17th October 2021

 As promised, the main points of the speech I made at the book launch of The Meleke Stone:

“As a writer I have to deal with many questions. The most common is How do you write a novel? My answer: write about what you know. That way it comes over as more realistic. As I started to write The Meleke Stone, therefore, my thoughts flew back to when we used to attend a synagogue in Toulouse. One day after the service, a male congregant came over and asked me why I wrote in the name of Olga Swan. Wanting to impress him I said that the name was an anagram of my late brother (A. Olswang): my way of remembering him. But there was a pause before the man asked me how long I’d lived in France. I was puzzled but told him. He then said Don’t you yet know that the name Olga here means a lady of ill repute, a streetwalker! I was shocked. Maybe I should have called myself EL James instead. I already have 50 shades of grey in my hair! Back home in Birmingham, there were more questions. How did I choose my current book cover? Local bookshops seem to stock a plethora of wartime novels, all featuring scenes of rubble plus a young, attractive girl wearing - for some strange reason - a red, expensive coat, looking far too clean for the surroundings and make-up that’s far too modern for the era depicted. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have liquid eyeliner in the war. So I didn’t want such an unrealistic image on my cover. Then I thought Well, my story’s about Israel so maybe I should use an image of Jerusalem, but the cover ended up looking like a glossy travel brochure. So, in the end, I thought ‘less is more’ so I chose an image of a wall of meleke stone representing Herod’s Temple, with two ancient keys with Roman heads. The subheading pointed the way to the storyline: Survival is the eternal key. I didn’t want to write an academic non-fiction book because I wanted to interest the ordinary reader - so it had to be a novel. My challenge was to counter antisemitism by writing an enthralling story but wrapped around the real, true historical facts about the Jewish people and the land of Israel. I’d like to now read a few pages from the start of the novel. A bomb has just exploded in a Toulouse synagogue and Moshe, a Holocaust survivor, is on his way there unaware of what’s going to happen….

Before this lady of ill-repute bows out, thank you everyone and (turning to my good friend Graham Stone) ‘Graham, perhaps you should call your future granddaughter Anna Meleke - then she will be A MELEKE STONE!

10th October 2021

 Yesterday I found myself in the hall where my teenage life began. My mind flew back to the youth club I attended in the early ‘60s at the age of 13. Along each side of the room was a line of chairs, boys one side, girls the other. On the stage was a record player where the Shirelles were singing Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Strange how a place can evoke such strong memories. I shook my head and tried to focus on the coming week as, glass of kiddush wine in hand, I chatted to the other people present. Would they like to come to my book launch of THE MELEKE STONE on Tuesday evening in that very hall, where I’ll be donating the proceeds to a community care home?  The message in my novel is so important. Only last week a German hotel, of all places, asked a man to remove his star of David necklace before checking in. Can you believe that? No other innocent, kindly people have had to suffer wave after wave of attacks over 4000 years. It simply has to stop for good. I’ll let you know next Sunday how the book launch goes. Let’s  hope they’ll all still love me tomorrow…

3rd October 2021

 Today is 11 years since my eldest brother Robert died. I wonder what he would have made of today’s crazy world. Not for him travelling the world. He refused to get a passport. Not for him a driving licence. He never learned to drive nor cook - he had no cooker in the house -  so today’s fuel crisis/food shortages/lorry driver paucity would have passed him by. Every day he took the bus into town and ate his main meal in Rackham’s cafeteria. No mobile phone/computer for him nor did he ever use the direct debit/credit facilities at his bank; just a cheque book. As a bill became due, he’d write a cheque. He kept no paper records at all. At his death, his house was scrupulously clean, devoid of anything other than furniture and a few clothes. His neighbours loved him. He was always very kind to everyone. I wonder what he would have made of the Labour Party conference last week. He certainly wouldn’t have approved of the deputy party leader’s very public use of the word “scum” regarding the government. Like me, he expected our leaders to be well-educated and polite.  RIP Robert. We could all learn a lot from him.

