Simple Pleasures

Sometimes I have great conversations with total strangers that makes me feel that life is really not that bad.
Today I went to Sainsburys really early and the nice woman who chopped up my fish for me (makes fish curry so much easier)and I talked about instant meals. As she pointed out some of them can take up to 18 minutes to microwave and we reckoned we could get pan fried fish, salad and potatoes on the table in much the same time with out the chemicals, salt and fat. What stops people-washing a pot? facing a frypan? Very sad I am old enough to have owned a wringer washing machine in my distant past-washing a pot pales to comparison.
Anyway this made me feel on a roll.
Small diversion by way of explanation. Approximately 50,000 Israelis get discharged from the army every year and about a third go to India. Many come back to Israel a little spiritually arrogant and often woefully spiritually ignorant at the same time. Hannah met one such charm bucket who told her that chick peas are not used in Indian cooking.
I was telling my friend Julian about this bizarre level of ignorance and he pointed out that there may be some places in India where chick peas are not used. As you may have already worked out Julian has more niceness in his big toe than in my entire soul.
Anyway the checkout lady at Sainsburys was from India and I told her the story-she said chick peas are used all over India. It turned out she has a relative that runs a boarding house in India and she knows Israeli travellers well. We ended up doing cosmic Israeli traveller imitations and it was truly funny-even more so as you do not really expect to end up in fits of laughter at the Sainsburys checkout-as I say life is alright