28 May 2020 at 10.30pm I hadn't been out tonight so I decided to go for a quick ten minute walk in the evening sun. It's the lightest time of the year and after an overcast day we got a gorgeous, bright evening. The bird cherry is in bloom and I've just seen the first strawberry flowers in the woods, probably some garden escapees because they were too big for wild plants. Lily-of the-valley covers the forest floor, with the last of the wood anemones peaking through the leaves. Nearby woods on 27 May, favourite time of the day About life in Helsinki this spring I seriously thought about writing something that did not even mention, you know, the virus. But that would have been dishonest since it has affected our lives in so many ways. I'd been getting this nagging feeling that I should be recording the current events. That feeling's been alleviated a great deal since I realised everybody is doing it: photographers taking snapshots of daily life, a lo
There went the April showers and darling buds of May. I can't get over the fact how similar the plant life, and the seasons, are in Helsinki and in Sheffield. It just shows how 'Finland' for me has meant ' North Karelia ' or possibly 'Lapland' at a stretch. I roll my eyes when immigrants and visitors make assumptions about Britain; how they take one area or group of people to represent such a diverse country. And now I find myself doing just that about the place where I was born. Ilosaarirock 2019 Saturday about 24,000 people. We're on the train, on our way to spend a weekend in mummola, aka my parents. And I get to go to Ilosaarirock . I don't want to make jokes about early onset dementia but for the life of me I can't remember whether I've been before. Only recently I insisted that I'd seen ZZ Top in Puistoblues but when I checked the dates I realised there was no way I could have been there. At least I'll keep some memorie