26th September 2021

 So now it’s a massive shortage of lorry drivers. Cars are snaking around the block near every petrol station. Soon, we’re told, there’ll be empty supermarket shelves. “I remember people pushing full trolley loads of loo rolls,” said one woman on the news, not realising that the people buying so many loo rolls back then were almost certainly small shopkeepers unable to secure supplies from their usual wholesaler! Listening to truck drivers on BBC local radio, it’s clear what’s causing much of the problem: very low pay, appalling conditions (no water/loos in their cabs), having to sleep in their lorry overnight, being forced to attend, at their own cost, useless mandatory training courses - in some cases after having been in the job for 40+ years, no younger drivers being recruited etc. Driver conditions in the EU are apparently far superior. In a panic, Boris has introduced 5000 temporary lorry driver visas for EU applicants. My urgent suggestion to all UK truck companies: improve pay, truck facilities and conditions immediately, at least to EU standards, so that recruitment becomes attractive enough to interest younger UK drivers. And for the rest of us - amidst erupting volcanoes, global warming and pandemics - when’s the world gonna return to normal?

19th September 2021

In May, new ‘smart’chargers in the home will be required to only work in off peak periods for electric cars, in order to stop the electric grid failing nationwide. So how will that work if your car runs out of juice outside of these hours, eg when you’re in a rush to meet an urgent appointment that’s just cropped up? And don’t get me started on other issues like what happens if you live in a high rise flat or have to park in different places every night, sometimes streets away! Just how long will the cables be? Hazardous for pedestrians/wheelchairs/pushchairs? What if your e-car breaks down/runs out of charge on one of those dangerous smart motorways - the ones with no hard shoulder ? I imagine that the RAC, if they turn up, would need an enormous trailer with an equally large generator, whilst the driver would be waiting in a vulnerable live lane. And don’t even mention if your e-car gets flooded or in a crash, whilst you’re sitting on that giant, expensive battery. Electrocution, fire?? Also, a new e-car battery, required every few years I understand, will cost a staggering £8k.TG in 10 years time when all petrol/diesal cars in the UK are banned, I’ll be too old to drive anyway. 

12th September 2021

It took two teenagers yesterday to show the world what emotional maturity means…

Twenty years since 9/11. But as New Yorkers gathered at the memorial yesterday and gazed down into the still waters, the reflection in many minds was not of peace and calm, but of anger. The recent withdrawal of allied forces from Afghanistan has achieved the very opposite of its purpose. All it did was delay the inevitable: the strengthening of the terrorist group who murdered thousands. The clash between the free, democratic way of life in the West and strictly-controlled, repressive regimes is contrasted every day via international media outlets. If life in the latter regimes is so prized, why aren’t people in their thousands clamouring to emigrate there? The truth, of course, is the very opposite, as evidenced by the daily boat-loads of poor people desperately seeking a better life on these Western shores. History records countless times when one tribe ‘childishly’ attacks another people simply because their way of life is different (e.g. The Meleke Stone). Time to call a halt before it’s too late. Recognise and accept our differences so that we can all move forward in peace.

……Game, set and match to both Emma and Leylah. That’s how you deal with each other.

5th September 2021

Watching the England match held in Budapest on Thursday night was an example of how two different cultures have evolved. It was noticeable how the Hungarian players and their visible fans were all Caucasian, compared to an England team of mixed racial ethnicity. The booing at the start when the English players ‘took the knee’ set the scene, followed by the Hungarian fans chanting and throwing missiles against the English black players. It was very clear that the enormous strides achieved against racist attitudes in the west have still not been achieved by many in eastern Europe, despite Hungary being a member of the EU. It makes me realise that the reason so many things went catastrophically wrong in my own life was because I did not talk to people enough, creating misunderstandings and incorrect interpretations of my attitude. That’s why I wrote The Meleke Stone, to highlight not just how the peoples of the Middle East should get together more, but as a catalyst to show other warring peoples how to show brotherhood to each other. We already have to fight global viruses and natural disasters together, so why not racism too? As the moon rises tomorrow night, the year 5782 begins for the Jewish people. Bringing people together around the world really would be a wonderful global portent for the year ahead.