In case you haven't read the latest staff blog post, I can tell you I've just read it and have checked out the upgrade and it is simply fantastic!!!

If you want to know what I'm talking about, click on the new "My media locker" link underneath your headshot on your own site, and you will see what they've done for us.

I am so excited, I wish there was a smiley here to show me doing a twirl.

A friend of ours has suddenly died.

It hasn't sunk in, and writing about it is probably my way of trying to get it into my head that he's gone. What is hard to get into my head is that he's never going to ring us again and leave his crazy jokey messages. The most weird thought I keep having is: we can't just ring him and ask what happened. From past experience of people dying, this is the thing that keeps coming up now and again, over the years - my sister died in 1996 and there are still moments when I have to stop myself thinking: I could tell her about that...

And being Jewish, I feel weird not being able to just go visit the family. Back home it would be quite obvious what you do, the customs and traditions kick in automatically and everyone knows where they are. If you're part of the immediate family, you stay in for a week, normal life completely stops, and people come to visit you. If you know the family, you go and visit. If you're a neighbour, then there's no way you could not know about it, as there would be a huge black notice outside the house, so anyone passing by knows that this home is going through bereavement. It's like having a notice outside saying: handle with care, or: please don't expect us to behave normally just now.

Here they do things very differently. The funeral doesn't take place the next day, it's arranged and planned and it takes place at a time that is chosen by the bereaved. The family have a huge amount of choice as to how, when, where - which could be a blessing but from my experience of bereavement, I think it could also be an extra burden at a time when all you want to do is just stop and let other people take over.

I remember years ago when someone I worked with lost his wife, whom he had loved dearly. He was back at work the next day! I was stunned. But apparently his English upbringing had conditioned him to ignore what had happened and keep soldiering on, to get back to normal as soon as possible, and even at the funeral it was really important to him to keep his feelings under control, to "keep strong", which to me seemed extremely unhealthy. And to my mind it looks like an insult to the person who died - my Israeli mind says: if you love someone then you will care enough to shed some tears when they die. But I think the thing is that the English do shed tears, they just do it in private and not in front of a whole load of strangers.

The closest I came in England to experiencing our own customs was, to my surprise, when my Ghanaian friend lost her husband and I found that the Ghanaians have similar mourning customs to ours, that the family does sit at home with people visiting - only in their case it's not specifically a week, it's from the death until the funeral, and in that particular case that meant several weeks because there was the need to allow for time for relatives from Ghana to get visas to come here for the funeral. I found it so much easier to relate to that, it seemed natural to me that my friend would be at home and people would be coming to visit. Whereas when a neighbour of ours died recently I felt thrown, confused - my instinct was to go and visit his wife, but I wasn't sure how she would see that, whether she would regard it as prying, sticking my nose into what to her is a private matter. After nearly two decades in this country I still don't feel I really know where I am with these things, though having an English husband does help in some ways and in that case I discussed it with him and we went round together one afternoon to visit our neighbour.

Living in England, for me as an Israeli, sometimes feels like treading in a minefield. If I act according to Israeli norms - as I did when I first came here - I'd come across as extremely rude. But there isn't a written rulebook, no user manual handed out at the airport when you arrive, so I'm still trying to work it all out, and no doubt still offending people now and again by what seems to me very normal behaviour!

Apparently they're working on things, so if strange things are happening to you I think the general message for now is hang on in there. But there's a thread at User Support dedicated to the current glitches here, which will be updated as things progress.

I've just had something funny happen to me here when I tried editing one of my posts and it just didn't let me.

But my experience of Multiply so far leads me to great optimism - they're great at listening to our moans (sorry, suggestions) and in one year here I've already seen some really good changes.

Wow - this was quick - the editing glitch has gone! Hooray!

Got into a debate elsewhere on the web (yes, I do leave the safe walls of my multi-home now and again...) and the subject of prejudice against "the obese" came up - and what prejudice there is out there! It seems that in a society that won't allow anything that might seem like you're possibly a teensy bit discriminating against people who sleep with those of their own gender (for example), anyone whose bmi is above a certain line is still considered fair game. And why? Because, as a guy called Andy on that thread pleasantly explained to me, the arithmetic is simple - eat less calories and you lose weight; eat more calories and you gain weight. Simple. So there's no reason why people should be overweight, and therefore - following Andy's logic - if I'm overweight it's my choice.

