Gone fishin' ... back in August

I had a stunningly intelligent dream last night, even if I do say so myself. The Minister of Justice, Patrick Chinamasa came to tell me that I would not be allowed to represent a client before Zimbabwe's Supreme Court because I had a conflict of interest. I was outraged, outraged, I was. What about my client's right to the legal representation of his choice, I said. Chinamasa said I was conflicted because I had written critically on land reform for the Sunday Times. But that's rubbish, I retorted. (See how I retort in my dreams?) You can't ask me to renounce agency simply because I have expressed an opinion on the matter I am now handling. More to the point, I yelled, what about the judges? Aren't they conflicted? Isn't their conflict more troubling? They all have farms, how can that not be a conflict of interest when they are ruling on land issues? Then we were in court and the judges were chanting out out out in their black gowns and white wigs and pointing at me and I was pointing back saying, recuse yourselves, recuse yourselves, you all have farms, you all have farms! Heh. Heh.

Then I woke up to today, Monday, the first day of my last week at work. No wonder I have Zimbabwe on my mind. I am moving there next week, leaving my job. Yes indeed. This is my last week at work before I leave Geneva for two years in which I will based in Zim. I am getting all verklempft at the thought, but I am also excited as you can imagine. I have been doing my current job for 8 years, before that I was at the WTO for 3 years, and before that I lived in England and Austria so I have lived in Europe for 15 years, including the most formative years of my life as an adult. I have been formed here, burned and burnished here. Of course, a lot came with me from Zim, I was 23 when I moved to Europe, but the real stuff, the working it out stuff the getting to know myself stuff, all happened here.

I will be reflecting further on Geneva next month. Right now, I am signing off ... I need to clear my desk, I need to work, I need to write, I need to pack. I will be back in Geneva in early August, working on that pestilential novel that is now the bane of my life, and I will tell you more then about my plans. Till then, enjoy the summer/winter or whatever you call it in your part of the world.

Image of the stunning sunset on Lake Kariba from GameReserve.Com.

Twenty things I loved about the World Cup

Here are some of the things I loved most about the World Cup. I could go on and on, but this is it for now. Oh I miss the World Cup.

1. Spain's joy at winning. I stopped supporting the Dutch at half-time -- I wanted them to win, but really, not to win that ugly. Johan Cruyff spoke for all of us Dutch fans when he said, "It hurts me that Holland chose an ugly path to aim for the title." That team slogan, "never mind the Big Five: beware the Dutch Eleven" became not such a cute joke. I loved the joy in the Spanish camp. And the cute moment above, when an overwhelmed Casillas kissed his reporter girlfriend in mid-interview. Aww.

2. Watching the World Cup with my son Kush… he is six and it is his first World Cup. He was supporting Switzerland because we live here, Brazil and Ghana because, as he said, “they have lots of brown players like me”, France because he speaks French, Italy because his friends Niklas and Marina are half-Italian, Deutschland because his friends Luka-Selim and Nicola are German, England because his friend Imani is half-English and the Netherlands because his dad lives there and our family colour is orange. (It is true! We are an orange family and we are not even royal!) And where he was neutral, and I asked who he was supporting, he answered “Both of them”. Now that’s the way to enjoy the World Cup.

3. Ghana. I am so very happy for Ghana, despite the heartache. They will make more noise in Brazil. 2014 cannot come soon enough.

4. South Africa. What absolute stars! Can we ditch that gunk about Africa, Africa pride of Africa? This was South Africa's triumph, and they deserve every accolade. That Green Point stadium in Cape Town is just stunning. And even the vuvuzelas became bearable after a while! Next stop, Olympics.

5. Panini stickers. Thanks to these stickers, Kush was able to recognise a lot of the players. Mummy, that's Maxi Pereira, he said as Uruguay played Ghana! And it was! Mummy, it's Miroslav Klose, he said. And again, it was!

6. Talking about the World Cup with Breyten Breytenbach, Mark Gevisser and Njabulo Ndebele at Shakespeare and Company in Paris.

7. The World Cup led to my first commission from the venerable Financial Times. I wrote on the link between football, dual citizenship and the African diaspora. It all made sense to me at the time.

8. Watching France play in France and watching Algeria play with Algerians.

9. Diego Maradona.

10. Any time Diego Maradona stood up, jumped up or waved his arms around.

11. Diego Maradona kissing his players.

12. Diego Maradona dismissing the suggestions of homoerotic feelings towards his players. "I like women. I have a girlfriend. Her name is Veronica". Please, Argentina, don't fire him.

13. Marina Hyde, Scott Murray and everyone at the Guardian for their awesome commentary.

14. Switzerland! I am telling you right here, right now, and you read it here first: they will be the Germany of 2014. They have some youngsters coming up who are really promising. And I loved this great comment on Swiss TV last night: So Switzerland is the only team to have beaten the world champions! Hee!

