Hit by a serious case of keyboard diarrhoea

It's been getting increasingly cold in Finland since my return on Monday, when it was plus seven with a harsh wind. They tell me it went to minus fifteen while I was away, which is totally unfair - and with no snow, which is quite peculiar. But still, not complaining, it's been getting colder and last night we hit minus twelve on my balcony. And still no snow - the lightest dusting today, hardly there at all. Still, it's probably a good thing, for we were forecast snow and warmer temperatures, which is not desirable. No. It might all make a bit more sense if I mentioned that I like a winter to be properly cold. We used to get them until quite recently. Please take note, all climate-change agnostics, for us in the (near-) Arctic climes will see the change first and in a more pronounced way, and the fact is that the winters have gone pear-shaped in the last five or so years. Certainly since the millenium, for I remember the millenium New Year and it was very, very cold. We had some special Japanese fireworks masters visit Helsinki specially (I think they were somehow invited by the city itself, you understand, not me personally) and I went with a bunch of friends to a central and (relatively) high location in the heart of town to see them. I was wearing an evening dress but on top of it, one of those great big ankle-length woollen overcoats (think Anna Karenina, please) and on top of that, my very beloved blue-green-aquamarine poncho (which has a story to it, but of that another time, mayhap. Oh well - now's the time, I suppose - I bought it from the island which neighboured My Childhood Island, from what still in my childhood was the local school for the island children, an adorable old wooden building with an outdoor toilet (with several, um, seats. One could imagine how totally unpleasant it would have been to run across the yard in mid-winter to go and sit out there - but then I expect the island lasses were used to it, as they had the same thing at home - although maybe with less seats) but which by my adulthood and due to the migration of people from traditional ways of livelihood, to city-living (and I never went to that school, you understand, I lived in the city really but we spent the summers, each glorious two-and-a-half months, in the island neighbouring this island I'm now talking about), had changed into a "local crafts centre" type of affair. I love my poncho, wearing it makes me feel like I'm somehow held safe by my childhood summer sea-landscape. That's that story). It was very cold, as I said, it must have been minus twenty-five or possibly colder. Another friend has told me about their millenium celebrations, how they had a bottle of champagne with them and it had probably been shaken around a bit, for when they popped it to toast in 2000, it shot out a spray which floated back down on them as flakes of frozen champagne. God, how I wish that was my story - I find it an outlandishly fabulous one, like the storyline in a song by an Arctic Tom Waits. (The fireworks, incidentally, were quite good as fireworks go (I have a very split feeling about fireworks). I remember I dreamt about them sometime afterwards, that they formed the number "2000" in the sky, and one spark shot out and landed on my hand like a glittering jewel.)

In minus twenty-five, the moisture which naturally occurs inside your nose starts to turn, well, to ice. It's a strange feeling to snuffle a bit and feel the ice crackle-cracking. In minus thirty and colder, I swear your eyes start to feel a bit more solid and stiff than usually, and breathing through your mouth gives you a stab of hot-cold pain in the back of your throat.

So, well, yes, after this brief look at everything through the lens of Helsinki climatology in the 2000s, I will tell you I absolutely adored going out with my dog in the cold today. She likes the cold - poor thing, her thick fur probably makes her feel overheated most of the time - and runs around like a pup. I cannot watch her running without laughing - in the femininity scale of dog-girls, she is definitely one of those hearty, healthy, earthy types, a robust and rosy-chopped little milk-maid with child-bearing hips and a pleasant if not very refined nature, and her back end definitely kind of wobbles from side to side when she runs, and I can see she's clearly imagining herself to be the fastest thing on four legs. I love her, the poor funny lovely thing that she is.

To counteract the myriad single magpies,

we, meaning the dog and I, came across a patch of good luck, in the wasteland on a grassy verge.



She wanted to eat them, so we had to leave.

