Page 52 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Autumn 21
P. 52
MANCHESTER KEN IN THE It took us several weeks to actually like the
people and the activities, but once we were
1970S hooked, that was it.
ELAINE BLACK I am sure I could still find my way around
11 7. The steps up, the public telephone
the Moadon blindfolded. The
, Upper Park Road,
Salford
on the wall on the right-hand
phone number was
side after the boys’ loo; the
3826, but was the prefix 740? gym, kitchen and clali. Clali?
792? The first three digits The use of Hebrew words was
escape me. Gary tells me it really very funny: The clali was
was almost certainly 740. Viv the room we could lounge about in
just confirmed that, and also and was so-called as clali meant
just enlightened me that the “general”. So it happened that the
way it was remembered was that 38-26 word was kidnapped to mean, in
were the bust and waist measurements of a “Habonimese”, a general room. Calling it the
certain chanicha. I think I will enlighten her Balagan (meaning mess – double entendre
50+ years on – she may well be chuffed. intended) would have been far more
appropriate.
There was a bulletin board labelled תוריהז:
This was because תוריהז in the Ben Yehuda
dictionary translated as “notice”, so Ivri
thought it was a good name for a notice
board, and that the “ot” suffix must make it
the plural: “notices”. Really, the suffix was
“ut”, and the word really meant “pay
attention/ be careful/look out!” (as in תוריהז
םישקומ “be careful of mines!”).
Gary and Howard were our madrichim in
11 Upper Park Road, Salford 7 Arad, a junior Bonim group that met in the
cellar. A shortage of girls meant we had two
I first entered those hallowed glass doors male madrichim, and not a madrich and
when I was nearly 13, in late 1967. Vivienne madricha. This was a great source of
Wiseberg and I, who had, until then, spent amusement. The dynamic duo were both
every weekend in the Lake District, became Ma’apilim from Ein Gev, the group that met
members of Plugat Arad and gave up the in the room just after the girls’ loo and just
decadent life of caravans and speed boats for before the stairs down to the cellar. It is funny
blue shirts, murder ball in the gym and kupa. what one remembers: I remember being
allowed in their meeting-room and, for some
52