I'll just pause here to clarify some terminology. If you don't know what a BMI is when it's at home - lucky you... You probably don't have a weight problem. Those of us who have struggled with weight issues are more likely to have come across this term: Body Mass Index. I don't remember off the top of my head how it's calculated, but it represents a certain ratio between your weight and your height, and is supposed to measure you against the supposedly healthy standard. If you're on one area of the graph you're considered to weigh a healthy weight; a certain level above that you're considered overweight; go over that level and you're officially obese. Which is where I've been for a while now. And oh, how I hate this word! It just sounds horrible, doesn't it? And when people talk about "the obese" it just sounds yuk, you can feel the disapproval coming at you through that word. Somehow saying I'm fat doesn't feel so bad, don't know why.

But back to that brilliant piece of logic I was presented with, that showed that obviously being way overweight is my choice...

I have made many stupid choices in my life. The thing is that when you're presented with temptation, the price tag is usually hidden. When I chose to start smoking (aged 14ish, eager to become "grown-up") yes, I knew it wasn't healthy, but I had no idea how strong the addiction would be. I had no idea how difficult it would be to stop. About twenty years later I finally managed to kick that habit, but it certainly wasn't simple. Would I have made the same choice at 14 had I known what it was going to be like? Who knows. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about smoking, it was just an example of a bad choice I made.

Was there a particular moment along the way, a decisive point at which I made a choice that would affect my weight? You know, I don't think there was one. There was a gradual sliding that started when I was about 23 and the person I started going out with at the time decided that I needed feeding up. At the time I was thin - not horribly thin, not like current-day models, just nicely slim. I weighed 50 kilos (about 8 stone) which for my height (or should I say my shortness) is a good weight. I had always been slim, and had always been able to eat whatever I liked without putting any weight on. And I had always had a sweet tooth. I remember when I started working (my first job when I was 15) I had this Friday afternoon ritual, coming home from work (in Israel we finished early on a Friday) via the Elite chocolate shop. They sold chocolate by the weight, and I would get 250 grammes of this kind, 250 of that kind, etc (don't remember them all, but my favourite was definitely the chocolate-coated orange peel) and then I'd head home with the chocolates and the similarly heavy Saturday newspaper (yes, in Israel the Saturday paper comes out on Friday, we just don't have a newspaper on the Sabbath) and after lunch I'd lie on my bed, reading the paper and munching through chocolate.

And I didn't gain one kilo as a result.

And no, I was not using up tons of energy through exercise. I wasn't even doing housework! I was sitting on a bus all the way to work, sitting at my desk at work, then sitting on the bus all the way home. A completely sedentary lifestyle, with absolutely zero physical exercise. Eating whatever I felt like, and staying thin.

Until age 23, when suddenly the magic spell was broken and the food I ate started actually making a difference to my size. I was extremely surprised to suddenly find that I had gained 5 kilos. I was totally new to the world of weight-gain, diets were a foreign subject to me, and in the years to come I was to learn a lot about this subject! I was to learn how absolutely climbing-up-the-wall depressed and/or ratty some diets can make you. I was to learn how infuriatingly-easily the weight creeps back up once you stop whatever diet you put so much effort into. I was to learn how hard it becomes to find nice clothes that actually fit you and flatter your figure once you've crossed a certain line. I was to learn how much harder physical exercise becomes once there's more of you to shift when you move. I was to learn how your body resents the extra weight you're putting on it and expresses its resentment through all sorts of creaks of the joints, all sorts of aches and pains that sometimes make you feel like you're your mum's age.

And I was to learn how infuriatingly smug some people can be who have never experienced any of this.

This is just a bit of my own story. Obviously there are people whose situation is even more difficult than mine. Obviously there are those who have medical conditions that affect their weight, or who take medication that affects it. (I was put on steroids once and blew up like a balloon!) There are those like my next-door neighbour who is in a wheelchair and simply can't do any exercise. But I reckon there are plenty of people out there with stories similar to mine, people who suddenly found at some stage that their metabolism changed and the eating habits they'd grown up with were not serving them well now, but suddenly changing your eating habits as an adult is not that easy - partly because generally changing habits isn't easy, partly because there are so many different theories coming at you from different directions that it can be very confusing.

