The Padre wore a dark suit with a white dog collar. He was a tall man and his dark form loomed large over the door of the terraced house in Southsea. He offered me his hand and held onto my palm for so long I felt trapped by his grasp. But he continued gazing into my eyes and smiling … [Read more...]
Finns can’t cope with ice – shock!
I've had some disturbing news from Finland: some 50 vessels of various kinds are stuck in the ice around the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden.During the most severe winter weather Northern Europe has experienced, this sounds a perfectly reasonable state of affairs. Expect … [Read more...]
Finnish guilt
I had a wonderful time in Helsinki last weekend. (You may have noticed...?) Although my family now live elsewhere, this city was home to me during my teenage years. I also went to university here, so this is a very special place for me. The main purpose of this trip was to see Daughter who's working … [Read more...]
How I came to be in England – Part 20
It wasn't until June that year of the Falkland's War in 1982 that I and the Englishman finally managed to see each other. We'd been apart for four long months, during which I'd feared for my submariner's life my every waking hour. He telephoned me very rarely. When the news of the sinking of the HMS … [Read more...]
That awful expression
I'm told what I'm going through is called 'Empty Nesting'. But I'm not a bird. I do not nest, I have no feathers of my own (only expensively acquired ones on some of my garments), have no wings (that I admit to) and I've not got a long beak (nose is a different matter).Still, my last baby bird has … [Read more...]
How I came to be in England – Part 15
I was back in Finland at my father’s place on January 4th 1982. It was Monday morning and I was tired from the travelling. First the late night flight from London, then the overnight ferry from Stockholm. I’d hardly slept on the free bunk bed, even though it had been a quiet crossing.My father was … [Read more...]
Landlocked
I've always had a thing about islands. I was born in Tampere, an industrial city pegged between two of the 190,000 lakes in Finland, Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi. When my family moved to Stockholm, we didn't get very far from water. The capital of Sweden is made up of beautiful islands. But as a Finn I … [Read more...]
How I came to be in England – Part one
'Englishmen are boring,' I told my then boyfriend. It was his third phone call. He didn't like that I was getting ready for a British Embassy cocktail party in honour of a Royal Naval visit to Helsinki. I was going as a favour to a friend from work, Maria. She'd been unlucky in love. It was October … [Read more...]
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