AIA

         

13th Feb 2012

Its my birthday, only a bit like Groundhog Day. Didn't I just do this? So I do what I know best, return to bed with cake and tea and a teenage book about dying over and over again, only each day Sam gets a chance to do it better. Or differently. Whilst our own Teenager is in absolute flabbergasted giggles over Entourage. The Congo Man is taking him to Congo tomorrow. Not many dads take their kids there, I believe. Its the world's second most dangerous country, at least to women, and truly not everywhere the Congo Man claims. Only, he's a natural to Africa, telling his truth as he sees fit at the time. Thats the way life goes when its sometimes harder than hell to live.



Anyways. Sweden being a perfect and totally unreal place is probably about to make a national study on how many kids go to PRAO in Africa. PRAO is short for doing two weeks of school at work and theres probably a great English word to be used here. TeenageR is barely 15 and yesterday the Lovely MissL had them all playing rugby in the dining room whilst the Congo Man shaved his head. And beard. Only in Somaliland they told him "Next time you come back Mr Congo Man you have beard." He didn't oblige, only Hillary came for lunch. Hillary as in Clinton. Mr Congo Man has this secret story, which I am going to do my best to reveal. Secrets and lies are really useless not shared.



What about me though, do I have a life? Yesterday, whilst in serious doubt during my track around the golf course, cross country skiing, I though about it for a bit and a half. Its always that extra half which is too much. So, having decided to get a life I cried YEEEES when receiving an invitation to to Literary Death Match in Stockholm. Now the wonderfully wild producer Todd Zuniga needs information from me and a press photo. Eh. Its my birthday. Im ignoring my latent eating disorder, my exercise excess mania, my tax return forms and having cake in bed. Tomorrow?



Only I did take new press pictures last week, and just writing about it they drop into my inbox. Thats how things happen to me. I see no difference between my real life, my dream life and my varsel. Whatever are varsel in English? Let me look it up. Omens. I have omens like a mad woman. I know when friends' dogs are going to die and wake up to text messages about them having died. The dogs.



So, who am I? I don't know, but can I just tell bits about my life? Anecdotes to make up the puzzle? So very tempting to tell the truth but not until everyone involved has passed. Ooops, Im jinxed, even cats die around me, cross my heart so it won't come true. One year 4 people in my close family died. It left me without a past, and not bloody keen on the future.



I would won't to run for American president. Imagine waking up and knowing you made a big mistake, huge mistake, having been elected. Right now Im hiding out having set this big ball rolling. Releasing 3 novels this year, organizing a big school event about reading, writing another 3 books, and moving both the Kampala and Cape town makes me feel busy. "Phone mum!" Teenage R shouts. Who uses the home line except for sales people? And a tv-station wanting me to talk about being a writer. OMG, I have to dye my hair! Why do always those thoughts come most spontaneously to me when I need to be serious? Because I want to be like P. She's very smart and lovely and knows how to choose fun. I am smart and at times rather lovely but preferably I choose gloom. Ok, that was I lie. I do lie a lot. And wherever is this story going? Don't ask me.

Now I need to call my publisher, and email my other publisher, and call my agent and hear from my publisher. Who would have thought I would end up with all these "my-people"? Not just my dentist? My dad probably. He's lovely and weird and rather narcissistic to put it mildly. But, and theres a major BUT here, and not everything before the but is bullshit, this time. My dad has a great sense of humor.

How on earth am I going to make sense of this story?





Dec 2011

The Congo Man's big gold suitcase sits packed in the middle of the dining room. Ready to go it's been standing there for a week. Is he going to leave tomorrow? No one knows. The children don't really mind anymore. Instead we discuss serious matters as whether one should use "anyways" or "whatever" when one doesn't care. Or mind. MiddleM laughs his happy laughs and does one of his dance routines. "I'm sexy and I know it" he sings and pulls off his t-shirt. The Teenager aka Starboy, who is on to the next round in the try outs for the regional basketball team, breaks out in giggles. LittleH sighs. Lovely Miss L stares. And the suitcase sits solemnly in the middle of it all, as if no one cares.



Do we? But of course. Life in the jungle IS different. Sometimes we Skype with the Congo Man over dinner. While he tells us about black mambas in the shower hut, we tell him about rain and shine over the local bus garage. Trading tales of a country where the UN have evacuated all staff post the election for daily routines as frost on the car and where the fuck is the ice skating gear?



The area where the Congo Man thrives but only sleeps a couple of hours every night because the crickets play so very loudly is not easily accessible, not at all.