So Covid was fun. I honestly thought I was ‘the special one’. Having survived the past two years without so much as a sniffle, I assumed I had acquired some superpowered immune resistant genes rendering me infallible.

The reason I had escaped thus far was because I hadn’t left my house. Lockdown was a dream come true. I had seen a Tik Tok video explaining that ice cream warded off Covid germs, so I ensured I had three tubs of Ben and Jerrys surrounding me at all times, together with one on my lap. As it’s hot here in Israel, I did encounter a melting problem, but this just meant I had to increase my speed eating skills. With time, I was able to slurp three flavours simultaneously without any dripping on the beige sofa. This was not easy, but practice made perfect.

But then - I had to leave my house. My nephew was having his barmitzvah. This was selfish behaviour as he lives in England. Not only did I have to get up off the sofa, I had to go to an airport to get on a plane. I had tried insisting the simcha take place here in Israel, but he declined. Something to do with his Mum and Dad had said no, apparently it was their decision as they were paying for it. Also, he had some grandparents or something in the UK and they wanted to attend. Like I said, people are selfish.

Tidy Husband and Middle Son were climbing a mountain somewhere - apparently this is their job now. So, I was left with only two offspring in tow. Allegedly, Covid is ‘over’, and gone are the days of empty airports and empty planes. Travelling has become trickier. There are people that like leaving their house to experience other cultures, sights and smells and relish the opportunity to fight crowds of people and sit squashed in a confined space for hours.

I am not one of those people. I relish the culture, sights and smells of my own house.

Eldest daughter believes herself to be an experienced voyager, (I think she went to Spain once), and went marching off in the wrong direction bypassing security completely and then becoming outraged when she was restrained by airport staff. Thankfully, she was allowed to remain in the airport despite her insistence that she was a ‘very important vlogger who could ruin a career’.

Youngest son is the least experienced in airport know-how but obviously still knows more than his stupid middle-aged Mother who knows ‘nothing’ as she hasn’t played as many video games as he has. He knew a better method of getting through security that he had seen in a virtual reality world and disappeared in another direction. So, it took a while until we were all gathered in the same place and being asked by security if we had any knives of bombs in our luggage or if some stranger had given us a hand grenade which we may have mistaken for a chocolate easter egg, (easily done, I do tend to mistake most things for chocolate).

Due to the panicked Facebook posts on the ‘Brits Living in Israel’ group and high alerts of long queues and full-on doom and disaster, I had decided to arrive at the airport 62 hours early for the flight. As it only took 17 and a quarter hours to get through to departures, (apparently, we were lucky as it was a quiet day), we were left with a mere 16 hours, (or something, maths is not my strong point), to wait in the terminal with 4,000 other Israelis.

Now, Israelis have their good points. They’re excellent at making falafel and have some sort of inspirational global reputation as hi tech entrepreneurs who have single handedly changed the world as we know it. But they’re quite loud and up for a fight, which is not pleasant to experience in a restricted space.

Once through the eternity of airport administration we arrived at the terminal to await boarding. My objective was to find a seated spot before the 70 billion other Israelis who had also arrived early.

I don’t like to stand as I find it hinders my eating capabilities. Seats were in short supply. The battle began.

Youngest son is a large lad, so I forcefully propelled him into position across three chairs. Eldest daughter is a slip of a thing, so spreading her out wouldn’t help. I instructed her to shout ‘GET BACK NOW’ at anyone coming too close to our area. As I am on the hefty side, I had no problem spreading myself across a couple of chairs. I am a champion lounger having had plenty of practice in remaining in one position on the sofa during lockdown. I couldn’t wait to tell Tidy Husband that he was actually wrong in saying that staying in one position on a sofa all day was ‘an absolute disgrace’ and it was, in fact, a very handy life skill.

There was a minor security incident after eldest daughter checked the departures board to discover our flight was delayed. She interpreted the slight delay to mean that the world was ending, and Armageddon was upon us. This led to a small (ish) scuffle with security again as she attempted to convey her disappointment to a flight attendant that she ‘didn’t do delays’ whilst threatening to ‘plaster her face all over Snapchat’.

Once things had calmed down, we needed to defend our position. This would have been fine if one of us didn’t have a weak bladder. At this point I deeply regretted my decision not to potty train my kids when they were younger as it was ‘too much effort getting off the sofa’. Eldest daughter certainly would have benefitted from knowing how to hold in a wee. So, her seat became vacant. I quickly filled it up with the bags of McDonalds goodies I had purchased in case EasyJet ran out of bagels on the plane, whilst I remained on high alert.

The peace didn’t last long before I was accosted by a woman gesticulating in my face and speaking in a foreign tongue. A barrage of unfamiliar words (I found out later it was Hebrew) were coming out her mouth whilst her hands were all over my bags of McDonalds. It appears she was telling me I had a bloody cheek filling up a seat with food products whilst her little Moshe had nowhere to sit.

She plonked herself down in MY seat, squashing my food products under her big bum whilst motioning for three other members of her family to come and squash some food products too.

This was too much. No one squashes my food products.

Declaring loudly ‘You. Are. Having. A. Laugh’ I stood up and in my best Hebrew shouted ‘LO, LO MAMASH LO’, whilst wrestling McDonalds bags from under her bum and pushing her off the seat.

She got the message. But I think in all the confusion she may have given me COVID.