That Palaeozoic trilobite groove

Poem for the week, 2 January 2023

That Palaeozoic trilobite groove

This is the age.
This is the Cambrian Period, man.
Not some fusty Archaean sludge.
It’s cool; it’s happenin'.
Deal with it, proto-grandpa. 

Hang with the 'bites.
Dig that exoskeletal gear.
Perfect for piercings and tattoos.
Hard rock, blind fury.
Rage against the marine! 

Screw limestone, bro.
You seen those protozoans there?
Long aeons crumbling into dust.
Live fast, die neo.
I’s not headin' their way, dude. 

Just get a life!
Three lobes good, two lobes bad. No sweat!
That evolution’s some good shit.
Don’t split, go sexual.
Make love not walls. Forevah!

First performed in March 2009 at Poetry & Jazz by the Finn-Brit Players, at Arkadia International Bookshop in Helsinki, Finland.

First published in 'magnetic resonance imaging' (buy here).

Imaging and footsteps

At first glance, the two volumes of poetry that I have recently self-published may not appear to be very closely connected.  They are, however, conceived as different sides of the same coin. To put it another way, Magnetic Resonance Imaging is the yin to the yang of Those Footsteps Behind.



Some of the material in Magnetic Resonance Imaging may be familiar to readers of this blog.  At a personal level, it represents "the Finland years" and was mostly written in the period 2005-2009.  The themes of pain and loss play a large role, whether physically or emotionally.  Moreover, the point of view is very much an inwardly directed gaze.  The intention is that this is enhanced by the use of the structure of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, as the music bounces around in the writer's mind.

On the other hand, the material in Those Footsteps Behind was, in chronological terms, written later. In this case, the writing represents the period 2012-2016. However, this is not necessarily synchronous with the time at which any events represented in the work took place.

The overarching themes now have become travel and time, and the point of view has become more outwardly focused. On the surface, the work is possibly more descriptive of physical landscapes than of emotional ones. The use of illustrative photographs, I hope, enhances this type of imagery. However, the poems in this case are intended to initiate at least some resonance in linking the concrete world of the traveller's footsteps to the intangible world of the traveller's experience.  Occasional echoes from other past and future travellers arise here and there to further muddy the mix.

The reader may choose to view the connections in different ways, of course: maybe not just inward-looking and outward-looking, but possibly pain and recovery, or shade and light.  Once beyond the writer's reach, words take on their own lives in a reader's hands, after all.  However, these two volumes will remain in the writer's mind as, if not twins, at least siblings.

"if they photographed my head they'd probably see her.
she's always there"
(Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

"life for us from this point on
means chasing lions in our pyjamas."
(Those Footsteps Behind)

As I like it

Barbers are becoming quite uncommon, it seems. I found a listing for a local barber in the modern e-world equivalent of the Yellow Pages, but he was shut. Hairdressers are beginning to dwindle, too, apparently.  So I passed by the braiding salon and ended up at a stylist. I think that must be vogue.  The lady was not from these parts, so we got chatting about what it's like to live your life in a strange country.

It's a conversation that I've had a few times before. One of the biggest talking points is usually the things that you miss the most.  In this regard, I haven't lived in my own country for a while, so I tend to think about my previous place of residence, too.  I can also give a couple of other places a passing mention.  As such, here are one or two things that I like in different countries.


The UK (my country of birth)

Pubs. Not surprising, perhaps, but true.  I have tried to analyse this, but it is difficult to get to the root of it.  British pubs are somehow unique.  In other countries, they become bars or something similar, and it's not the same thing.  I don't know what it is that does it.  It's not cosy furnishings, because I know several fine pubs in Edinburgh where the only seating is bare wood.  It's not dim lighting, because, heaven knows, I've been into some distinctly gloomy bars over the years. It's not even the beer, because British draught ale has become a popular import in many parts of the world. (Not here in Valdosta, though - where, I might mention, one waitress suggested to me that a local Georgia beer to try would be Guinness. But that's a different topic.) I know a pub when I walk into one.  I just have difficulty defining it.

