Musings at 35,000 feet

It's time to resurrect the blog. Almost 12 months since the last entry, and there has barely been a single moment to write anything - and that's no exaggeration. Since well before the end of the army, life has been hurtling by - during the final six months of the army, every free moment (and there certainly weren't many) was spent trying to figure out what next; where to live, what to do to make a living; basically what we wanted from life, while simultaneously trying to plan the immediate future afterdischarge - to go straight to specialist training, or to make up for the time apart by splurging our meagre earnings on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Happy dilemmas, no question. But stressful ones at the same time, and not helped in the least by the two camps interfering on each side.

"Go travel - you'll never get another chance. Spend every penny, see everywhere." "Don't you want children? You're both coming up to thirty; what if you have problems conceiving? You can travel when you retire, but the fertile age is only a one-off."

For better or for worse, the travel bug won. And so began the super-stressors: trying to make the money to fund such a trip, and then of course, where to go. How much money could we make in a reasonable non-specific period of time, and how far could we travel? Where are the most important places to go to and what can we put off until, say, retirement?

It quickly became evident that a trip to the UK was in order. 18 months of army service without seeing most of my family apart from brief visits to see us in Jerusalem, a desire to keep my foot in the door of the UK medicine establishment, and the chance to earn more than double the salary I could earn in Israel made this first step very clear.

Of course,there's also the building yearning for the old life - the polite drivers, the British TV, the customer service. No matter what perks life has in Israel, ignoring for a moment the ideological fulfillment and meaning that life has, and notwithstanding the completion of a dream to be an Officer of the Israel Defence Forces, the sheer joy that my Britishness generates when a pedestrian smiles and mimes 'thank you' when you stop at a red light and don't run them over is surprising. Of course I'm going to stop. But why shouldn't I be thanked for not commiting murder? Why should that snooty Israeli feel that it's his/her right to walk in front of my car without saying thank you or even acknowledging the effort I just made by first elevating my right foot, and then depressing it a few inches to the left? It is perhaps petty, but day after day of the ingratitude (or, for the sake of argument, the lack of expressed gratitude) builds up, and wears you down. Day to day non-events, like queueing at the supermarket generate irritation at the check-out person's bad attitude, whereas a little smile would have changed the whole experience to a positive one. After three years of the same, and half that time in the dregs of society working with the young runts who comprise Israel's young conscripts, I have not adapted; instead, I have had my pride in my Britishness reaffirmed. The British culture is not 'different'. It's better. And the simple concept of mutual respect, a Jewish concept as much as a British one, needs to be applied for Israeli society to progress and be the light unto the nations that Israel needs to be to achieve its potential. Many people will say they prefer the honesty of Israelis who will say what they mean. Well, I don't. I prefer tact, subtlety, and patience. It works in civil society, and it's nicer.

Looking back so long after leaving the army, it is very hard to think of juicy stories to tell. There's the time a Palestinian and his British activist walked into the middle of a live-fire exercise where I was the doctor on standby. As the subtle officers started to shout at them to "get out, or you'll be shot", I quickly saw the opportunity to prevent a classical media distortion. When it was explained by one British gentleman to another (even though one was in combat greens with a loaded M16 machine gun and a 20kg medical kit, and one was in sandals with a keffiyeh around his neck) that the broken English was not a threat, but a cheerful warning that several tanks were loaded and pointing in their general direction, they were far more willing to move along, and The Guardian was not compelled to write its usual sh!te about Israeli soldiers shooting at the British Friends of the Earth bloke who was wandering next to the site where, so it is rumoured, we Israelis genetically modify Palestinian kids so that we can make them into felafel, or sell them for Tesco burgers.

After a handshake with both guys, as they turned around and walked in the other direction, one of my soldiers cameup to me as asked, "why did you bother talking to them? Why not just tell them to get lost?" And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how one of the most moral and humane armies in the world can be so midunderstood and misrepresented by a misguided press looking for a classical underdog tale.

Incidentally, on the same day, one of my soldiers was bitten on the face by a camel spider. Have a search online a find a picture. Lovely things, about the size and fluffiness of a small kitten... but with ten legs. Yes. Ten. And although it is non-venomous, its bite is so vicious that you treat is just like a wild dog bite. Beats the usual dull scorpions.

So... September, and suddenly I'm a civilian. Home each night, choosing what clothes to wear, rather than just the bits no one will see. And instead of flashing a card before taking my gun into the bus station, cinema, bar or nightclub, having my possessions checked to make sure that I don't have one at all. Inconvenient. But worth it. My bed, my diet, my entertainment, my shower. And my wife. After trundling through 18 months of isolation, we could start to live like a couple again. Dates to the theatre, restaurants, seeing friends, and getting stuff done. Bliss.

October, and we're onto the next step of the big plan. Back in the UK, enjoying all the novelties as mentioned above, and getting to know our now-much-larger nephews and neices. Mum's food. Seeing the friends who haven't had the desire to come visit us yet. Hrmph.

November, and we're getting back into the flow of British life. Both seeking out locum work, which sadly is no small feat these days for a pharmacist; as Deborah picks up the odd shift here and there, I settled for the only safe option to ensure our trip could go ahead, and accepted a full-time job for two months all the way over in Wakefield and Dewsbury. Somewhat misguided by the clever person who advised me that Dewsbury was a very posh area where most of my patients would be pony-accidents or sore throats, I was surprised to have abuse hurled at me by the drunk and smashed-on-coke-and-hypoglycaemic-after-taking-his-own-mother's-insulin-for-a-laugh distant cousin of a July 7th bomber. NOW I remember why I left the UK. Turns out that Dewsbury is NOT the same as Daresbury.

December, and I'm tired of commuting across the country. Deborah and I decide that if we did it in the army we can do it in the UK - I take a room in the hospital and live like a student; obscene hours in A&E, roll back to bed, get up, do some planning or learning, make myself a meal for one in a communal kitchen, and get ready for work; perhaps with a little exercise and fresh air thrown in here and there. Debs, meanwhile, moves in with her folks, and we split the times where I have enough of a break to justify the perilous snowy M62 to come back between seeing her folks and my own.

January, and the money starts to accumulate - guestimated budgets, enough money to buy tickets, and suddenly we have a departure date, a plan for an itinerary, and a lot of work to do.

February. Work is completed, the plan to save up for the trip was more or less successful (although thanks to the pharmacy world being swamped with locums, much much less successful than hoped) - but we still have enough to delay bankruptcy until later in the year, so it's all systems go. Packing, tying up a million loose ends, shopping to buy smaller and lighter versions of everything we may need, saying goodbye to family and friends.

NOW: 17th February 2013, 2358 GMT, 100 miles North of Tehran. Deborah is curled up next to me wrapped up in a Singapore Airlines blanket, snoring in that nice girlie way that isn't really snoring. I'm listening to 'Du Du Hao' by Claire Kuo on my shiny Airbus A380 enertainment system, the lights are off, and as I sip a glass of mineral water and nibble on my fresh fruit platter before taking out my own blanket to get some sleep before our descent into Singapore in seven hours, the title of one of my friend's blogs springs to mind. "Don't forget to breathe".

The trip ahead is about exploring, seeing places that only the priviledged few get to see. It's about gaining perspective on what is truly important in life, and appreciating the opportunities we have been given. But for me, right now, what I really want is to just slow down, enjoy the present and not think about the future, and breathe.