New discoveries about family and life in England

Horse eating hay in a regular stable

Shirley is my mother’s older brother's daughter. She is a bit younger than me, and over fifty years ago, I met her once in England and a couple of times in Israel. I barely remember her, and when she comes to pick me up, I find her to be quite a beautiful woman with enormous green eyes and a smile that melts hearts. Her demeanor is light and cheerful, filled with warmth and love for everyone and for the whole of the universe.

I am quite frustrated about my troublesome vertebrae that have shifted sideways right when I volunteer to clean Shirley's horse's stall. But sharp pangs of pain are piercing through my body and I decide that despite the awkwardness, I will refrain from cleaning stalls now and in the near future. I apologize to my dear cousin and limp out into the stable yard while Shirley, dressed in a red dress and rubber boots, finishes cleaning the stall, kisses the horse three times on the nose, and signals to me—“Come on, let’s go.”

We arrive at a standard house with a standard private parking space in front of it. Shirley says it’s okay for me to park next to her camper van; yes, they also have one, and for the time being she will park her other car on the sidewalk near the house. Backing up, I manage to squeeze into the parking space, and she is very impressed with my navigation skills. With a grimace and a sigh, I get out of my van and hear a dog's bark coming from within the house. Then she opens the front door and invites me to come in.

2 camper vans and a Volvo

The tiny foyer is full of boots, shoes, socks, coats, hats, and mud mixed with straw and horse manure—some dry, some less so—along with leashes, collars, suitcases, and boxes. And covering all this is a thick layer of golden-white dog hair. In fact, dog fur is covering every surface in the house. It is now that I see a big golden retriever galloping toward me. I signal “No! No! No!” but before I can say “Don’t jump on me!” its front paws land on my chest, and half a meter of pink, saliva drooling tongue, slathers my face, and my aching back folds me in half and I fall to the floor.

Shirley says to the dog, “Blossom, no!” and chuckles, while the dog continues to lick my face. Lying there I am wondering how the heck will I get up from where I am lying. Finally, with Shirley’s help, covered with fur, straw, mud, and horse shit, I get up and slowly make my way to the kitchen.

The kitchen floor is made of wood, and as I place my hiking boot on it, I feel the sole of my shoe sticking to the wood. Shirley asks if I would like “a nice cup of tea,” and I say “Yes, of course,” settling into a high chair that also kind of sticks to me. I rest my elbow on the counter, and my elbow, too, sticks to the counter. That’s it. It seems I’ll stay like this, in this cool sitting position, for the rest of my life.

Tea is served, and we chat about everything that cousins chat about—her family, my family and everything in between. Then Shirley says, “Let me show you where you’ll sleep,” and a wave of nausea sweeps over me. I already know that this house hasn’t been cleaned since my brother visited here about two years ago. How do I know? Because at some point during the tea, I get hold of a pretty icky cloth and wipe the top of the counter, and Shirley says: “That's funny! When your brother was here the first thing he did was clean this house. You guys are so weird.”

In short, I won’t bore the accidental reader with descriptions of the bathrooms, toilets and bedrooms of the house. I’ll just say that after a single restless night in a bed that only God knows what lives inside it, I tell my cousin that, due to my aching back, I think the camper van bed is the best option for me. So I return to my camper van and live in it for the entire duration of my stay there.

After a few days’ rest in my dear camper van, my back improves, and I volunteer to take the dog for a walk. We go out into the open fields, the horse trails, the streams that can almost always be found in the more wooded areas. Walking outdoors feels good and, as always, the dog has already become my best friend. In England, when you leave the human habitat and step into the countryside, you can truly be alone for quite a long time, and in that peaceful quiet, you can hear the breeze, the water’s murmur, or the birds’ chirping—normal birds' chirping, not like the unbearable screams of Ring-necked parakeets or the common mynas that have invaded Israel, may their names be erased from the book of life.

A Golden retriever in the countryside

One evening, I return to the village after one such nature walk, and right next to my cousin’s house, I see three or four children in underwear splashing in muddy puddles. They look about five or six years old, and an older woman, standing nearby, smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone, seems to be the grown up in charge. The children are dark-skinned—and not due to their origins. They are coated head to toe in black mud. Any Jewish mother would have died of a heart attack had her children jumped into muddy puddles like these guys. But here, in the glorious British Isles, dirty children and houses don’t seem to bother anyone. Good for them!

Kids playing in mud puddles

For many years, I’ve wondered about my origins—after all, this entire trip’s purpose is to define my identity to some extent. I know I am not English, and the truth is that my roots, like most Western European Jews, are firmly planted in different regions of Eastern Europe. I was told that my paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were born in England (not sure if that is a fact), probably in Manchester, but my great-grandfathers' father came to Britain from Russia, and my paternal great grandmother, Leah, definitely, probably, maybe came from Ukraine.

Like my paternal great grandmother, my maternal grandfather, at the age of 12 or 13, with his parents and six or seven siblings embarked on a journey from Priluki in the Ukraine to Liverpool in the United Kingdom. I asked ChatGPT about this journey and here's what I got: Traveling from Priluki to Liverpool at the beginning of the 20th century would have been a long and complex journey, likely taken by people emigrating due to war, pogroms, poverty or persecution.

Here's how some might have made the trip:

1. Local travel to Kiev or Poltava by horse cart or train

2. Train westward possibly to Lviv or through Warsaw and then, by a different train, to Germany or Austria

3. Passports and permits would be needed, especially under the Russian Empire's strict internal travel controls.

4. Having reached Western Europe the immigrants would have made their way to a major port like: Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam or Antwerp

5. Steamship to England (usually to Liverpool), a journey that would take a few days.

6. Arrival in Liverpool and with the help of the local Jewish community, finding somewhere to stay.

My maternal grandmother, via more or less the same route, landed in Liverpool at the age of one. She and her family came from Raducaneni, Romania. So both my parents were born in England and that is why I hold a British passport. In my younger years—especially during times when I despaired of the people of Zion and its government policies — I often thought that moving to Britain could be an option.

Now I walk around this place and see all these schlumperdiks with their rotten, crooked teeth, and by the smell in closed spaces, do not shower more than once a month and I’m quite sure that despite holding a passport, I will never live in this country.

I also wonder if the "real" English people ever work. It seems, the only people who are not sitting in pubs all day are the Indians, Pakistanis, Jews, and, I have to admit, the Arabs— in other words, the Muslims, Hindus, and Jews—and they are probably the ones who tend to be a bit more diligent about their personal hygiene.

My cousin, eager to be more English than the English themselves—and her English, non-Jewish husband— drink every evening. Most days, they also have a glass of wine with lunch and a pint in the late afternoon. My cousin even has a book as thick as the Old Testament and twice as sacred, filled with every drink and cocktail imaginable. Every night, she “crafts” a new cocktail for herself and her gentle partner, and at the end of the evening, both of them, surrounded by clouds of light-colored dog hair, snore open mouthed in front of the TV.

I will stay in Toddington until August 3, then leave the van behind and take the train to London to look after an aging cat living on Mafeking Road. The first time the cat’s owner said the street’s name, I thought she was joking, but it turns out there really is a street called Mafeking Road in London.