In the eye of the beholder

If muted hues of grey, brown, ochre and green do it for you, November is your month, in spite of the bad publicity it tends to get (and here I am as guilty, or more so, as the next person). The main trouble with November is that you're never, ever out in daylight, for there is so precious little of it - at least if you're here, on these latitudes (and I am). Pretty much dark when you stumble around allowing your dog to do her morning business (and the look in her eye, when you get up in the nighttime darkness and start acting like it's morning, is one of severe chiding), pretty much dark when you trundle through the drizzle to the bus stop to make it home again.

It's dark, and it's only getting more so. However.

I have conjunctivitis, so I noticed this morning (this is "pink eye" for you American folks). So I needed to see a doctor for some eye drops, and so the health centre is pretty much chocker with the pig-flu people - both those who are ill and those who are being vaccinated. Currently children under six. Health care professionals have already been done, as have risk groups such as pregnant women and diabetics and other suchlike losers. Healthy robust adults (such as I) are due to get their vaccination sometime in February, by which time we will all have either died of it or developed natural immunity by living through it. Incidentally, I've been thinking, wouldn't it be just great if pig flu would manifest as a cute little snout forming on your face, a curly wee tail sprouting from the base of your spine, and your speech coming in grunts and oinks? Way better than the current thing. Man, if I were to redesign the world, I'd make it so much more interesting. But I digress. Yes, conjunctivitis, pink eye, unattractive as it is, has (combined with the pig flu of others, and the health centre being unable to see me until eleven-twenty) given me a chance to view November in daytime - daylight through hazy fog, the aforementioned muted earth colours. And lo, it is actually quite lovely.

So that is good. And it's made me think about how when I have my luutamummon mökki, Ms Dogot and I will just really enjoy November, rather than moan and groan through it, about its inherent hopeless ugliness and what have you. We'll sleep as late as we like and potter around in the haze admiring the muted colours when we're up. It might help you understand if I explain about luutamummon mökki a little, though.

In July, Ms Dogot and I had four spectacularly perfect days over at the summer cottage, during which we saw practically no-one, the idyll only ruined by a few words exchanged with the neighbour ("I'm heating the sauna tonight. I'll give you a call when I'm out, so you can go, too. Could I borrow your tick tongs? Ms Dogot's got a tick on her leg, and ours are in town. Ta."). When my parents came to collect us (for we were there carless and carefree), I told them how flawlessly beautiful a time we had had, and how we'd firmly decided this was how we'd spend our lives - in a little cottage in the woods in the middle of nowhere, together, rarely seeing anyone else. My mother (the pragmatist) asked whether we'd considered how we'd earn our keep. No, we hadn't considered that yet, actually. She suggested we (well, I, I suppose, technically) could become a luutamummo - literally, a broom granny. A(n old) lady who collects twigs and makes brooms of them, the weirdo living on the outskirts of human habitation, muttering to herself, the society of civilised people feeling a pity and a shunning and a "wonder how on earth she makes ends meet, nobody ever buys her twigs on a stick". This future plan sounded truly fine to me, but my mother added, after some consideration, that I could probably also get a pension of some sort, if I'd just show enough signs of pensionable instability.

This plan sounds mighty fine, too. And as someone, quite recently, authoritatively claimed that outspoken dreams tend to become reality, I have now started serious work on reaching this goal, as you can see. I'll let you know when it all comes to fruition. In the meantime, to give you an idea of the future of Ms Dogot and myself, we'll be looking out of a window not unlike this one.