“Do you know where you are? You are in the jungle!”
Axl Rose
——————————————
Geraldine García Collins (46) considers herself a normal person, but her schedule barely fits in one day, and that’s not too normal.
It will be because, as a child, he was dedicated to the heptathlon: he was a specialist athlete in combined events.
A heptathlete jumps and throws and hurdles and runs short and medium distances. You don’t decide definitively on anything and you eventually decide on everything, it depends on how you look at it, and when you transfer all that to ordinary life, then everything proves it.
Today he continues to compete as an athlete, no matter how many years pass.
And write books.
And she works: she is the director of marketing and sales at Farmapremium.
Sometimes, Geraldine García Collins sends me a photo and there she shines, with another medal around her neck, champion of Catalonia master in longitude (“4.95m and with five nulls, you have to go to the bag”, she tells me) or in height (“I jumped 1.44m, I knocked down 1.47m with my foot”).
(He is in Jerez this weekend: the magnificent Chapín stadium hosts the Spanish Veterans Championships).
If I ask him about his schedule, he makes a poker face and answers:
-At five I’m up.
And what are you doing at that time?
–At half past five I’m already writing at my desk.
He opens his backpack and shows me his first creation: Welcome to Axl and the Magic Garden (Rocky Books), with illustrations by Namibia Coronado.
And who is Axl?
–Axl Rose, the lead singer of Guns N’ Roses. I assume you know the group, right? he asks me.
I know him, I know him.
–With Welcome to Axl and the magical garden I intend to bring rock closer to the little ones. I incorporate winks with quotes from songs, like November Rain or Welcome to the jungle.
(To compose Welcome to the jungle, Axl Rose had been inspired by an encounter with a homeless man who he and a friend had lived in New York; trying to scare him, the homeless man had called out to them: “Do you know where you are? You’re in the jungle!”).
‘Does all this come to mind first thing in the morning?’
–My mother (Helen) helped me translate the book into English. I have given a copy to Axl Rose himself. Last year I went to Seville to a concert of his band and I stayed to wait for him afterwards. I saw him appear and I ran after him and called out to him: ‘I’ve got something for you!’. He stopped and I told him the story of the book. He signed one for me and I signed another for him. I have the photo!
(He has it, it’s on his Instagram).
–My daughters (Sophie, 11, and Joanna, 9) have read the book. They took it to school and read it in class. At first, the teacher was suspicious. She thought it was a Guns N’Roses biopic. Since she was surprised by the story, they ended up playing the band’s music in class and imitating Slash.
“And you still get up at five?”
-Clear! Sometimes I do the exercises for my writing course. And I’m stuck in another book. I was thinking of dedicating it to Queen, but I’ll dedicate it to Elton John. The character is better.
And how long do you write?
“More or less, until six.” Then I change and go to the gym. In the mornings I move weights for an hour and a half and in the afternoons I go to the athletics tracks in Gavà or El Prat, or wherever my coach, Àlex Codina, tells me.
–¿…?
–On the slopes, I often meet my daughters. They are athletes in Gavà. They don’t really like to see me around. If I get close, they say: ‘Mommy, go away’.
And in between, work.
There are many things, aren’t they? I don’t watch TV.
–¿Ni Netflix?
–Bufff, the series are so well done that they hook you. I prefer not to go into that. My husband, Klaas, is also involved in his things. His passion is the guitar. He has two rock groups. When he comes back from work, he goes with them.
(Actually, there are characters out there who can’t stop for a single moment.)
