When it comes to this column, I usually write about my family, arguing, food, more arguing, more food, arguing within my family, and arguing about food.
It’s not that I’m not interested in the big wide world out there — quite the contrary, in fact, as I am usually a news junkie. I dip in and out of BBC News 24 on TV all day long (yes, of course while I should be working) as well as compulsively checking the news on my phone like an addict hunched over her stash, plus I buy an actual newspaper a few times a week.
But I’m primarily a novelist with a sideline in journalism, not a proper reporter, and I’ve always been wary of broaching topical subjects in case I mess up and embarrass myself.
Even when I had a weekly Covid column (The C-Word) during the pandemic in this very paper, I tended to skirt flippantly around the edges, wondering if a home-built sukkah could be used as a socially distanced work-space or if “a completely normal shooting party” (thanks, Prince Andrew) might offer an opportunity for families to gather outdoors.
Then came the Hamas massacres. My husband rang his various cousins in Israel to check that they were OK. As Israel started massing tanks and troops on the Gaza border, my anxiety levels soared.
Non-Jewish friends were sympathetic, but seemed not to understand the impact it might have here in the UK and for diaspora Jews all around the world.
By contrast, when I bumped into a Jewish friend at the supermarket, we clung to each other in the bread aisle, desperate for comfort. Another Jewish friend texted that she was currently too scared to go into the centre of London and, like me, wakes up in the middle of the night with her heart pounding.
And, although my default setting is anxious, it soon turns out that I’m right to be so. As has been widely reported, antisemitic attacks in the UK and across the globe have increased sharply: the Met police registered a 1,350 per cent increase in incidents of antisemitism since October 7.
The news gets worse. More death and destruction, more civilian casualties, more antisemitism. I attempt to adopt the ostrich position by focusing on news stories that are less terrifying. Ukraine — no. Trump court case — definitely no.
Finally, one headline catches my eye: “Britain’s loneliest sheep in hiding after rehoming row”. A ewe that had been stranded at the foot of a cliff for two years was finally rescued but then immediately became the subject of an almighty row about where it should live.
I’m intrigued by a line referring to the sheep as “now called Fiona” —as if the sheep has entered a witness protection programme (possible as the story reports it is now in hiding) and has had to undergo a change of identity.
But, though mildly diverting, the story of the sheep currently identifying as Fiona is not enough to hold my attention while I lie awake at night, trying not to think about the hostages, civilians caught up in the carnage, young Israeli soldiers, many the same age as my own son, now at university.
Eventually, I find a strange sort of temporary respite by delving into the livestream of the Covid inquiry. While some parts are inevitably on the dry side, especially as I am neither a lawyer nor a scientist, much of it is absolutely gripping. Not just testimony from Dominic Cummings, but from most of the witnesses.
Some you can see are struggling with the obligation to tell the truth to the best of their ability combined with their reluctance to drop cabinet ministers in the soup. Whatever you had suspected about the incompetence of the government in handling the pandemic, the inquiry reveals it all to be much, much worse than you could possibly have imagined.
And then, while I’m firing up my laptop for another day of work-avoidance and Gaza-avoidance, waiting for the next instalment of the Covid inquiry, my husband calls from work.
At first it sounds as if he is weeping but that can’t be right — it’s 9am on a Wednesday morning — he must be laughing or pretend-crying as some sort of joke. But it isn’t a joke.
He’s calling to tell me that the son of one of his Israeli cousins has just been killed, the cousins I’d recently met while on holiday in Scotland last month. Their flight back to Israel got cancelled, so they came to stay for a few days while they were trying to sort out another.
Their son, who had just turned 22, was in the army, and was shot by a sniper in Gaza. Barely older than our own beloved boy.
That’s the trouble with burying your head in the sand. You can kid yourself that everything really isn’t too bad because here, down in the sand, yes, it’s dark but surely it’s safe at least? In the meantime, the bullets continue to fly, the bombs continue to fall.