News media.  This may be a little controversial post-Leveson, but I don't mean the puff-pastry tittle-tattle that replaces real news in some rags. The better news organisations in Britain still know a thing or two about investigative journalism, and many papers report the facts even if they don't sit neatly with the general editorial sympathies.  There is also a variety of views: left of centre, right of centre, and the plain old awkward squad.  I have not found the same breadth, coupled with the same hard-nosed questioning, in the mainstream anywhere else. Pick up a couple of weekend papers, and find a nice pub in which to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon: luxury!

Let's not get into Britain's leaking plumbing or creaking railway system. That would be tasteless.


Finland (my previous country of residence)

Sauna. I'm not sure how well this notion will travel for anyone not familiar with the Nordic countries.  Sauna is not a hot room where you go with your swimming trunks and a vague sense of naughtiness. You wouldn't wear clothes in the bath, would you? Get naked and relax. Get your steam on.  Life is not the same without it.

Doctors and nurses.  Which is not to say that health care is poor elsewhere, and maybe I was just lucky in Finland ... but with a combination of occupational health services and an insurance policy, it all seemed so easy.  Sure, it's not free at the point of delivery, as is traditional in the UK, but one big point for me is the idea of holistic well-being that seems so big in Finland. In some places, you are expected to just get the jab and walk straight out, for example.  I always found the care in Finland to be sympathetic and thorough. Two healthy thumbs up.

We will not dwell here on the long darkness of winter or the lack of air-conditioning in summer.


Bulgaria (a shout-out to some memories from years ago)

Hospitality.  I do not think that I've found any people so eagerly hospitable as the Bulgarians. I was invited into an incredible number of homes, even by hosts with whom I did not share a language.  It goes beyond buying a drink at a bar or a meal at a restaurant.  People opened their lives to me for long hours of nibbling salad and sipping vodka, and usually I couldn't leave without being given a bottle of home-made rakia or a package of meatballs or ... just something to keep that warm feeling alive.


The USA (where I have now landed - for the moment)

Grocery shopping.  I am still building my impressions stateside, but there is already one thing that I find myself thinking about when I'm elsewhere.  That is, how the food shops are always well stocked with a good range of ready-to-eat fresh fruit and vegetables.  This is not to say that the produce in Britain or Finland, for example, is not fresh, but it does tend to be more seasonal. It also tends to be less convenient. Maybe the truth is that I just like it when someone else does the washing, slicing, and dicing of fresh produce.  Perhaps it's my imagination, but cooking seems so much easier over here.

Intercultural indices of the breakfast egg

There I was, with two other naked blokes, talking about eggs.

No, really. If you're Finnish or if you've spent any significant time in Finland, the situation seems less foreign. It's a sauna thing, see. People discard their clothes to sit and sweat together, and pass the time in either perspiration-soaked silence or small talk.

This time it was small talk. Which meandered in the direction of intercultural diversity.

At this point, I should explain that I've just returned to Finland after a bout of globetrotting to and from the two Uniteds: Kingdom and States. The Kingdom is much as it ever was, and maybe much as it ever shall be. The States, on the other hand, is still an object of some cultural puzzlement.

Or to put it another way, the States makes me feel like an object of some cultural puzzlement.

An infamous misquotation hangs in the air, with the two same nations still divided by the same common language, and the authorship (Shaw or Wilde, both Irish) still unresolved. But at this moment, the pith seems to be epitomised by eggs.

Actually, I'm spreading the yolk somewhat. It's not an Anglo thing, it's European-North American intercultural diversity hanging like an improperly punched chad in the frontal lobe of my mind.

One much-regurgitated personal tale from the Bulgaria of old concerns my favourite menu item of the times: Хемъндекс без Яйце (that is, 'ham and eggs without egg').

The lack of said breakfast item in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall is neatly juxtaposed by the market saturation on the other side of the pond in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Lehman Brothers.

There still, the unwary European traveller can be befuddled by waitresses who, intent on earning their 20% tip, want to know whether the eggs are to be 'over easy' or 'sunny side up' (and whether the sausages are to be 'patty' or 'string'; and which of any number of variants of milk/cream/milk-cream mix is to be preferred).

