Last year, having hit 35, I did a web page about April 26. Desperate to stay awake today, I was googling people who shared my precise date and year of birth, and came up with a few obscure celebrities who I had not heard of – the musician Green Velvet, born Curtis Alan JonesWWF wrestler Kane, born Glen Jacobs aka
Then I came home, tried a slightly different Google, and to my astonishment realised that there was in fact someone who I knew of, who in fact I had quite close links with, who was also born on 26 April 1967, though in sunny Santa Monica, California, rather than in damp and not-yet-troubled Belfast. Like me, she always had a strong interest in politics; unlike me, she actually did her first degree in it, graduating from Stanford in 1989 and then getting a job with the National Democratic Institute for International AffairsFulbright Scholarship as an excuse to be in South Africa in the run-up to the first ever multi-racial elections due to take place in 1994. Amy Biehl never saw those elections, though she had worked hard for them to take place; on August 25, 1993, driving through a South African township, she was dragged from her car in a racially motivated attack and murdered.
That was just over ten years ago. Anne and I were looking forward to getting married at the start of October. I was just getting re-engaged in Northern Irish politics, barely aware of where Bosnia was, let alone the other countries that have become part of my life since then. As I jiggled the baby on my lap this evening, trying to read the website of the Amy Biehl Foundation, I realised how lucky I am to have had the last ten years of my life; and also how proud I am of the work that I do, which is probably about the same as Amy Biehl would have been doing if she were still alive. Over the summer break I had some doubts about whether I really wanted to continue trying to make the world a better place, or whether in fact I should sell my soul and find a more lucrative and less demanding job. Thse doubts are now beginning to dispel.
Basically, I do the work I do because I’m good at it and mainly I enjoy it. Yesterday I was invited to argue with the Bosnian prime minister and foreign minister at a public meeting and then went on to brief a senior Euro-politician about the situation in the Balkans. Today I’ve been emailing various of the ambassadors I met in Vienna over the last week to find out what the latest is in the Moldovan peace process. I love it when it’s going well, and if I were only sleeping a bit better I would be able to maintain a more balanced perspective.
I have yet to be disappointed by Ian Rankin’s fiction, which is somewhat unusual for such a prolific author.
I liked Hand’s Waking the Moon, but I also know people who hated it — and I can’t really predict who will end up on each side. It’s a very particular kind of world.