Harvest festival

The traditional harvest festival was held last night on our kibbutz - and presumably on most other kibbutzim in Israel. The programme is agricultural branches displaying some of their 'goods' - a sheaf of wheat, a young turkey, etc - interleaved with songs and dances. Some of the dances have a long tradition on the kibbutz - the dresses and music stay the same, but the girls wearing the dresses over the years change.

The weather over the past few days has been terrible - 40°C outside! Inside, the air conditioner in our lounge struggled, cooling the air to only  29°C. I don't know whether this was because the a/c doesn't work properly or whether the air outside was too hot to be cooled sufficiently. Fortunately, the hot weather broke early yesterday evening, so by the time the festival started (at about 7:30pm), the temperature was a balmy 30°C, if not less: definitely bearable and even pleasant.

Many years ago, it was my lot to have guard duty on the main gate during the day of the harvest festival, when again the temperature was far too high. I had a mild case of overheating and was nearly physically sick when I tried to drink water.

I was slightly envious of those playing, singing and dancing: over the years, I have taken my place with the performers. Looking at it rationally, I don't have the time these days for rehearsals, so maybe it's just as well that nobody asks me anymore to perform. 

After the programme finished, we had a picnic on the grass (only dairy products), then someone put on a tape of music for folk dancing. After my last experience of dancing (Independence Day), I wasn't inclined to participate, although I was going over the steps in my head. Actually, I did dance a few steps to 'The shepherd's dance', which is yet another complicated dance with lots of twirls and hopping which I learnt when I was 15; during the dance, I realised that my shoes weren't right for this kind of dancing, and I was also afraid that my sunglasses (which I didn't need at all) would fall out of my breast pocket. So after one chorus, I said my goodbyes and left.

I very much enjoyed yesterday evening!