15. The North Koreans. Awww!

16. The Germans. What a team.

17. Jogi Low and his coaching crew… so very metrosexy and yet so very German.

18. Giovanni van Bronckhurst and that awesome goal. Then there is that awesome name: Giovanni van Bronckhurst.

19. The curse of the Nike ad --everyone of the big stars that starred in it got knocked out early. It even extended to poor Federer who was in it ... he got knocked out early at Wimbledon.

20. Paul the Wonder Octopus. How much must William Hill hate that creature? Hee!

Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side!

My sisters, brothers and I loved this song. We had a book in which we wrote song lyrics, and boy, did this song vex us. Even more than the first line of Temptation by Wet Wet Wet. We had no idea what they were saying, so we made it up as we went along. Enjoy.

Never mind the Big Five - Beware the Dutch Eleven!

And that my friends, is just about right. Quietly, efficiently, and without fancy flounces and flourishes and fanfare, one of my four favoured teams has made it to the World Cup final! This is a family blog and some of my best friends are Uruguayan, but this I must say: suck it Uruguay!! Here is a short message for Luis Alberto Suarez: God, whom you invoked in your infamous triumph against Ghana, appears to love the Dutch a tad more than you:) Hee! I must say, the best moment of the night came when my son Kush, all of six and enjoying his first World Cup, said, in great excitement, Mummy look, look, its Maxi Pereira! And it was! Yes, we shall make a football addict of him yet. Give me the boy until he is seven, said the Jesuits, and I will give you the man. I say give me the Kushman at six, and I will give you a lifelong fanatic of the most beautiful of games!! In the meantime, handei Madzibaba Robben, handei Madzibaba van Bronkhorst, handei Madzibaba Sneijder. Go flying Dutchmen! In the words of their team slogan: never mind the Big Five - beware the Dutch Eleven!

On the death of Beryl Bainbridge

I learned today that Beryl Bainbridge died on Friday. This is one of those freak coincidences, on that day, I gave a friend who was over for a visit one of my favourite Bainbridges, Master Georgie, the masterful Crimean War novel that was shortlisted for the Booker in 1998. I am sorry to say the book made him highly anti-social as he could not put it down until he finished it.

As a reader, I loved Bainbridge's wit and great plotting, as a writer I am in awe of her attention to structure, an attention that never results in showiness. I loved Every Man For Himself, and I could not get over The Birthday Boys, which is probably my favourite of hers as it deals with the great Scott-Amundsen race to the Pole ... I developed a passion for Captain Scott in childhood, you see. I know Master Georgie best of her novels because I am currently writing a "slow reveal" novel like that, and I have been studying it to see how she does it.

Here are the first lines of the novel:

I was twelve years old the first time Master Georgie ordered me to stand stock still and not blink. My head was on a level with the pillow and he had me rest my hand on Mr. Hardy's shoulder: a finger-tip chill struck through the cloth of his white cotton shirt. It was a Saturday, the feast of the Assumption, and to stop my eyelids from fluttering, I pretended God would strike me blind if I let them, which is how I ended up looking so startled. Mr. Hardy didn't have to be told to keep still because he was dead.

She also sounds like she was great fun. Here is her friend Paul Bailey writing in the Guardian: "Her capacious sense of the ridiculous encompassed her own failings and misdemeanours, as when she mistook the Queen for Vera Lynn (both ladies were dressed in blue) at a Royal Academy reception. "Isn't this a boring party?" she asked the startled monarch, before being rapidly ushered out of the royal presence."

Hee!

My admiration for her shot up when I read somewhere that when she started a novel, she did not stop writing until she had finished it, and that she would often put in three or so months of non-stop round the clock writing to produce a complete first draft. This is confirmed in her Guardian obituary - Janet Watts writes: "Her discipline as a writer was intense. Each novel emerged from a few months in which she wrote through the nights, smoked a lot, slept and ate little. She constantly read aloud what she had produced, to get "the music of the prose" right, and in an alchemical process of cutting and perfecting, she would distil every dozen or so draft pages into one sheet without a single wasted word. The books that survived this surgery were short. In case anyone called them slight, she would quote Voltaire's apology when he wrote a long letter: "I didn't have time to make it shorter.""

Hee!

Her discipline, of course, explains her considerable output of 18 novels, 2 story collections and several essays. She will be missed, but happily for her many current fans, and for new ones, through her work, she is still very much with us.

I have no words for this image: well, I have some words, but not many

Apologies to AELTEC/ Pro Sport whose copyrighted photo above I have pinched from the Wimbledon website. I had to share this. This is one of the most moving images I have seen in a very long time. This is why I love sport.

Image: AELTEC/Pro Sport