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.

Not even going to mention the two-day gap in my daily posting

Throughout my life, I've had a number of recurring dream-themes. These include

- the end of the world being immediate, because I witness a mushroom cloud rising in the distance (often seen through a window). My reaction to this is a panicked hurry to tell the person I'm with that I love them,

- trying to hit my father, but failing, because my arms will only move in the slow-motion typical to nightmares. My father will just look at me, just look, and I feel dreadful, not only because I can't vent my rage, but also because now he knows it is there,

- I find myself in my house, one that I've once lived in, in the past, or forgotten I own, or not known about. The unifying factor of my dream houses is there is a secret room, which feels delicious and right and I can't understand how I've not remembered about it.

Interpretations and readings are welcomed. Thank you.

It came to me in a dream

I woke up this morning with a phrase on the brain: valtameriä kuolleille tilaajille, which roughly translates as "oceans for dead subscribers", although the Finnish original is smoother. I sort of like it - can't remember what it referred to (or indeed if it did, as dreams are not necessarily that logical, my dreams anyway) but my still-sleepy mind felt it was in relation to my writing. I write oceans for dead subscribers.

(Incidentally, I have now received my official translator's certificate, so whenever you need stuff translating from Finnish to English, don't hesitate to be in touch.)

Dreams of dead people

I dreamt of my paternal gran and grandad last night. They have been dead for seventeen and twenty-one years respectively, but I saw them just as they used to be, proving, I suppose, that we do not forget people over time. I woke up convinced, for some reason, that my dream meant I was going to die soon too.