Before Yom Kippur, the religious Jewish have a tradition of requesting their friends and acquaintance's forgiveness for anything they may have said or done to hurt them during the year. This year, although I do not ordinarily participate in this tradition - I want to request Israel's forgiveness for what I have done to her. She knows what I'm talking about.

I convinced myself to go for a walk today, and took an ice-cream along with me. But not just any ice-cream. Special birthday ice-cream cones bought just for me, packaged in a misleadingly cardboard box, chocolate mousse and pecan bits on top...like you are ripped off for on the beach, only so much better. Boy was it good. It made me see the warmish late afternoon in a completely different light. I strolled by arguing preteens in a happy trance, enjoying the few gentle splashes of vitamin-D sunshine that remained of the day.
I smelled the familiar smell of onions frying as I walked down my street, gazed dreamily at some sunlit flowered branches and while crunching the best (and my favourite part) of the coffee chocolate filled bottom of the cone, I realised that I don't really hate Israel.

Sure, modern Israeli neighbourhoods do not look steeped in the tradition of ...anything much, really. But you have to get to know them to know the typical grandmotherly cooking smell, making schnitzel and rice for her grandson whom she is looking after while his parents are at work.
The familiar semi-permanent smell of fried savoury food, courtesy of a windowless corridor and some dude's applied rule of culinary aroma and buildings, sits and permeates me comfortably as I walk up the stairs to our first floor apartment. I swear it nearly knits. I know that no-one is cooking at the moment because there isn't that extra fresh and warm layer of scent on top of the base savoury one. There isn't a sound of pots and clanking cutlery coming from the little old romanian lady next door.

It's just the usual.