The Scribbler

For the whole of the day, I have been toying with what I wanted to write here. I still don't know. The last few days of this year have found me struggling with one of the many curveballs that life throws your way and I wonder whether I will have the strength to dodge it, or just go with the roll. This has been a seminal decade in my life. I fathered two daughters, found myself a new career and face the coming 120 months with a feeling, the like of which I have never had before. So what will the future bring? Where will any of us be on 31st December 2019? It's not that long away and if the last ten years are anything to go by, its going to be a long, hard slog. I'd like to be more cheerful and optimistic, but I'm afraid I can't muster the good cheer I'd like to exhibit. Here's to 2010 and 11 and 12....and G-d help us all, because we need His provenance to guide each and every one of us, along the dimly lit pathway that lies ahead. Oh yeah. And happy new year.

I was sent these and I think it would be bordering on the criminal if I didn't share them with you, particularly as I can't remember the last time I laughed this much when reading an email: I met this bloke with a didgeridoo and he was playing Dancing Queen on it. I thought, 'That's Aboriginal.' ----------------------- This lorry full of tortoises collided with a van full of terrapins. It was a turtle disaster. ------------------------ I told my girlfriend I had a job in a bowling alley. She said 'Tenpin?' I said, 'No, permanent.' ----------------------- I went into a pet shop. I said, 'Can I buy a goldfish?' The guy said, 'Do you want an aquarium?' I said, 'I don't care what star sign it is.' ---------------------------- I bought some Armageddon cheese today, and it said on the packet. 'Best before End' --------------------------- I went to buy a watch, and the man in the shop said 'Analogue.' I...

בס'ד Rabbi Lister, Grandparents, dearest cousins and friends, welcome to Hadassah’s/Dassi’s Bat Mitzvah celebration. Thank you for coming to join us, from the distant and not so distant homes that you inhabit. It is as wonderful to see Dassi’s great-aunt Yalu, who has flown in specially from Ramat Hasharon as it is to see her uncle Guy who is here from the other side of London, as well as both sets of her grandparents, who also join us from the rather nearer suburbs of Golders Green and Finchley. Your presence (and everyone else in-between) is what makes this day so very special for all of us. However, it is also very sad that Dassi’s maternal great grandmother Savta Shchora (who we think is approaching her 100th birthday) cannot be here to share in the celebrations, although she is in our thoughts at this joyous time. We are all here, each and every one of us to celebrate the bat-mitzvah of one very unique young lady – Hadassah. I am sure that Rabbi Lister will smile when I say th...

A long time ago, I wrote a blog about encapsulating those moments in time when words just can't do justice to the events that are unfolding. Today was filled with those moments. It was Hadassah's Batmitzvah and today was made up such moments. If you are reading this and you were there in Shul , you will know what I mean. From escorting Dassi up the aisle to the podium, with my daughter flanked on either side by her parents, to her amazing delivery of a self-written Dvar Torah, to the beautiful words uttered by the Rabbi, to the vision of our living room filled with more people than I've seen therein....the moments were so many that I wonder if I'll ever be able to match them. We are half-way through the Batmitzvah weekend and my mind is already awash with memories that I never want to lose. If you were there, please remember them for me and remind me in twenty five years time. If you weren't, try to imagine. Days like today remind me of the vitality of life, fa...

On this very day, some forty two years ago, an amazing thing happened to me. I was born. Notice. I didn't say "an amazing thing happened", because then, I would have made some arrogant, probably overbearing and frankly absurd statement. I added the "to me" suffix. An amazing thing happened to me. I was born, with all my senses intact, ten fingers and ten toes all formed as they should have been; a heart that still beats as it was designed to and a brain that probably worries far too much but thankfully does so in the first place. I was born on 1st December 1967. I haven't been a great fan of Sci- Fi . Not really my scene, but I do know that according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the meaning of life is 42 (apologies to anyone out there who hasn't found this out yet). I don't quite know what that represents, but since midnight this morning, I've been privileged to call myself that age. I say "privileged" because I know th...