began wiping Mamma’s skirt with paper napkins from the holder on the table as she tried to console her sister. ‘Hush now, it’s not so bad. We’ll just wipe you off here and then go into the loo to wash off the rest with water. Your skirt will dry in no time in the sun. You’ll see.’
The other children and I sat in horrified silence as Mamma sobbed. She kept switching between feeling sorry for herself and yelling at me.
‘Why does everything always have to get wrecked? Why can’t I ever be happy for just one minute?’
I noticed that the people at the other tables were staring at Mamma with a mixture of surprise and alarm. And then, to my dismay, I suddenly felt something running down my legs. When Mamma saw it too, she got even angrier.
‘So now you’re peeing your pants like a baby? Haven’t you already done enough? Haven’t you? You stupid sodding brat! You always ruin everything – absolutely everything!’
Terrified, I sat frozen to my chair, incapable of moving. In one hand I still held the empty cone.
Mamma was silent and withdrawn the whole way back to Grandma’s flat. I never got to see the elephants. I would never visit Skansen again.
SUNDAY STARTED OFF slowly at the editorial offices of Regional News in Visby. Johan Berg rarely had to work on Sundays; it only happened a few times a year. What annoyed him most was that on this particular day, the editors in Stockholm had decided that they didn’t need any stories from Gotland. The news reports would consist entirely of stories compiled at headquarters on the mainland. Having to sit in the office when nothing was going on seemed to Johan like the stupidest waste of resources. But there’s no use trying to second-guess the managers of Swedish TV, he thought morosely. He really could have used a few more hours’ sleep.
At the moment he was sitting at his desk, having his morning coffee and eating a sandwich. He listlessly rocked his chair, casting a critical eye at the cramped quarters of the editorial office. He let his gaze wander over the bookshelves, the computers, the bulletin boards and the windows overlooking a park. He also glanced at the stacks of jumbled documents and the map of Gotland, which always gave him a guilty conscience because there were so many small parishes that they almost never visited.
Although Gotland was Sweden’s largest island, the distance between the northern tip of Fårö and the southernmost district, Hoburgen, was no more than 180 kilometres. And the island was barely 50 kilometres at its widest. That’s why we ought to be doing more, thought Johan. We should be covering more of the island.
As a reporter for Regional News in Stockholm, with Gotland as his beat, he’d become a bit jaded after so many years of meeting deadlines and working with inadequate resources. Although things had definitely improved : they’d moved from a musty cubbyhole of an office into the new and modern building that housed Swedish TV and Radio, only a ten-minute walk from the centre of Visby. The premises were admirably suited to their jobs, but they’d been forced to change their routines. They’d had to become much more organized. Now they set themselves goals, and pursued a specific strategy in their work. Usually he or his cameraperson, Pia Lilja, decided which stories to investigate, yet, since they were the only two employees in the local editorial office, it was difficult to find time to do the necessary research. Their boss in Stockholm, Max Grenfors, wanted them to deliver a story every day in a steady stream so that he had no problem filling the TV news programmes. He preferred their reports to be no more than two minutes long, which was considered just right in terms of newsworthiness and relevance, since the further away from Stockholm the programme ventured, the less important the news was deemed. At least that was how Grenfors viewed things. Johan couldn’t even count the number of times he’d beaten his head
The other children and I sat in horrified silence as Mamma sobbed. She kept switching between feeling sorry for herself and yelling at me.
‘Why does everything always have to get wrecked? Why can’t I ever be happy for just one minute?’
I noticed that the people at the other tables were staring at Mamma with a mixture of surprise and alarm. And then, to my dismay, I suddenly felt something running down my legs. When Mamma saw it too, she got even angrier.
‘So now you’re peeing your pants like a baby? Haven’t you already done enough? Haven’t you? You stupid sodding brat! You always ruin everything – absolutely everything!’
Terrified, I sat frozen to my chair, incapable of moving. In one hand I still held the empty cone.
Mamma was silent and withdrawn the whole way back to Grandma’s flat. I never got to see the elephants. I would never visit Skansen again.
SUNDAY STARTED OFF slowly at the editorial offices of Regional News in Visby. Johan Berg rarely had to work on Sundays; it only happened a few times a year. What annoyed him most was that on this particular day, the editors in Stockholm had decided that they didn’t need any stories from Gotland. The news reports would consist entirely of stories compiled at headquarters on the mainland. Having to sit in the office when nothing was going on seemed to Johan like the stupidest waste of resources. But there’s no use trying to second-guess the managers of Swedish TV, he thought morosely. He really could have used a few more hours’ sleep.
At the moment he was sitting at his desk, having his morning coffee and eating a sandwich. He listlessly rocked his chair, casting a critical eye at the cramped quarters of the editorial office. He let his gaze wander over the bookshelves, the computers, the bulletin boards and the windows overlooking a park. He also glanced at the stacks of jumbled documents and the map of Gotland, which always gave him a guilty conscience because there were so many small parishes that they almost never visited.
Although Gotland was Sweden’s largest island, the distance between the northern tip of Fårö and the southernmost district, Hoburgen, was no more than 180 kilometres. And the island was barely 50 kilometres at its widest. That’s why we ought to be doing more, thought Johan. We should be covering more of the island.
As a reporter for Regional News in Stockholm, with Gotland as his beat, he’d become a bit jaded after so many years of meeting deadlines and working with inadequate resources. Although things had definitely improved : they’d moved from a musty cubbyhole of an office into the new and modern building that housed Swedish TV and Radio, only a ten-minute walk from the centre of Visby. The premises were admirably suited to their jobs, but they’d been forced to change their routines. They’d had to become much more organized. Now they set themselves goals, and pursued a specific strategy in their work. Usually he or his cameraperson, Pia Lilja, decided which stories to investigate, yet, since they were the only two employees in the local editorial office, it was difficult to find time to do the necessary research. Their boss in Stockholm, Max Grenfors, wanted them to deliver a story every day in a steady stream so that he had no problem filling the TV news programmes. He preferred their reports to be no more than two minutes long, which was considered just right in terms of newsworthiness and relevance, since the further away from Stockholm the programme ventured, the less important the news was deemed. At least that was how Grenfors viewed things. Johan couldn’t even count the number of times he’d beaten his head
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