And hence it strikes me, with not a little irony, that in Europe I may not understand what is said, but I do most often get the meaning. In America, where we have that common tongue, I can mostly tune in to what people say. The puzzle more often is what they mean.

Who's in awe of the IT guy?

So. Two stories.

The first story takes place in the coastal town of St Annes-on-Sea in north-western England. I have my mini-laptop with me, with its built-in webcam, but need a headset to go with Skype. One possible port available: USB.

So I walk into a self-proclaimed computer shop. There's a guy doing something technical in the workshop at the back. I decide to not waste his time and get straight to the point: "Hi, I'm looking for a USB headset."

"Pfirrrrpp," replies the guy, inhaling through his teeth in the manner of a middle-aged man caught masquerading as a specialist. "I've never seen one of those in the catalogue."

I resist the obvious reply ("Have you ever looked?") and believe his assurances that such fanciful technology doesn't exist.

Except that I don't. Instead I go to the shop over the road.

This place is different. Not much on the shelves, but two eager looking chaps behind the counter. I try a different approach. "Hi. Look, I've got this headset with the audio in/out jacks but my laptop only has a USB port. What do you think I should do?"

Hardly a moment's pause from the younger of the two techies. Then: "Have you thought about getting a USB headset?"

I play the part of the naïve technovirgin. Oh, does such a thing exist? How wonderful and how clever you are. Yes, if you can get me one by tomorrow morning, that would be perfect.

Job done.

Now, before all the Finns start laughing at how backward the British Isles can be in matters technical, let's cross-cut to Espoo, Finland.

Second story. Having got all Skype-happy on the young upstart mini-laptop, it would be nice to do the same on good ol' desktop. Headphones are no problem. I've got the ones with the audio in/out jacks, you know. But how about a webcam?

Hmmm. Webcam.

I walk into an electronics shop (expert [sic!], with a wonderfully web-savvy lower-case logo, for those who know) and find a USB plug-and-play webcam, no software necessary, no requirement specifications listed on the packet. I wander over to the counter and ask casually if this will work on Windows 2000.

The look the sales assistant shoots at his colleague tells me instantly that I am a contemptible technocaveman.

"Pfirrrrpp," the young guy inhales. Here we go again. No, he doesn't reckon it will. He has the schadenfreude smile of someone who senses that a painful clean install of Vista is imminent.

"Is there a webcam for Windows 2000," I persist, wielding my brontosaurus bone in self-defence. No, no. You need Windows XP or ... (significant pause) ... newer. So I believe his assurances.

Except that I don't. Instead I go upstairs to the department store (Anttila, for those who care). Avoiding the look of the sales assistant, which isn't too difficult as he's browsing facebook or something, I scan the shelves. Clearance offer on a webcam, special low price. Suits ... *drum roll* ... Windows 2000.

Thank goodness there's always an IT guy around when you need one, eh?

Troubling times

I interrupt the quiet slumber of this blog with an urgent message for my current country of residence:
Oi! Finland! Wake up!!!

Yes, I know I've given you a bit of stick on here in the past, Finland. But usually, when push comes to shove, if someone else starts giving you lip, I'm there to defend you and tell them all about your good side. I've also reeled out some of the lines that you like so much, about how other countries don't do any better and all that.

But really! The last couple of months have been a bit silly, haven't they?

The international news media picked up on two stories from your snowy shores this Christmas. One was a former ski jumper allegedly trying to murder his wife, and the other was the actual murder of several people at my local shopping centre. That's on top of your recent history of other gun crime.

Not only that, but the last two times I've come over here to see you, your airport arrivals hall has been jammed with unclaimed luggage. Plus the central metro station in your capital city is closed for an unspecified time due to water damage, and now there's a runaway train lodged in the hotel wall at your principal railway station.

I can't leave you alone for a moment, can I?

I know it wasn't always like this, and I know you have a history of good Nordic efficiency, but I have more to tell you, and it's not pretty.

You see, several people whom I met on my round-the-world trip were mumbling unkind words about Finnish companies ignoring environmental regulations in Australia and South America. And don't forget that it was a Finnish tourist who tried to hack a piece off one of the sacred moai on Easter Island not so long ago.