Incessantly snuffling about - a dogot update

I love it that she takes me out walking at night (or very late evening, depending on the hours you keep) particularly now that it's not getting dark anymore (although, as I said, we're still getting stars, so it's nowhere near as light as it can - and will - get. The other night I checked my claim and at twenty-five minutes to midnight I could count three stars, and forty-five minutes later I could make out all of the Big Dipper, but it's a blue darkness, not a black one, and when you get away from the street lights you realise you can see perfectly well without them - better, even, or certainly better further. Darker than dusk, lighter than darkness). Of course I loved her taking me out on wintry nights as well, but that's right beside the point at the moment and seems to belong to a different life, because right now we plunge ourselves into the night of light darkness, together, and because it's late and there are few, if any, people about and I trust her, I will let her off the leash so she can explore the night. The smells of the kevätkesän yö, spring-summer night are heady in her nose, in both our noses, actually (and yes, we have words for the between-seasons times of the year - kevätkesä, syyskesä, syystalvi, kevättalvi. It's very useful). She will leap and run and roll on the grass a little, but what she loves most is following her nose, unravelling the spaghetti of scents which evidently wiggle along the ground, her chunky-ish bottom swinging amusingly from side to side as she trots along, all determined and purposeful, in concentric circles and spirals, with sudden twirls and turns and steps back, and all the while I hear her snifi-snifi-snifi-FHRHRFF, the latter being the huff of her outbreath with which, I fancy, she empties her nose of the scents she's gathered, to make space for more. She can go on like this forever, it seems, and all I can hear is her and the nightingales (there are at least three in the neighbourhood), because I am good at blocking out the drone-hum of the motorway a mile or so off, and it's anyway not all that busy at this hour, and I love her and am, like her, loving the night and its smells (although I prefer the bird cherry blossoms, the grass, the nettles, the fir trees, to the hares' and rabbits' tracks which she is so drawn to and I can't detect, and I'm so not letting on that I too wander around with a snifi-snifi-FHRHF nose-noise).

I come from the land of the ice and snow

I have always liked the look of snow on trees, particularly at night, the intricacy of the fractal filigree of it, the lack of colour forcing the attention on the form.

It is also fun, when walking in the snow, to measure your footsteps to match those of someone else who's walked the same way before you, but opposite to them, so in the end the tracks left by you and the unknown other give the impression of someone in an odd pair of shoes having bounced, two feet together, all the way down the footpath.

So I thank Ms Dogot for taking me out walking in the night, for giving me these wonders. When she makes dog snow angels, they end up looking like Oriental characters, and I wish I could read the messages she is leaving.

If you would choose music for a black-and-white slide show of your life, what would it be? Would you always choose the same tune?

About a dog

When she first arrived, she was depressed. I know, because she was withdrawn and didn't really want to eat. I know how that feels. I tried a couple of dog foods but wasn't going to go down the "try every one in the shop" route. Someone who has great psychological understanding and empathy suggested I eat from her bowl first, and it worked. (I didn't really, you understand, I just pretended, for her benefit - "yum-yum-yum, top dog eats first, your turn now". I'm vegetarian.) It worked, for a while, anyway, a few days. Then the depressed blank look at her bowl returned. I started to feed her from my hand. I still have to do it sometimes, and although when my son feeds her, she will devour her food without worry, when I feed her she likes me to stay with her and scratch and stroke her shoulders while she eats. If I go to another room, she'll follow me with a worriedly-wagging tail, instead of eating. I don't mind, actually, although obviously I want her to feel confident and settled enough not to need me for emotional support whilst having her meal. But the truth is, I love being there with her, squatting by her side, scratching her, feeling her all strong and furry and alive, her eagerness for life, shot through with the uncertainty that puts an ache in my new and growing love for her.

During her first three weeks with us, we had a few days of snow - four or five, which looks to be the extent of it this year. She has a way of snuffling the ground, following the scents and smells she detects, which was very endearing from the start - and a relief, as apparently many dogs with a dog-pound background can be so traumatised they don't use their noses anymore, and have to be taught and tantalised to do so again. Her sniffing became a reason to fall in love with her when snow arrived, for she would poke her nose in it and create the sweetest dog-nose shaped holes with a snuffle-sniffling movement from side to side. She would then look over her shoulder at me, as she does, checking that I'm there, that all is well, that she is a good dog, and she would have snow on her nose and love would well up in me. It was also when getting carried away in the snow to the extent of forgetting herself that she would suddenly, out of the blue, make the first clumsy playful love-lunges at me, coming out of the withdrawnness that was characteristic of her during her first days with us.

During her first visits to the local dog park she was so worried about having me off the leash (and thus easily lost) she would walk with her nose to my knee instead of running about, stopping when I stopped, walking when I walked. She has grown brave now and will romp with dogs much bigger than her with spirit and gusto, but she comes when I call her and usually straightaway (although I wouldn't trust her when rabbits, hares, squirrels and the like come into the picture). She got told to get lost at first when she tried to get into my bed with me in it (although she is always allowed on it, as long as I'm not in it. With me in it, it's invites only), and consequently will only grace my bed on weekend mornings, even if I invite her - but she does come and kiss me first thing in the morning when I roll over to turn off my alarm, except this Monday, when I was terribly down. Poor innocent creature, she feels my moods and takes them all upon herself. Her life will not be an easy one.

I've had her a month today, and, as is the case with babies and lovers, I cannot fathom I haven't always had her, that there could have been a life of not having her. I love her. I've waited for her for eleven and a half years. She's my dog.

Waiting for Dogot

I know I shouldn't be jinxing it like this...but tomorrow, she will come.