14 Days Quarantine - בידוד

Waking up on Friday morning, our first day in quarantine, we very much appreciated that there are worse places to be in quarantine than on the 18th floor of Sea Opera, looking out at the sea. We started as we meant to go on with breakfast on the balcony. We used old fashioned air conditioning i.e. we just opened the windows, and had a lovely through breeze - not something that works in August or when you have young children.

The first thing we did was unpack everything. Malcolm put a quarantine sign on the door and I wrote my blog.

We had been a little anxious about two weeks indoors, even with the balcony, but in fact it was a very positive experience.

We were well prepared.

I had brought out a 5000 piece jigsaw which I had started in England. And yes I did carefully put the made sections in marked envelopes and transport them in my suitcase, to then reconstruct it over our first Shabbat.

Although Malcolm had to work consistently during the fortnight he found time to indulge in new and old hobbies.

We read a lot of books - Hilary Mantels 'Mirrors and Lights' being perfect for lockdown. I had my weekly art group via Zoom and did some painting and Malcolm even managed a card night with friends from all over the world, something they have been doing since university, albeit usually in person rather than by Zoom.

On the first Sunday I was proud and excited that my first online shopping had arrived, left neatly outside our door. My only error had been to order ten corn on the cobs, which were going to take some getting through.

As we couldn't get out for a walk we started each day with a Joe Wicks exercise video before making and eating breakfast together - something we have never done before but fully intend to continue with - the breakfast and the exercise video!

Extraordinarily, we managed to exchange on the sale of this flat and the purchase of a house in Ramat Poleg, South of Netanya, not only whilst in בידוד, but also on the same day, which is unusual in Israel. This was in part due to the hard work and enthusiasm of both our solicitor Michael Sacofsky, who was at university with us ( brother of Mark and Charlie), and our estate agent, Maxine Marks. Michael came and sat outside our front door whilst we signed the documents then went to our purchaser and then to our vendor. Being Israeli they sent photos of themselves after signing and asked us to send a photo!

We had drinks with friends over Zoom on a few evenings and time passed really quickly. Both the airfix model and jigsaw were nearly finished and we were almost sad at the thought of getting back to the real world - almost. It had however been just what we needed. Time to recharge our batteries and quality time together.

Friday morning, we took the quarantine sign off our door and headed for the beach for a walk, only to find that there was no beach! The tide was in and it wasn't possible to walk to the square that way. We walked along the tayelet, promenade, to the square, where we picked up a hire car, went back to the flat where I went for a swim whilst Malcolm dealt with some work, went shopping for Shabbat, went to look at the new house, and I got a haircut - and all before lunchtime!

Gila and Tzvi arrived for Shabbat. There were many much needed hugs after such a difficult period apart. As we prepared for Shabbat we looked forward to having 25 hours to recover from our first day of 'freedom'.