Two (historical) events which I wish had never happened

My friend the rhinovirus came to visit two days ago, so since then I've been displaying all the usual symptoms: blocked nose, disappearing voice and especially general weakness. Fortunately it is holiday time here so I don't have any commitments in the next few days, thus allowing me to recover without causing any complications.

I found it very difficult to get to sleep last night; as a side effect of the virus, I'm not walking 5 km in the evenings and so my body is not physically tired. To add to my problems, I had an over-active brain last night and all I could think about was two events which happened to me in 1974. One has to suspend one's belief that these events really happened.

As one might recall, I was in Israel for the first half of 1974. The first event happened when the group was in Jerusalem, so it was presumably in January 1974. I had travelled from Jerusalem to spend a weekend with a family in Netanya; I would return by train.  It's hard to accept this now but there were trains from Nahariya to Tel Aviv and from Netanya to Jerusalem 40+ years ago; the 80s were a bad decade for Israeli trains.

Somehow, we knew that there was a train leaving at about 5 pm (how we knew this is interesting as there wasn't an Internet which would show times) for Jerusalem and one about 10 minutes earlier for Tel Aviv. I was driven to the train station where there was a train waiting; without checking, I went to alight this train, whereupon it started moving. Without thinking, I stood on the step, holding on to the handles of the carriage, like in Wild West films. The train picked up speed, and I'm still holding on - from the outside. After about ten/fifteen minutes, someone must have noticed me, for the train stopped. I was able to open the door and enter the train. Of course, I was shaking like a leaf.

In the train, I came across a member of Kibbutz Bet Ha'emek (where we were based). Whilst talking to him, I discovered that of course, I had alighted the train to Tel Aviv, which was a few minutes late as opposed to alighting the train to Jerusalem. I don't remember talking to the train conductor, but soon the train stopped at a station (I remember it being Bnei Barak, which doesn't make sense for a train from Netanya to Tel Aviv) where I disembarked. Shortly afterwards came the Jerusalem train and off I went. The old train station in Jerusalem was at the beginning of the Hebron Road, which was a kilometre or so from the seminar centre.

The second event happened a few months later when we were solidly in the midst of the 'work period'. I had decided to spend a weekend at Kibbutz Mevo Chama in the southern part of the Golan heights; this was the kibbutz where the most recent emigrants from British Habonim had settled, and it was assumed that the next group - to which I would belong - would also settle there. Despite having been there for two one week periods, I hadn't developed any real feel or liking for the kibbutz, so presumably I thought that going there for a weekend would be an attempt to improve my liking.

Reconstructing from memory, I must have left Bet Ha'emek on a Thursday afternoon, travelling by bus to Tiberias, from where would leave another bus to Mevo Chama at 8 pm. Unfortunately, I arrived a few minutes after this bus departed, so I was stuck in Tiberias. In retrospect, it might have been more prudent to return home (if this were possible), but instead I decided to spend the night there. Having very little money (I only needed to pay bus fares), a hotel or hostel was out of the picture. With little choice, I decided to sleep on a park bench near the police station; I think that I had explained to them my position and they suggested that I spend the night in the park. One must remember that this was shortly after the war and everyone was suspicious of strangers.

Although it was warm, it was very uncomfortable sleeping on a bench which I suspect was not long enough (and I'm not exactly tall). I woke in the early morning and made my way to the bus station; presumably it being Friday, there wouldn't be a bus at 8 pm but rather at 2 pm. Unwilling to wait another eight hours or so, I decided to take a bus to kibbutz Ein Gev, which whilst being on the right sight of the Sea of Galilee, was also next to the sea, whereas Mevo Chama was at the top of a high cliff, overlooking the sea.

I don't remember now how I got from one kibbutz to the other; presumably I must have hitched a lift for some of the way (north to Samech Junction, which is just above the '92' mark on the map, then east and up, finally south on '98'), but I do remember walking part of the way, with blackened vehicle wrecks by the sides of the road - don't forget, this was a few months after the war.

Eventually I arrived at the kibbutz and had yet another dismal time there, which near enough sealed the fate of this kibbutz for me - NO! I must have returned 'home' safely with no memorable incidents.

While writing this memoir, I first thought that I never returned to Mevo Chama, but that isn't so. In 1999 (?) we rented a small holiday home near the sea of Galilee (it would be in the top left hand corner of the map), and one day we took the children to the Golan and to Mevo Chama. We walked to the club house where I had celebrated my 16th birthday, admired the views, then drove on. Also at some stage we had visited the hot springs at Hamat Gader, which is a few kilometres south and east of Mevo Chama; I had been there in 1974 before the site had been developed in a tourist attraction.

There used to be a parlour game which we used to play where one would describe two incidents, one which happened and one which was imagined. The other players would have to guess which incident was true and which was not. I always used the railway story along with some invented story which would sound reasonable for me - and no one ever guessed that the railway story really happened to me.