I have tried counting calories, and yes, I did lose weight through that, but could I carry on doing that for life - weighing everything you eat, keeping a daily record of exactly how many calories you have consumed? No, I'm afraid that was only doable for a short time, for a few months of pushing myself really hard. And many other diets are just not healthy as a long-term plan.

My brother recently introduced me to the concept of the low-carb diet, which I do find much easier than others I've tried in the past. I like meat, so eating lots of meat is no hardship for me... The great difficulty is resisting my sweet tooth, and I have ups and downs on that front, which translate pretty directly into ups and downs weight-wise - so yes, it does work: focusing on eating lots of protein + fat, filling up on that so that you won't need the carbs - to my surprise I found it does work. But there is still that bit in a corner of my mind that equates sweets with a treat, which is a problem.

So here I am, I weigh 76.5 kilos, which makes my bmi 32.5, and apparently if it's over 30 you're officially obese. I never chose to become overweight. It happened, and fighting it once it's happened is actually very very difficult. If it was really as simple as people like Andy reckon, we wouldn't have such a huge diet industry. And seriously, Andy, putting aside the fact that I would love to once again just stroll into any shop and buy nice clothes, do you really think I enjoy the discomfort of having to lug so much weight around? Don't you think if it was so simple to lose weight, I'd have done it by now?

Okay, here's something that I've been wrestling with and as it's come up recently in a debate elsewhere, maybe it's time I attempted to put my confused thoughts together. Be warned though - I have many more questions than answers! In fact, I'd love to hear any thoughts or insights that you have on this issue.

I'm leaving aside for the moment the question of which day of the week it should be - I know some people will want to stone me for saying this, but I really don't think it's that crucial, I think there's a principle in the Bible of having a day of rest, of not rushing around like headless chickens all the time but trusting God that he will provide all we need even if we dare to stop for a day. I think God gave us this gift out of his love and care for us, knowing the human tendency to work too hard and to keep pushing ourselves until we get a heart attack.

So far, so good. We have a principle of stopping work for a day, and resting. Sounds good. But what does that actually mean in practical terms? What does work mean? And what does rest mean? My questions come from realising that these terms can mean very different things to different people, or even to the same person at different stages of their lives.

When I was doing an ordinary 9-5 office job, it was very clear to me what work was. Work was what I did in the office, obviously... Some of you may have already noticed what's missing here - what about stuff like housework, I hear you saying. But then in those days I didn't do much of that (not that I do now, come to think of it) so this wasn't an issue for me. Having said that, I do remember visiting a Christian friend who was also working 9-5 but had a young daughter to look after and very different standards to me as far as housework was concerned, and I was surprised to see her doing the ironing on Sunday afternoon after church. My understanding of the Sabbath principle is that you would somehow squeeze the ironing etc into the rest of the week, say in the evening after work, so that you could have a day that is completely restful. But I didn't ask my friend why she did it, and it just may be that she is one of those people who find ironing relaxing - who knows?

It could be very easy in a way to go with the list the rabbis put together of what you shouldn't do on the Sabbath - it would mean not having to think about it. But it would enslave me under a set of rules that I don't believe God intended. You see, he made me and he knows what I'm like, and he doesn't expect me to be like everybody else. He's made each of us different! And he knows that what is work for me is restful for you, and vice versa.

I remember when living with my friends up in Wales - I helped them run a retreat house and we had a "community day off" on Thursdays (Sunday was not an option for them as a day off as they were both church ministers). I was stunned to see one of them doing some gardening on a Thursday afternoon, but then discovered that for her, pottering in the garden was relaxing, it was a way to unwind and rest.

The rabbis would frown on gardening on the Sabbath. But then I expect they would also frown on, say, embroidery or knitting, which for me are fantastic ways into stillness. Or what about drawing or painting? At least they do allow going for a walk, but they tell you how far it's ok to walk - again laying down the same standard for all of us, no matter how fit we are! And they won't let you go for a nice drive, take the family somewhere nice for a stroll in the countryside, have a nice picnic, enjoy the beauty of creation.

