Lighter side: 13-year-old with a bucket list, Masked Maisel, and your woof pics!
Brigit Grant takes reflects on how lockdown's confinement allowed young people to itemise their ambitions, with a dash of Mrs Maisel and a cute picture of our four-legged friends!
Brigit Grant is the Jewish News Supplements Editor
Who would’ve thought it? A 13-year-old with a bucket list. I’d always believed the inventory of dreams in a pail was the preserve of aged folk desperate for a last shot at bungee jumping or crossing the Pacific aboard a pedalo. But I was wrong. Turns out teens laid claim to our bucket some time ago and the March-September confinement allowed them to further itemise their ambitions.
In a blog post last week my friend, the author Debra Barnes, reflected on the High Holy Day experience for her late mother in occupied France during the Holocaust. Such deprivation and terror is mercifully beyond the imagination of my peers and their children, but while accepting there’s no comparison, dismissing people’s current anxieties is wrong. Yes, it’s trite to malign the wearing of a Cath Kidston face cover when our elders wore gas masks to school, but, as my friend Stacy’s gran often said: “My shoes hurt me!”
This handy phrase – which I steal – was her quaint way of acknowledging an individual’s right to feel the way they do without guilt. Granted, culpability is in our DNA thanks to our Jewish mothers, but in these unsettling Covid times, no one should feel bad about feeling bad. And if you are admonished for self-pity, why not conjure up your inner Streisand and sing “we got nothing to be guilty of” right back at them.
Our children shouldn’t feel guilty, either, as it’s not their fault we raise them in a privileged bubble, so not being allowed to do the things they usually do because of restrictions is understandably upsetting. You can always try a round of Blame Boris instead of Simon Says at birthday parties short on guests and then, in an act of support, hire several out-of-work performers to entertain. It sure beats playing five-a-side football with six!
Experiencing the joy of live entertainment has made it to my daughter’s bucket list and she cites Pretty Woman, The Prince of Egypt and Waitress –
“one more time, Mum” as shows she still longs to see. Hamilton and &Juliet will be on repeat once they open and Carrie Hope-Fletcher’s Cinderella is a must. Trying on clothes in shops, Fashion Week and dressing up for evenings in are also in her bucket as is “travelling without quarantine” and “more than six friends in a room”.
To the list she has also added “seeing friends employed by theatres go back to work”; “hugging all my family” and “finally having my batmitzvah party”. What reads as text book teen also reminds us of what we have missed and continue to miss and it’s interesting to see how things that were once the norm for her are now considered goals. Hopefully when it all becomes available again, she will appreciate it more, so lockdown has provided lessons more valuable than just learning to Zoom.
To mention Anne Frank in relation to a 13-year-olds’ bucket list in suburban luxury seems amiss, but Anne was also 13 when she wrote about her ambitions to be a famous writer, goals to act on stage or just watch another movie starring Rin Tin Tin. The famous dog appeared in The Lighthouse By The Sea, which was the last film Anne saw on her birthday before going into hiding.
Had she lived, anything would have been possible for the 13-year-old with years ahead of her, and that is what we want for our own children. Of course, oldies will always harbour ambitions and some did
a few listicles of their own during lockdown. But they will fit comfortably in a petri dish, so let’s leave the bucket with the teens.
Masked Maisel
And she’s back. Well, almost. The hilarious housewife from the Upper West Side is having her first costume fittings .
While chatting to Carole Aaron, who plays Midge’s mum-in-law, Shirley, she expressed the need for a heads-up well in advance of dress fittings as she has acquired lockdown pounds.
The 1950s girdles will be essential wear for season four and, in preparation for its upcoming arrival, here is the viewing mask from 
www.redbubble.com
Winkleman & Lawson
They may sound like estate agents, but they’re sassy Jewish women with books to promote. Claudia Winkleman of the fulsome fringe got the cover of a certain Sunday mag to talk loudly about her book, Quiet. Nigella’s new book of stories and recipes, #CookEatRepeat, has a title inspired by the EatSleepRaveRepeat lyrics of FatBoy Slim. Who better than a weighty lad to lasso your tome to, though Fat aka Norman Cook is as feather-light as Nigella’s pavlovas. We wish both authors well and wonder why their Jewishness never extends to talking to us? Even Jeremy Corbyn did that.
Paws a minute
There isn’t time to blink before the next pup appears, and this is Crumble Noah, a labradoodle from Edgware.
Keep those woof pics coming to brigit@jewishnews.co.uk to get your free treat caddy from www.mytreatcaddy.com
Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.
For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.
Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.
You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.
100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...
Engaging
Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.
Celebrating
There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.
Pioneering
In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.
Campaigning
Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.
Easy access
In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.
Voice of our community to wider society
The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.
We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.
