So as the honeymoon begins for Johnny and Tali today, the honeymoon for the weather here in Israel changes. Yesterday it was Mediterranean spring, today its Midwest Hurricane. Wet, dark and really really windy. But heh, we never expected summer here; not in Jan, and other than yesterday morning, we didn’t get it.

Thus we’re going to see Star Wars movie tonight, down the road in Ramat Hasharon. As ya do.

The wedding was fab. It took place on a kibbutz. Which are vast, sprawling places of industry and commerce that work as a collective. Its an old socialist ideal that worked pretty well in the 40s and 50s when everyone who hated fascism was a socialist or communist, and the state here subsidised the kibbutzim to keep them viable. By the 60s and the cold war most socialist ideals had evaporated into one kind of American dream or other so the kibbutzim either turned a real profit or dissolved.

The one last night has, among its other enterprises, entered the world of ‘party venue’. So you drive into the kibbutz (always on massive, thousands of acres, plots) and you go off-road down an unpaved driveway for about a mile into the fucking wilderness (like Moses in a rental Peugeot) and darkness and then, ka-boom, there’s a massive (you could have probably up to about 1000 people seated at tables in there, I reckon) purpose built hall. And it is magnificent and beautiful and opens on three sides to the lovely countryside and just wow!

There were only (its only ‘only’ if I’m not paying) about 250 people there and that was just comfortable and great. The only potential problem was that, in deference to the groom’s veganism, this was a strictly vegan wedding. Oh. Hmmm. How d’ya like yer lettuce leaves, fried or boiled? Two asparagus tips and a vat of sodding tofu. Great.

Yet, to my and every other carnivore’s great surprise and pleasure, the food was absolutely brilliant. So brilliant that I’ve decided not to eat meat until tonight. As a show of solidarity.

Today, going down in the lift we were talking to a ‘cable guy’. Israeli, unsurprisingly. ‘Oh, you’re going for a walk’, he said. ‘Do you have a gun?’ Do I fucking need one?? To walk??? He pulled up his t-shirt to show us the automatic holstered on his hip. Yeah, you may need one. The reality of life in this otherwise laid-back, chilled-out, cafe-societied foody heaven by the seaside.

Happy Friday

A xxxx