Fiasol On the Go

Fiasol is an eight-year-old traveller. She celebrated her birthday in pouring rain in a trailer tent in the east of Iceland and gave everyone on the campsite a piece of cake and hot chocolate. Fiasol says that she's spent half her life sleeping in a tent but Mum says that's just rubbish. In the hallway at home is a small suitcase that nobody is allowed to touch. Fiasol has stuffed everything into it she might need, should she suddenly have to go travelling.

"This family is always going off here there and everywhere," she says. "I may as well have my suitcase ready if I need to whizz off somewhere. One simply lives in a suitcase, always off somewhere, such a nomad," she says, shaking her head precociously. She has sometimes heard her grandmother say this when she and her grandfather come back from the Canary Islands.

"You don't even know what a nomad is," says Pippa laughing.

"Yeah, a nomad is a wanderer and I am a wanderer," replied Fiasol, pleased with herself.

Fiasol still lives on Green Grove in Grasby with her mum, dad and her sisters Pippa and Bidda. She also lives there with the noisybags and lazybones Hansina and Jensina who bark non-stop when they're not sleeping. Then they lie on their backs in the basket in the kitchen, snoring like little monsters.

One day there was an awful lot of rain in Green Grove and Fiasol was bored. She painted her face to look like an American native, using yellow, green and blue face paints, and then she implored her mum to let her paint her too.

"Please Mum, let me change you into a native American chief," Fiasol begged, while her mum kept working on her computer.

"No, absolutely not," Mum muttered, preoccupied.

"So you're just a boring old hag," said Fiasol moodily. "Can't be bothered, don't know how to play and don't want to do anything that's fun."