Poor old blog has been neglected for quite a while so I thought better check in just to say Hello, Bonjour, Jambo, Buongiorno, Buenos dias, Grüß dich, Yassou or et cetera, et cetera et cetera as the King of Siam says.
The silence is due to the current book I am writing and hoping to finish by the end of March at the latest.
It’s arrogant to believe that anybody wants to read an account of the first thirty years of my life, but I’m writing it anyway because I have to. It’s been simmering for several years like a boil, and it won’t go away until it’s burst.
You might think that memories from more than 50 years ago would fade, but some don’t. They grow stronger. At the beginning of December I began the rewrite of the original manuscript I wrote several years ago, but it brought me so low that I put it away until after the New Year.
I prevaricated about restarting, and concentrated instead on two other writing projects. But, as my mother used to say: “This won’t get the baby a new bonnet.” And so I began again in earnest a couple of weeks ago. Since then despite taking sleeping tablets I’ve been waking at silly o’clock and unable to get back to sleep. That’s why if you had passed the house at 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 o’clock some mornings you’d have seen through the crack in the shutters that the light was on, and might have heard the tapping of the keyboard.
It’s the most emotionally exhausting project I can ever remember, because you cannot write dispassionately about the events that shaped your life. But hopefully once it’s finished, the boil will burst. So for now it’s back to life in Kenya in the late 1950s, exactly the half-way point.
Tapestry panel depicting Colonel Grogan at Gertrude’s Garden Children’s Hospital
Image courtesy of EAWL.org (East African Women’s League)
Government Road, Nairobi , 1950s
Image courtesy of: Sikh-heritage.co.uk
Machakos.
Image courtesy of EAWL.org (East African Women’s League)
Bye. Au revoir. Kwaheri. Arrivederci. Hasta la vista. Auf wiedersehen. Athio. Or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as the King of Siam says.
Yes, it would be emotionally sapping…but it looks to be that until you get it out of your system you won’t know any peace…
Looking forward to it!
Dear Susie, I read a line in an interview in which you mentioned your live in Kenya and I knew you would once write a book about this. We look forward to reading it and we wish you good luck and inspiration !
Hello Marga
Thank you for visiting my blog, and yes, I am now writing a book partly about the years I spent living in Kenya. I am trying to finish it by the end of March. Thank you also for your good wishes!
With kind regards
Susie