I have seen how silly it can get, following the rabbis' rules and regulations. For instance, my mum keeps the rule about not writing on the Sabbath. So one Saturday afternoon - this was a few years ago when I was living with her - I was having a rest and she was going out for a walk with a friend. She needed to leave me a message, but couldn't write me a note. So what did she do? (My mum has always been very imaginative!) She got her Scrabble set out, chose the right letters from the bag and left me a message on the dining table made out of Scrabble letters, saying: Gone for a walk with Erika. Now, I take my hat off to my mum for the ingenuity, but I have to ask: which would have been the greater effort? To make this message out of Scrabble letters, or to write a quick note?

But having said that, if I try to define work in terms of effort, I run into problems too, because there are some things that we do for fun and relaxation that involve effort, like playing sports for instance. (You'll notice I said "we do" not "I do"...)

You see why I said I had many questions and not so many answers?

The question of "what is work" has been a big question for me in recent years as I am not in a job and when people ask me "do you work?" or "what do you do?" I don't have a straightforward answer. No, I don't go out to work, I try to explain, and all sorts of well-intentioned people say, ah, so you're a housewife (or homemaker). Well, no, I'm not really. I'm at home and I do the household shopping and I cook a meal for us every night, I do some washing up once a day and once in a while I throw some clothes into the washing machine, but that's as far as my housekeeping goes. My husband does a fair bit - he's actually much more fussy than I am about cleanliness, so if he waited for me to notice it needed doing he'd wait a long time...

So, what is work for me right now? Well, cooking and washing up and supermarket shopping - definitely. Which is why I make a point of doing the shopping before the weekend so that I can have time off from that; and I've negotiated with my husband a couple of nights off from cooking over the weekend - either he cooks or we get a takeaway. Then there's coursework - it's quite obvious to me that that is work. And the course involves residential weekends, so obviously when I have one of those, I have to take a day off in the week instead.

Oops, I said "obviously" but that's just obvious to me, not to everyone. Many people on the course work full time and so they come on Friday straight from work and on Monday they're back at work. I don't know how they do it! And here's a question: is it right?

But another non-obvious bit about this is that for some people on the course, those weekends feel like a break, like being away on holiday. I've spoken to some women on the course who so enjoy being cooked for and not having to do the washing up! For me these weekends are something to be endured and survived - as a night owl having to be up before 7am, and as an introvert having to be with people all day, I get through these weekends with the help of coffee and chocolate and then I come home and crash. But for extroverts, who thrive on being in company, I can see that it could be positive and recharging.

This issue comes up for me again and again when I go away on Messianic conferences. I love these get-togethers and wouldn't miss them for (pretty much) anything, but... I struggle with the Sabbath issue. We do the candles and wine on Friday evening, welcoming Shabbat. We do the Havdalah on Saturday evening, saying goodbye to Shabbat. But for me as an introvert and a night owl, this is not a Sabbath, it's a day in which I'm pushing myself to be up early, having to interact with people over breakfast, and there's no way I can see this as keeping the Sabbath. I come home from such a conference and have a day off on the Monday to rest and recharge.

And here's another question: surely there are some things that are work for you but you still simply have to do them on the Sabbath? If you're a farmer, no doubt you still have to feed the animals and milk the cows. And if you're the mother of a young baby, you won't leave the baby in dirty nappies for a day, will you? I suppose some things can be resolved by getting someone else to do them, but a breastfeeding mum wouldn't really be able to delegate... So how does she go about having a Sabbath rest? or doesn't she?

Just a few questions... Would love to hear what you think. Do you have a regular day of rest? What does rest mean for you? How do you interpret the Sabbath principle in your own life?

So, I got back from the course weekend full of enthusiasm about the next assignment. Really looking forward to it as it involves a Bible study. (We're sort of pretending to be counselling Jacob.) I've piled up a whole load of books, printed out the relevant Bible text in two different translations, all set and raring to go...

But by Monday evening my throat was on fire, and now I'm coughing and sneezing all over the place, my brain has turned into boiled cabbage, and I can just about spell my name right but that assignment is just going to have to wait till I can think straight.

