I have realised that it has been far too long between now and my last entry for me to actually give anything in detail without it turning into some vast extended and gratuitous essay on the mundanities of daily life here. I will try my utmost to curb these tendancies to give an accurate yet relatively concise image, unlike Rousseau.

I may be so bold as to juxtapose two events that took place precisely a week apart and involved the same journey and the same destination. You cannot come to Palestine without seeing Jerusalem, and thus I ventured out on a sunny day over two weeks ago into the fabulous old city. Although I am strangely numbed from it now, that first checkpoint where they make you get out of the bus and demand your passports, guns in hand really makes you feel as if you have committed some heinous felony, even though the worse you may have done was nick a couple of quid from your mother's purse once (aged 13 or so) to buy chips. It makes one strangely petulant and I had a near overwhelming desire to poke one of the guards with a feather duster and dance around them to see what would happen.

My enthusiasm meant that the number 21 bus from the crossroads with Beit Jala and Bethlehem that I took got me into the city at just past 9am and I headed straight towards the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and once there heading straight into Jeremy Paxman. It was a completely oblivious collision on my part, and having apologised first in arabic and then in English to this man whom I felt I had met once, as one might vaguely recongnise a distant uncle one hasn't seen for a decade or so, I shuffled away. It was only then that I noticed the cameras and the very English accents echoing around me. Being me, I hadn't the courage to approach him and be so bold as to ask what he was doing here, even when I saw him again barely a couple of hours later in the arab quarter. Our eyes met and I could tell he recognised me from somewhere, probably as he would a distant niece...

After that I found my way up onto a rooftop and looked across the city with a surprsingly warm sun beating down on me. It was fun to watch people cross the rooftops as if it were just another ordinay road, though the setting agaist the al -aqsa mosque was about as un-ordinary as you get but pleasantly peaceful as if you were on a plane strangely removed above the bustle of daily life. After that, I decided to get me two feet back on the ground and continued my walk.

All in all, that visit to Jerusalem was difficult. You can feel an unnatural tension between the quarters weighing in from the outer walls to the centre. The old arab quarter reminds me a lot of Aleppo, whilst the Armenian quarter seems strangely european for some reason and the Jewish quarter doesn't seem quite right. Of course it shouldn't because most of the buildings are new from 1967 onwards when most of it was destroyed as the Israelis tried to get a hold of it. Still, everything feels like an old city - the stones are right, the paths and alleyways snake around the houses - but the architecture is new. It jars. In an odd way it is like the Israeli presence in general. It should be fine, an ancient people in an ancient country living right next door to others, but it just doesn't work, nomatter how much effort you put into making it seem natural.

The Isaac Kaplan museum reminds me of Faversham's little Fleur de lis centre where you catch a little snippet of what daily life was like here for Jews. It was a strange little place, with the final room being unnecessrily emotive, as the walls were filled with photos of Jews who fought for independence in 1948. There was so much expectation, pride and hope in their faces that it was hard to equate with what was done to the losing side. Who was it that said that history is the story of the victors?

From Jaffa gate I walked the walls round to Dung gate (the most attractive name of all the gates in my esteemed ((or e-steamed, oh yes groan at my shockingly bad pun)) opinion) and from there I went around the outside of the city walls. I was gazing over the mount of olives and the Jewish cemetery just as it came to the time for the call to prayer. I suppose this is where I should say that I am amazed how well the different religions get on here in this remarkable place, but even thinking that makes me uneasy. I walked around through the muslim cemetery and back in via damascus gate, ate some falafel and keneffe. I then sat in a cafe in the Christian area - by far the most relaxing of the quarters - for an hour or so, sipping orange juice, reading Great Expectations (how pretentious) and silently deriding the tour groups that forced their members to wear ludicrous t-shirts or headgear of alarmingly fluorescent hues. After this I wandered the markets for a little and drank a lot of coffee at the emporium of a likely looking lop-sided chap who had a somewhat world-weary air, but sounded and somehow looked, despite his gangly frame, uncannily like Nicholas Cage. I went home thinking it had been an interesting day, but one I did not wish to repeat, much as the history of the place is so incredible, the reality is hard to take. But a week later.....

Sheikh Jarrah was a surprise, not just because it is so close to the city, but of the absurdity of it. All the day that I was there I watched in disbelief as the settlers who had taken the house of the Palestinian family who were camped directly opposite them (about 20 feet away) continued about their daily chores. It was as if they had received special training which meant that they could make the former occupants of the house invisible to them. Apparently there are about 30 of them living there and they used to intimidate and threaten the Palestinian family before the International Solidarity Movement started a permanent vigil there, keeping at least one foreigner on site to record anything that happens. During the day the family sit on the pavement, the children play hula hoop in the street, watched by one little toddler from behind the closed gate of the house which has a huge wooden menorah attached to its roof. At night the family sleep in a tent in some land opposite the house which is also at risk I believe. They have nowhere else to go.

