h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Frank

Tomorrow 22 August is my younger daughter's 37th birthday. She has a learning disability but it is not too serious. She lives in sheltered accommodation where carers come in for periods during the day but she is out at work during four days a week. Among those days are two half-days at the main local hospital where she works in the maternity department. For that she gets a pay which is above the national minimum. She is also going on a Mediterranean cruise with the two other residents of her accommodation and three carers.
I have arranged a birthday lunch tomorrow for her in a restaurant in Oxford accompanied by my other daughter, her husband and two grandchildren.
I'm looking forward to it.

Zy gezint (a Yiddish phrase which nmeans, roughly, be well.)

Harold

Hello Harold,
What is Yiddish for "I got it wrong" tomorrow is the 21st of August unless you use a different calender.
Nice to hear from you and I hope I do not smit you with this heavy head cold I am carrying. The wonderful weather we are getting is not helping, we have had 6 inches of rain this month already.
You know I have interest in the formation and after of Isreal well I got another book this week;- "A Mearsure of Danger" by Michael Nicholson. It is the Memoirs of a British War Correspondent. He covered the Yom Kippur war and there were things in there I had not read anywhere else. He also covered the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 that was something I did know about being there at Dekhelia.
There is always another point of view on everything and I am always willing to learn.
Have fun at your party and enjoy your children, I do.
Zy gezint to you too,
Frank.

Frank

Quite right. I must have been dozing. I should have said that the birthday was the day after tomorrow. As I write this, now, the birthday will be tomorrow. Glad that's sorted out.
As far as I know the Yiddish for wrong is falsh or farkerrt.
My grandparents spoke Yiddish and so did my parents but it was hardly used at home, apart from the occasional word. But when I learned German at school this introduced me to some Yiddish words. And being brought up in the Zionist movement Modern Hebrew was preferred over Yiddish which was regarded as a ghetto language, to be discarded. But a few years ago when I was researching Jewish soldiers in WWI I came across a Yiddish biography of German-Jewish soldier, published in New York in 1916. I had it photocopied and decided to learn Yiddish in order to be able to read it. I went to Yiddish classes in Oxford (interrupted in 2000 by my back operation) but after about 3-4 years the teacher got a full-time job in London University so the classes folded. In the meantime I couldn't find the photocopy and it only turned up recently, hidden on the floor of a room I don't use much now.
The soldier was in the German army at the start of the war, in the invasion of Belgium, but then apparently deserted and made his way to America. I can't say I've got very far with the book.

The weather has not been too bad this week here. Fortunately for me in that I was having the outside of the house painted and it has hardly been interrupted by rain. I could have painted the downstairs myself (in fact I did put some Sadolin stain on some of the relevant downstairs windows) although I would not have been able to reach the upstairs to replace some rotten wood (gables?) The painter turns out to be very good, checking on all the woodwork and replacing any dodgy bits. Better than another painter I had a couple of years ago who painted over rotten stuff.

Best wishes

Harold