And in the meantime I'm getting daily reports from home about my mum's progress - she managed to have a fall last week and this time actually broke something for a change, but when I spoke to her on the phone she was still cracking jokes as normal, telling me how in her old age she's turned into a liar - having to lie down a lot and rest. Thank God for her sense of humour, and thank God that it's her left arm and not the right, and thank God for my wonderful niece who is going back and forth every day to help her wash and dress and get her to eat something.

End of news bulletin for now :-)

Well well well. Don't ask how... but I just discovered that today is exactly a year since I signed up here. Amazing now to think that I used to live without Multiply.

When I first joined I didn't have a clue how I was going to use it. Someone invited me and I thought, okay, let's see what this is about. At first I stared and thought, what is this for? Then I began to realise - this is a writer's dream! A blank page on which I can write anything I like and it's me who chooses what to publish! Wonderful!

So here we are, one year on, and any time I feel a bit of rambling coming on, I come here and ramble... Plus I've been making connections with people in a way that for an introvert is absolutely ideal - in my own time, not having to leave the house for it, plenty of time to think in between posts. Yes, this has been really good for me. Thank you Gerry for introducing me to this place! I love it. I feel I was born for blogging!

Just got back yesterday from the bmja conference and it was fantastic! So good to catch up with friends and make new ones, not to mention all those lively debates in which we confirmed the old saying that two Jews means at least three opinions - great fun!

And the teaching - wonderful stuff, new insights about the Psalms (well, at least new to me).

But as a writer, the highlight for me was when we were given the exercise to write our own praise psalm. Richard Harvey (who I have discovered is an excellent teacher) explained to us about the structure of praise psalms - about starting with a call to praise God, then giving reasons for praising him - and I found this spiritually so useful, as when we started out I wasn't feeling very "up" but actually the act of writing down reasons to praise God was very uplifting.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the fruit of this exercise, the praise psalm that I wrote. Here goes:

Let us praise God
even if we're not feeling like it
even if our soul is downcast
or if we're just tired or not feeling very with-it

Let us praise God
because he is worthy of our praise
God is faithful
He does provide all that we need
God listens to us
He is there for us in the hard times
He loves us as a father
His love never stops, he never takes time off

I thank the Lord because he knows me
and he still loves me
with all my weaknesses
with all my failings
Even when I let him down
he is still there, waiting for me to turn back to him.
God's love is always there
Halleluiah - praise him for his faithfulness
praise him for his mercy and his patience
praise him and let his praise lift up your soul!

In the beginning God covered the earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, with green, yellow and red vegetables of all kinds so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

So what are you doing up at 6am, Meirav? Well, counting sheep has never worked for me, nor have any of the other zillion suggestions I've had from well-meaning friends who just swear by lavendar/hot milky drinks/blah blah. Reading a novel is my normal way of getting to sleep, but now and again it just doesn't work and at 5.30 this morning I just decided if you can't beat them join them - get up and pretend it's morning, have a coffee and see what happens. Will probably find myself crashing on the sofa at some point and getting nothing near the requisite number of winks, but there you go, that's life. The biblical phrase that springs to mind is: this too shall pass... (Well, that's what experience tells me - I get these nights, it tends to get worse before it gets better but eventually it does get better.)

So what to do now that I'm up and re-caffeinated? It feels weird, like I'm in some in-between zone, very definitely not asleep, but not properly awake either, kind of here but not fully here. Have enough mental alertness for blogging/chatting with people online - that sort of thing - but not feeling anywhere near intelligent enough to try editing my assignment.

Yes, assignment in draft stage even though it's not the last minute yet - wonders never cease! Got a few days to finalise it - need to get it finished before next weekend's conference, as once I get back from that I'll be exhausted, so that week will be dedicated to recovery in preparation for the following weekend, which is when I have to hand in my assignment. (Confused? well, what do you expect from me at 6 in the morning?... Anyone who knows me will be aware that I have never ever been accused of being a morning person!)

So, what to do now in this in-between state? Maybe I could catch up with my ironing... then again, maybe not...
 

So there's a company that's offering a free personal report to tell you what you should change about your nutrition. I thought I'd give it a go - what did I have to lose?