You think that's funny?

Sorry, Finland, but you're fast developing an international image problem.

Sort it out, will you?!

The European work ethic

Everyone likes a good public holiday, right? Well, not governments and corporations, of course. And especially not in the North, it seems.

This point came home to me again over the last couple of weeks. All Saints' Day, on 1 November, is a Roman Catholic holiday, fair enough. So it is no surprise to see it observed as such in countries such as France, Italy, and Spain. (But not in Ireland, if someone can explain that to me without blaming the English.)

Finland and Sweden, although not Roman Catholic by statute, try hard to be equitable but chicken out at the last and place the holiday on the nearest Saturday, which is nice for shop workers but makes life difficult for everyone else. Though it looks good on paper. (And as a side note, Finnish law has this disingenuous habit of counting Saturdays in its quota of annual leave, which makes employers sound more generous with holidays than they really are.)

Then the UK ... ah, the UK ... not only ignores All Saints' Day completely, but also ignores Hallowe'en as an opportunity to make vacational amends, and even ignores wicked ol' Guy Fawkes as a reason to give people an extra feel-good winter day off.

And by the way, is the UK the only country in the world to celebrate the day when the revolution didn't happen? Never mind. It's obviously not a real holiday.

And in Finland, we get Saturday off, so there!

What?

D'oh!

Bills, bills, bills

Last week I received a bill for a lovely ride that I had in an ambulance two months ago. (Actually, the first ambulance that arrived didn't carry any painkillers, so they had to call a second. And still they charge me. A tax-payer. But let's not go there again. For now.)

Today I received a bill for the accident and emergency treatment at the hospital the same day. No doubt it includes a special payment for the exclusive trolley-top view of the corridor.

I was, once more, amazed. Firstly, that the bill is in English. (Well done, them!) Secondly, that they obviously have a sense of humour for someone who has just passed a landmark birthday.

People, people, everywhere

It is little more than two months ago that my companion and I returned from our Indian adventure. As has been noted, the whole experience was so intense that some substantial processing time is needed to internalise the things that we saw and did. Add to that the various setbacks that have surfaced since our return to Finland, and you have a reason why it has taken so long to blog anything much about the trip.

Now, however, I flip to the pages of my travel notebook. On the road out of Delhi, I scrawled the words "wall-to-wall people; what do they all do?"

The sheer number of people was quite amazing. Take one example from the desert city of Jaisalmer. At the hotel, one of the staff (a charming older chap known to the rest of the staff as 'the boy', who would engage you in pleasant conversation for as long as it took you to twig that a tip was expected) guided us to the hotel gift shop. The lights were off and all was quiet. It was undoubtedly shut. Except that it wasn't. Immediately we approached, the lights snapped on and we suddenly had four or five shop assistants showing us clothing and souvenirs.

I was reminded of the children's television series Mr Benn, and the quote "as if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared." I have no idea how these guys spent the doubtless long hours without customers. They must simply have been sitting and waiting, because there was no delay to fetch them, as there would have been in the West. Furthermore, whereas in Europe you may expect one or two people to be doing a task, in India that number is easily doubled or tripled or more.

Such an abundance of humanity must surely lead to a different view of life than in a more sparsely populated country. In Finland, for example, I experience crowds as aggressively indifferent places. (Yes, that is an oxymoron; but yes, it does make sense.) On the other hand, in Finland, a group of people is unlikely to form around you to just stare, as happened to us straight away in India, when we entered the Jumma Masjid mosque in Delhi with our guide. Yes, that can be intimidating, even if the stares are merely inquisitive.

All told, though, for an Indian in India, with friends and family all around, the feeling in a crowd must be something quite at odds with that of a European in Europe. Perhaps the feeling of constant familiar company is warm. Perhaps the feeling is supportive. Perhaps the regular Indian seems happier than the regular European because they are so often in this sort of situation.

Perhaps I'll never know.