There was a protest that afternoon which was well attended considering it was the 5th anniversary of the BelAyn protests north of Ramallah, so many people were predicted to go there instead. There was music and giant cloth puppets and bright green cardboard dragons, very different to my last experience of a protest. I suppose it is too close to a lot of residential areas for the large numbers of Israeli soldiers or protestors present to do anything too outrageous. Apparently this week though there were violent clashes with Jews as they celebrated Purim. I imagine any festival where the orthdox practice is to drink until you cannot tell right from wrong will always have a tendency to be provocative. still, it was fun to see the protest taking place, with one of the women from the displaced family proudly waving flag amongst the crowd which seemlessly mingled with the Hasidic Jews sitting on the wall right next to it. Contradictions all around...

And speaking of which (provocative) didn't mean to be provocative when I approached the main gate of the notorious mental institute on one of our pleasant evening walks (1)ahmed, Qusay and I tended to take these turns in more clement, temperate weatherand 2)trust me to find the only camp in palestine that contains aforementioned asylum ). I just wanted to see into where all the nurses that had been staying with me at the centre had been doing their courses. As one does in Britain, because you know that no one is ever looking, I gave a cheeky wave and grin to the security camera, turned and carried on along the road. I was filled with apprehension as, barely half a minute later from behind me, came the sound of the vast gates creakily opening, and a doctor in white overalls emerged, looking round for the evidently insane individual who had had the audacity to approach and mock the unwitting night watchman. As I felt that running away (my first impulse) would only serve to deepen the certainty of my guilt, I wedged myself between my two companions and tried to walk with the swagger of normality, whilst making them swear that they wouldn't let the men in white coats take me. True to their word they accompanied me calmly away from the scene of my misdemeanour, only retelling the tale with keen alacrity to their father later that eve.

It was their father that explained the semi-theory of Palestine to me when I asked what the problems had been with Arafat's government here. He replied that with the limitations imposed on him by Israel, Arafat was crippled from the very beginning. With powers that extended only over partial bits of government it was hard to affect any sort of deep change within Palestine. How can you when Israel controls most of the water supplies, controls access, the roads, vast swathes of land within the West Bank that they refuse to stop building on, prevents you from having your own army or defence force apart from police which cannot do anything when Israel decides to enter a camp and wake its inhabitants at 3am (I speak from experience here). Palestine doesn't even have half the land, half the governing powers over itself. The people lead a semi-existence in a semi-town semi-slum in partially built houses that smack of improvisation, with half a water and electricity system (power cuts happen all the time), within a semi-state and semi-rights. He said that living here you only feel like half a person.

David the wonderous Dubliner brightened our lives with papier mache masks that he made with children from the camp a couple of weeks ago when the weather was so warm and sunny that I was getting burned in the sun. It was messy but highly enjoyable, especially as it meant that, although I had class during the time when stuff was actually going on, I got to play with swarms of young children in the garden in a sort of attempt at wearing them out before painting so that they would be more focused. This cunning plan failed, but it was still worth it to be chased around and dragged to the ground by what felt like a plague of lilliputians. This amazing warm weather had started over a week before when one of the student in my class, Ahmed (I think I know about 10 ahmads here) invited me and David to attend a rap gig in the Bethlehem Peace centre. His brother was in the band, all of whom are from the Dheishe camp. Twas amazing, even though I couldn't understand a single word of it, except when the main rapper took time out to talk, very eloquently, about politics. I think the youngest there was about 7 or 8 and the oldest was probably around 18. I've noticed here that there is not really an age divide that we get back home - everyone hangs out with everyone, even if they are several years apart. What is noticeable is the gender divide. There were almost no girls. This goes for the streets aswell where you will find groups of guys wandering around in the evening but no girls to speak of. It is quite striking.

A group of youths were so taken with me and David that they accompanied us home. I even got a plastic valentine's rose from one of them, complete with cellophane with love hearts imprinted on it and a little plastic white bear. So inspired was I by this that I forced my English classes the day after on Valentine's Day proper to read My love is like a red red rose and sing along to the song 'love like the movies' which I think they all secretly enjoyed. Subjects in general that we talk about in class range from politics to strange hypothetical questions, to choosing which inventor to save in the sinking hot air balloon to their personal favourite of consquences. My utterly best one was Condoleeza Rice meeting Osama bin Laden in an aeroplane. I cannot remember what they said to one another, but in the end it just didn't work out. Today, to celebrate the endless rain we have had I found Gene Kelly on youtube and made them listen to and watch Singin' in the Rain. Twas beautiful, even though they are puzzled as to why anyone would want to get so wet on purpose.