Tag: David Drori

Categories
memories

David Drori and Walking

This is my second post about David Drori (1953-2023). Here’s the first. There might be more – no promises.

We met in the summer of 1973, at a guitar lesson. I was drawn to his shyness, making him refreshingly different from all the boys I’d met up to then. When we parted ways at Euston Underground Station, he gave me his phone number and said, “Give me a call sometime.”

So I did. I invited him to a ramble organised by the Zionist youth movement I belonged to. Little did I know how fitting that was. He was planning to live in Israel, and he loved walking. I liked walking, too, although my walks had been quite limited up to then. I hadn’t seriously considered emigrating to Israel; it was more of a dream at that point.

Over the years, we did lots of walking. We walked in various parts of the UK, in Norway, in Vietnam, in South Africa, in Israel and more. The country in which we enjoyed walking the most was Switzerland. There, we discovered, public transport is so good that hiring a car becomes a hindrance. Using public transport, we could ride to one place, walk all day, and return from another. If the weather forecast in the area where we were staying was unfavourable, we could easily travel to an area of sunshine. If it was too hot down in the valley, we could ride up to the cool air of the mountains.

Switzerland, 2014
Switzerland, 2018
Switzerland, 2021

David was always ahead of me, especially on climbs, and our final trip, to the UK in July, was no exception. He’d sprint up apparently effortlessly, and then wait for me to arrive, breathing heavily. When the children were small, he’d carry one – occasionally two, and still arrive before me.

Walking was the only exercise he did consistently. Neither of us ever wanted to belong to a gym or to do any exercise just for the sake of it. Walking is enjoyable. By walking, you see views you wouldn’t see from a car. You meet people you wouldn’t meet when stuck in a box. And, by chance, walking keeps you fit, too.

David imbued in me a love of walking, and I will continue to walk without him.

Categories
memories

David Drori and Accuracy

A wall of paintings by David Drori.

David (1953-2023) and I met 50 years ago. We got married 45 years ago. He was 70 when he died, just a week after my 70th birthday.

At David’s 70th birthday party.

There’s something special about those numbers. I wish the 70 could have been changed to 90 or even 100. I’d always imagined we would grow old together. But those 45 years were filled with happiness and I’ll always treasure the memories.

Talking of numbers brings me to accuracy, a trait often mentioned by those who came to console us during the shiva. David’s job as an electronics engineer was to design printed circuit boards. It’s a complicated process that involves taking numerous factors into account. Other engineers create the design, try it out, work on the bugs, try again, and so on until it eventually works. David considered all the problems in advance. His boards worked first time.

What about David’s hobby, art? He produced delightful paintings and sketches, as well as some sculptures. But art can surely be whatever you want to make it. I wasn’t even sure that accuracy was a term that could correctly be applied to art.

“Of course it can,” said the artist Anat Eshed, who taught David several years ago. She looked up to the wall with his paintings. “And David was very accurate. He had an eye for detail and drew exactly what he saw. He was a pleasure to teach.”

A wall of paintings by David Drori.

I might write more about David in subsequent posts. In the meantime, here’s a poem:

Shy Guy (a poem)
Drawn to a shy guy I met at a guitar lesson.
Afterwards, he invited me to give him a call.
Very soon after,
I
Did.

Diving in was not our thing.
Rather, we waited five years to marry.
Over the decades, our love grew. Now, I can only
Remember.
Initial letters of each line, you may have noticed, spell his name.
Categories
Books Rhymes

Two Poems

As part of the May Mayhem challenge, I wrote two poems this month.

For the first, I took the acknowledgements from my novel, Neither Here Nor There, and turned them into rhyming verses.

Acknowledgements for Neither Here Nor There

NeitherHereNorThereCoverSeveral people a role they took.
Without them there would be no book.

Gill reappeared from a thorny past —
One that I had tried to cast
Away. She helped me understand
Myself, and taking me by the hand,
With friendship, advice and support,
She showed me the ball was in my court
And told me with tact and sobriety
All about social anxiety.

I joined a local writing group.
Its members formed a merry troupe.
They helped me learn how to write,
Critiquing till I saw some light.
Of David the mentor I’m in awe.
He always finds what no one saw.
Judy, who ran my other group,
Brought fresh ideas into my hoop.

Romance themed Sally’s excellent workshop,
Where I created a heroine and a heartthrob,
And devised a plot with conflicts in heaps
That threatened to separate these struggling young peeps.
Sue and Gail, course-made friends,
Critiqued my drafts from beginnings to ends,
Turning the words that came from my head
Into a novel that could be read.

I hadn’t let anyone close to me read,
Expecting disapproval I didn’t need.
But after acceptance Other Half found
Bloopers. So glad they left the ground.
Crooked Cat Publishers, Steph and Laurence,
Introduced me to authors in their torrents,
And produced an opus with delightful cover,
My name below its troubled lover.

A big THANK YOU to those and others, for they
Provided support and showed me the way.

Here are the original acknowledgements for comparison:

Several people made this novel possible and I will always be grateful to them.

Gill Downs, who has been my friend, advisor and supporter ever since we remet twelve years ago.

David Brauner and Judy Labensohn, who taught me about writing.

Sally Quilford, who ran the excellent pocket novel workshop that led me to consider writing a romance.

Sue Barnard and Gail Richards, who spared no time or effort in helping to turn my draft into a real novel.

David Drori, who pointed out several problems when I thought there were no more left.

Laurence and Steph Patterson of Crooked Cat Publishing, who accepted me into their warm basket of cats and used their professional expertise to produce a volume of high calibre.

Thank you to all, and to everyone else who gave me encouragement along the way.

***

In a rather nonsensical poem, I varied the number of lines in each verse: 9, 7, 5, 3, 1. Someone has probably done this before and given the form a name.

Eye Spy

I wonder why
There is no Y
That I can spy
In “shepherd’s pie”
But there is a Y
In “your red tie”
Which lost its dye
In a wash that I
Set too high.

It makes me sigh
And even cry
When in your eye
I see that I
Am seen as shy.
It’s a lie
That I decry.

The bread that I
Like best is rye.
It makes my
Smile wry.
Does that apply?

Saying “Hi,”
Drinking chai,
By the by.

Hello goodbye.

I’ll tell you how well I did with the challenge in another post, later today. Sorry it has to be today because it’s the end of the month. See you soon….