Take a large pinch of salt

It is possible to rely too much on guidebooks. If the Lonely Planet guide to Rajasthan is to be believed, almost every step one takes is overshadowed by the danger of a scam, an illness, unbearable weather, or an environmental crisis.

Maybe it's like that. I don't yet know. But you can sometimes get a better sense of proportion if you go back to look at guidebooks of places that you know a little better.

Here are some excerpts from The Rough Guide to Scandinavia (1993 reprint of the 1988 edition). Don't blame me for the title; I know that Finland is Nordic really. The country was less well known in Britain then, and this was my solitary beacon of information when I first arrived, all those years ago.

On second thoughts, maybe the warnings about India are all true and the trip is just what I need to rekindle my appreciation of a quiet life.

Imatra
"Imatra has little to set it apart and you'll make more of your time by passing right through it...."

I've been to Imatra only once. The hotel restaurant closed for lunch. Other than that, I couldn't possibly comment. Although I know at least one chap who may.

Kajaani
"... idling is what you're likely to be doing if you stay here overnight. The problem of complete boredom is no less severe for the local youth, who've taken to lining the pavements of Kauppakatu in their hundreds, waiting for something to happen."

The highlight, apparently, was watching the logs floating along the river to the pulp mill. I heard that the mill has closed, so I sneakily checked out the most recent Lonely Planet guide in a bookshop. There is no mention of the mill. But it did say that Kajaani is now widely considered the most racist town in Finland. I have never been to Kajaani, but things are obviously not improving.

Kokkola
"For what it's worth, the tourist office ... can point you towards the only remotely interesting local sight: the English Park ... A much more welcome sight, though, is the train station...."

I was a regular visitor to Kokkola for a couple of years, on work assignments. This write-up is a little unfair. But only a little.

Rovaniemi
"An administrative centre just south of the Arctic Circle ... tourists who arrive on day trips from Helsinki expecting sleighs and tents will be disappointed by a place that looks as Lappish as a palm tree."

No, no. I like Rovaniemi and find it quite charming. Though that may be because I've been fortunate in my companions, just proving that it's the people who make a place special.

Varkaus
"There's little incentive to stay longer than you have to in Varkaus...."

I've been to Varkaus only once. I have no intention of returning.

Oh, and for those who know:

Helsinki
Pub Angleterre: "Utterly Finnish ... good for a laugh and cultural disorientation."

Well, yes.

Random numbers

By 19:30 on 11 July 2007, my blog had been viewed 4,065 times.

By 19:30 on 11 July 2007, my Flickr stream had been viewed 5,514 times.

By 31 December 2006, 15,512 copies of my book had been sold.

On 10 October 2000, The Washington Post claimed that 1 in 140 people react severely enough to have to stop taking mefloquine, the malaria prophylaxis that I have just started.

On 11 July 2007, the BBC 24-hour weather forecast for Udaipur in Rajasthan, India, was 35°C maximum temperature with 100% relative humidity.

The 2007 eniro telephone directory online lists 193 hairdressers in Espoo and 825 in Helsinki.

Where do hairdressers come from?

For some time I have been fascinated by the number of hairdressers in Finland. Where do they all come from and whom do they all perm? I still have the Yellow Pages from when I lived in Jyväskylä, in Central Finland. There were 146 hairdressers listed in the Jyväskylä region in 1998. Compare that to the 24 dentists or the 51 electricians. (Or the 6 psychotherapists. Or the 1 theatre. One!)

There seems to be the same peculiar overclipping in Leppävaara, the district of Espoo where I live now. To check this properly, I decided to relive the days of secondary-school geography fieldwork to see what the statistics show.

This is a raw list of the shop-fronts that I pass on my 15-minute walk home from the railway station. It does not account for the main shopping centre nor the main road, so is not a survey of Leppävaara as such, but let's take it as random and therefore vaguely typical. Get your bar charts ready. Here goes:

1 aquarium,
1 beauty parlour,
1 chemist,
1 diving-equipment shop,
1 doctor's surgery,
1 electrical engineer,
1 estate agent,
1 flea market,
1 gift shop,
1 gym,
1 osteopath,
1 solicitor's office,
1 tattoo and body-piercing parlour,
1 Thai massage parlour

2 banks,
2 dental surgeries/laboratories,
2 restaurants,
2 supermarkets,
2 video rental shops

3 kindergartens,
3 pizza take-aways,
3 pubs

and

8 hairdressers

Granted, Leppävaara is quite well-stocked if you're looking for a Quattro Stagioni to go, a tropical fish for your collection, and a quick rub-down. But that ratio of hairdressers is alarming. And I'm sure there were more of them a couple of years ago, before the beauty parlour and the osteopath moved in.

