Yesterday was the day when the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza. Given the complexities of the situation, I wondered if there were last minute discussions of a technical nature, n what language the two sides would basically communicate? I found the answer in this blog - 'The Arabs that I have met know either basic Hebrew and/or English. It seems that for some Palestinian Arabs knowing Hebrew (at least basic) opens up more job prospects. Also depends on social class since religious private schools (many of them for Christian Arabs but that many Muslims attend) have good English level. So there are more than a few ways, except Israelis learning Arabic which is still exceedingly rare (albeit not impossible)' So this is what more or less what I suspected. If you are an Arab living in Israel, for example the West Bank, you would have taught yourself some Hebrew but, as I suspected, the Israelis would hardly ever be inclined to speak Arabic. The fallback situation, which I also suspected, is that English is used when all else fails. English is considered the current global 'lingua franca'. A lingua franca is a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. English has become the lingua franca in many fields, including business, science, technology, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy.
As the carers are coming an hour earlier today, I actually got up at 5.0am and managed to write some emails giving details of Meg's current condition to family and friends with whom I had communicated the other day when I thought she might have drifted away for good. But 'the boat bobbed a little bit back yesterday' which is good and I have to tell myself that a bad day might be followed by a better one and vice versa. After the carers had departed this morning, I got some porridge into Meg followed by a strawberry mousse - fortunately, for me, Aldi seems to have a good supply of things like mouse and tiny little pots of fromage frais which are ideal bits of food I can get into Meg these days. I had just finished breakfast, when I received a text from my sister in her residential home in Knaresborough and immediately gave her a FaceTime call. I thought she looked pretty well and she had, indeed, just had her hairdresser last week. We were mainly talking about Meg and I was pleased to tell her that after my experience of a couple of days ago, Meg seems a bit more connected with the world this morning. I had started to watch some interesting Sunday morning TV when our University of Birmingham friend phoned and he is going to pop round for a chat later in the day which is always very welcome. I had started watching the Alan Titchmarsh programme on ITV called 'Love your Weekend' and found some interesting gardening tips. First looking at the kind of waterbut arrangements that enable you to get clear rainwater from your drainpipes, the other thing that took my attention (so something no doubt stocked in gardening centres) was called a gutter snake. Imagine a bottle brush on a much larger scale and available in lengths of several metres. Once the gutters have been cleaned out, then you place the appropriate length of 'gutter snake' in the gutter and whilst rain water falls through the bristles into the containing gutter, any leaves that would otherwise end up in the gutter get caught on the bristles, eventually dry out (if we have a few hard cold days of frost later in the year) and then just blow away. This is such a simple idea that one wonders why it has never been thought of before (which it may have been, but not marketed). I was so tempted by this that after the winter clean out of the gutters, I might be tempted to install such a system before the leaf fall of next autumn.
I continue to receive helpful and inspirational emails from one of my nieces who showed me a poem to which she had been introduced by my mother (my nieces's grandmother) called 'Footprints in the Sand' which is comforting in times of trouble. When the two carers came to see to Meg in the late morning, they were both in some distress, the elder one being concerned that her car had in effect broken down with the engine management system limiting her speed to 20 mph. Meanwhile, the far younger carer only a week or so out of shadowing was being called upon to undertake tasks that should really have taken two carers but as so many staff had phoned in sick was asked to do jobs single handed and she doubted that she had the experience or ability to cope. My sympathies extended to them both but there was nothing I could do to alleviate either situation. I managed to get a fair quantity of lunch inside Meg (ham, baked potato and broccoli followed by some yogurt for afters) after which I promised Meg an opera for which she could allow the music to sweep over her even if she did not follow the plot. I chose 'La Traviata' principally because of the quality of the singers (Renée Fleming, Rolando Villazon) but the theme was not the most suitable given current circumstances (basically, the heroine is dying probably of consumption from practically the first scene of the opera and spends the rest of the opera tragically fading away, albeit with beautiful singing).
The media attention this afternoon is focused on the release of some of the hostages from both sides in the Gaza conflict. The Israelis are keen to avoid anything that looks like Palestinian rejoicing and are therefore controlling the news media as tightly as they can but after an initial hitch, it now looks as though this release if proceeding as it should on both sides. But the destruction in Gaza is terrible to behold as the ceasefire agreement comes after more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed and 93% of homes in the Gaza Strip damaged. One cannot see the Israelis wanting to rebuild Gaza whereas the other Arab states (and Arab money) will not invest in rebuilding Gaza without a solution such as the 'Two States' solution firmly rejected by Israel so will Gaza ever be rebuilt, one wonders?
© Mike Hart [2025]