The way it works is that you fill in a questionnaire online, which they analyse and then they send you a link to your "personal" report which you can view online. I wasn't too surprised to see that their report ends up with recommendations for the purchase of health supplements from them - after all, why would they be offering a free report if they didn't hope to make a profit somehow? That's fair enough in my book.

But really disappointed me was the way the questionnaire was phrased. They ask you about certain types of food, and the question is: how often do you eat this? e.g. how often do you eat red meat/wholemeal bread/fruit/etc. And then on the basis of that rather limited information they produce what is supposed to be a personal report for you - how on earth do they reckon they can produce a personal report about my nutrition when they have no idea how much I eat of anything - all they know is how often I eat this stuff! Say you have two people filling in this questionnaire - John eats 100 grammes of red meat 5 times a week, whilst Jane eats 250 grammes of red meat twice a week. The answer to the question "how often do you eat red meat?" is going to be 5 times a week for John and twice a week for Jane, but they both eat the same amount per week.

Either I'm missing something, or this is one big con!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's something amusing I found on my multi-travels:

Grandma's letter, she is eighty-eight years old and still drives her own car.

She writes:

Dear Grand-son,

The other day I went up to our local Christian book store and saw a Honk if you love Jesus bumper sticker. I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting.

So,I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper. Boy, am I glad I did. What an uplifting experience that followed.

I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good he is, and I didn't notice that the light had changed.It is a good thing that someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn't honked, I'd never have noticed.

I found that lots of people love Jesus!

While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, For the love of God! Go! Go! Go! Jesus Christ, GO!

What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus!

Everyone started honking! I just leaned out my window and started waving and smiling at all of those loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love!

There must have been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something about a sunny beach.

I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. I asked my young teenage granddaughter in the back seat what that meant. She said it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something.

Well, I have never met anyone from Hawaii, so I leaned out of the window and gave him the good luck sign right back. My granddaughter burst
out laughing. Why even she was enjoying this religious experience!!

A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed.

So, I waved at all my brothers and sisters grinning, and drove on through the intersection. I noticed that I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared. So I slowed the car down, leaned out the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!! Will write again soon,

Love,
Grandma

Ages ago I wrote about what the English mean by teatime, and I promised another blog about coffee and cafés. The latest Multiply staff blog reminded me.

Not that I'm a coffee connoisseur by any means. I have always been an instant drinker (and by that I don't mean that I down my coffee quickly - I mean I drink that stuff that serious coffee drinkers wouldn't touch even if they were desperate) and in my youth I favoured what my friends referred to as "babies' coffee" - weak instant with lots of sugar and lots of milk. My biggest treat was if it was made with hot milk instead of hot water - I guess in today's terminology that kind of makes it a latte, only a not very high-quality latte...

But I digress. I was going to talk about what happens in England. Part of my culture shock on arriving here was on the coffee front, because back then - nearly two decades ago - they just didn't seem to have anything remotely approaching a decent cup of coffee. Not, as I've pointed out, that my standards were very high, which says a great deal about the low level to which the coffee here had sunk. And as an Israeli I still find it funny now the way the Brits tend to assume that you will drink tea - the more old-fashioned the person, the more likely they are to make this assumption. They won't ask you what you'd like to drink, they'll just talk about "putting the kettle on" and making "a nice cuppa", and they simply won't think of checking with you whether you actually want any tea.

In Israel we tend to make a similar assumption about coffee - in many an Israeli home when you walk in the door you are greeted not with "what would you like to drink?" (not that we have a way of saying that in Hebrew - we'd say "what do you want to drink?", which to the English ear may sound just a tad gruff...) but the question will be "coffee?" But at least, in our defence, I can say that we do actually ask. And if someone were to say, "actually I'd rather have tea" then we would find a teabag somewhere in a dusty corner of our kitchen. Even my Brazilian friend in Kfar Saba, who pretty much has coffee running through her veins instead of blood, is perfectly capable of rustling up a cup of tea for me. But here there seems to be some hard and fast rules that people don't even think about - it seems from my observation of the Brits that if you arrive any time in the afternoon, the drink you'd be offered is tea. Coffee is for mid-mornings, or elevenses; or as an after-dinner drink. It just isn't something you drink in the afternoons.