So what's it all about? I looked around. I did not detect a particular coiffuredness among the local populace (many of whom were sitting on benches, bottles in hand). I remain puzzled.

However, this little outing did lay to rest another idea that I had, which was that Finland also boasts an unseemly wealth of florists and undertakers. But maybe they're on the other side of the tracks.

What I will do this summer

A certain breed of Finn greets midsummer, arguably the biggest national holiday in these parts, with gleeful melancholy. They can be heard to bleat that the days get shorter from now on and winter will soon be with us.

No, no, no! Midsummer is when summer begins. I'm still psychologically tuned to the British school holiday cycle, where work goes on into July and breaks for August. The best is yet to come.

So what will I do with my hard-earned days and cash this time round? Well, big plans are afoot. Last year I went west. This year I go east.

First up, towards the end of July, is India. It is maybe not the sort of place that I would normally consider, and maybe not the sort of place one should go alone. It will be the monsoon season: hot and damp. I've got my visa and have started my vaccinations. The malaria tablets come with a warning of possible psychotic episodes. Which may be handy when suffering from stomach cramps and being held to ransom by a taxi driver in the middle of the Thar desert. But two weeks doing the Golden Triangle of Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur, plus other bits of Rajasthan, sounds so exotic, so unique, who could say no?

Second up, after a few days of recovery time in Helsinki, is Japan. I have amazed myself by going for a second destination that is likely to serve severe culture shock. Normally the flights are hideously expensive, but I stumbled on a package that includes the travel and six hotel nights for about half the usual price of an air ticket. It was a sign. It was to be mine. A week in Osaka. My August meditation will be Nipponese.

A life not remembered

A short while ago, good friends and fellow Prima Donnas keltanen and hannamime posted childhood images of themselves. As a dedicated follower of fashion, naturally I had to do the same.

I wish I could remember more about those days. I was born in Swansea and until the age of four lived on the Gower peninsula. (And although I'm four in the picture, it was actually taken on holiday at Loch Ness in Scotland.)

In theory it should have been an idyllic childhood: a small coastal town with a friendly local community, in an officially designated area of outstanding natural beauty. Family stories of that time are populated by kindly Welsh ladies called Mrs Jones, and feature endless afternoons running along wide, sandy beaches. Alas, I remember no stories for myself, just occasional images.

However, I do get sensory echoes of those times: the salty tang of the smell of the sea, and the plaintive cry of distant seagulls (the word 'plaintive' must surely have been coined specifically for seagulls). Even the primal feeling of unease in the gut as a storm brews somewhere over the water.

There are occasional faint reminders of these in Helsinki. Some seagulls certainly sing the same song. Others, however, are city scavengers that do not provide the same romantic resonance as the ocean-goers circling high overhead. Furthermore, the Baltic Sea, although noble in its own way, is brackish rather than salt. The air is not fully flavoured with the sea in the manner of my childhood.

I don't do watersports and I don't care for hours of roasting on the beach. But for deeper, less explicable reasons, sometimes I feel that, at the heart of my subconscious, I want my seaside back.

Reasons to be cheerful

Nowhere and nobody is perfect, and it is easy to be negative in blogs. Or at least I have found it so recently. Let me take up the matti challenge and try to achieve some balance. It takes the form of one of those dreaded lists. Things about Finland that are just great.

1. Summer nights
A cliché maybe, but I still remember the wonder of walking down the main street in Tampere in full daylight at 4 a.m. Even now, further south in Helsinki, I get a buzz out of being able to read a newspaper in natural light at midnight. In June and July, that is.

