sentence, into  new territory. Only later did I realise who he is - Lord Finkelstein, a former executive editor of The Times. The reading is easy, the language clear, fluent, always interesting. In the Introduction he mentions growing up in Hendon. My own Granny and Grandpa, also refugees, lived in Wessex Gardens, a stone's throw from Hendon.