Unless, that is, you go to a coffee shop. That's where in the last decade or so the Brits have been practising American-style behaviour, ordering tall skinny lattes and short decaff mochas as though they've always done it. I well remember the beginning of the American-style coffee shop era - I was living and working in London at the time, and right next door to our office there was a bookshop which started running a coffee shop in a corner, and the coffee was so delicious it quickly became our regular morning treat, grabbing a latte in a disposable cup on our way in to work. It was so popular in our firm that one of the partners managed to arrange a staff discount for us. Not surprising when all we had in the office in terms of coffee was a kettle and a jar of instant. I get the impression that Americans would have gone on strike over such bad working conditions... (But from what I remember from my Israeli working days, all we tended to have in the office was a kettle and a jar of instant - except in some places where due to popular demand there was also a packet of Turkish Coffee, which was used to make what we call "mud coffee". We call it that because there's this huge amount of mud-coloured sediment at the bottom of the mug.)

The Brits may correct me, but I have the feeling the word "coffee shop" arrived with that trend from across the ocean. I think until then there were only cafés, where you could get a not-particularly-brilliant coffee if you asked for it, but also tea of course, and light eats.

And then there is the different kind of café, which is pronounced "caff" - sometimes referred to  fondly as a "greasy caff" or a "greasy spoon" (short for "greasy-spoon café) - which is really a basic down-to-earth restaurant where the plebs can go for a meal and feel at home, and the not-so-plebs go to enjoy the sort of food that the posh restaurants wouldn't dream of serving, even in an ironic post-modern style. This is where you can get the great British all-day-breakfast, which consists of bacon and eggs plus all sorts of possible additions: grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, sausages, baked beans, fried bread, and one of my favourite things: bubble and squeak, which I've been told was traditionally made of leftovers from Sunday lunch, and like so many dishes that developed as an attempt by poor people to make the food go just a bit further, is so much nicer than some of the super-duper gourmet food! In my single days in London, before I learned to cook and before I made the decision to stop eating pig, I used to sometimes go to one of those greasy caffs on a Sunday after church for a belated breakfast (never had time to eat before church, me being not very much of a morning person). These meals are obviously not what the health food brigade would recommend - some have referred to them as "cholesterol on a plate" - but they are certainly very filling! (and if you're on Atkins or any low-carb diet, then you can go for it with no qualms at all!)

So if you come to England and you see what looks like a no-frills restaurant offering "all day breakfast", "cooked breakfast", or "English breakfast", this is what they mean. You won't get any croissants there, that's for sure! (And don't expect a decent cup of coffee in there either. They'll do you a mug of what's fondly called "builders' tea" - so strong you can stand your spade in it. If you want a decent coffee, look for a smart place with a name that seems American. I shudder to think what reaction you'd get if you walked into a greasy caff and asked for a tall skinny latte... I expect the response would be along the lines of "you wot?")

Once again I read in today's paper about a crime involving a "member of the public", and no matter how many times I've come across this expression I still can't get my head round it.

Am I missing something? It just seems like such a pointless, meaningless piece of euphemistic journalese. What does it actually mean when they say that someone is a "member of the public"? As far as I can see, all it means is that this is a person, one of us plebs, an ordinary human being. The public is us, not an exclusive club or political party or even book club or library, where you have to take out membership. I've been a member of the public for 46 years now, how long have you been a member? Can I cut up my membership card and stop being a member of the public? Are there any benefits to being a member?

I can see the point of euphemisms for expressions that may be considered obscene or offensive, but what's so bad about saying the guy who was stabbed on Oxford Street was, well, a guy who was stabbed on the street? an ordinary bloke? If what they're trying to say is that they think he wasn't a criminal, then they could say just that: the man stabbed on Oxford Street is believed not to have been a criminal. How about that? And anyway, I don't see that criminals aren't members of the public - they're just not very law-abiding ones, that's all. And there's another expression they could use if the intention is to say he wasn't a criminal: a law-abiding citizen.

Hey, I think I've got it. In other countries they could say he was an ordinary citizen, but the Brits aren't citizens, they're subjects, and nobody would understand the expression "ordinary subjects". I wonder - am I right? Is "member of the public" just a British expression?