2. Lapland blue
You stand under the clear blue sky with the temperature at twenty below freezing and with the sun just peeping over the horizon. The land is flat and open all around, and the snow is bathed in deepest blue. There is total silence, apart from the occasional rustle of a reindeer. You feel as if you are in a magic spell.

3. Smoke sauna
A rare treat these days, but worth waiting for. Wood sauna is wonderful and a distinct step up from electric. Smoke sauna, an immersion in steam and the smell and feel of wood smoke, is another world entirely.

4. Aki Kaurismäki films
I have been critical of mainstream theatre, but Kaurismäki hits the spot. This is where it's at. My current favourite is Kauas pilvet karkaavat (Drifting Clouds), which achieves an unfair amount of gritty optimism.

5. 24-hour hot running water
Any time, day or night, a hot shower for as long as you want. Air conditioning is another matter, but that's pre-empting the next list!

More sex please, we're Finnish

Yesterday I went with a companion to see A Streetcar Named Desire at the Finnish National Theatre.

Tennessee Williams wrote almost literal bucketloads of passion into this play. It comes as a constant buzz of electricity; hot, red-blooded, sexy, and dangerous. It was almost inevitable, then, that my concerns about the use of sex in the Finnish theatre would resurface.

I have an inkling that theatrical tendencies such as those that I have blogged about are related to ideas of rebellion and liberation; ideas of being 'free'. But when the form of rebellion is dictated and repeated, it ceases to be rebellion. When freedom of expression becomes a necessity to act in certain ways, the freedom becomes illusory and elusive.

Yes, Stanley was well sculpted. Yes, he emerged from a soaking in the shower in nothing but wet, white briefs. But we might as well have been watching laundry on a washing line. It was a display of theatrical bravado, but the raw emotional spark was not there. It was sex but not sexy. The technique was perfect, but the heart was missing.

Where does the passion come from, and why is there so little of it in 'liberated' Finnish theatre? Come to that, why is there so little in Finland?

But my time was well spent. I have been very lucky in my artistic company recently, and yesterday my companion was simply delectable.

Finland, Finland, Finland

That's almost it. Enough of this arrogant wasteland, already.

I have now had two medical professionals questioning the wisdom of me living in Finland. This is not your average Jussi being pissed at the pub, but during consultation with two qualified practitioners (one Dutch, one Swedish) who expressed concern for my health and welfare.

On top of that, the company occupational health care centre has now ordered all workers at my office to an immediate health examination. If it's just a vague concern about air quality, why is the message posted as urgent and the check strongly urged, which I take as a Finnish understatement for mandatory?

As I said: Finland, that's almost it. You're on a formal warning.

Fortune-telling (2)

As well as the gypsy palmistry, we have the results of a traditional Finnish method of reading the New Year's runes. This involves melting a small horseshoe-shaped piece of tin and tipping the molten metal into a bucket of cold water. The shape of the resulting lump reveals images that tell the tale of the year ahead.

Anna MR was master of ceremonies. The shadows of my tin mostly resembled a quill, a mushroom, a carnation, and something distinctly phallic.

I leave interpretation to you, dear reader.

The kastike conspiracy

My Finnish is not as good as it should be, although I can sometimes get by in an emergency. However, I do know enough to occasionally eavesdrop on buses and trains, to find out what everyone is talking about.

It requires concentration on my part, and I have become startled to discover that many conversations that I tune into seem to involve the word 'kastike', meaning sauce or dressing for food.

So what's all this about? Either everyone in Finland is forever discussing gravy, or it's a secret code for "shut up, the foreigner's listening!"

My balcony's barren summer

The coming of autumn in Finland makes me more melancholic than it should. The Nordic climate is so schizophrenic, with nature's heightened summer recklessness and deep winter reclusiveness, that passing from one to the other cannot but be traumatic.

The box on my balcony failed once again to yield any flora this year. I followed the instructions carefully, planting the right number of bulbs, at the right time for the latitude, the right way up, with the right amount of soil, providing the right quantities of water. No joy.

Now the sunny September days carry the threat of things to come, with a chill bite lurking in the air. The box, unfulfilled, is emptied once more.