Lighter side: 13-year-old with a bucket list, Masked Maisel, and your woof pics!

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