Postcard from Finland

Finally Finland. A trip that was talked about for a year, and now I am here. All those trips to shops in quest for thermals have paid off.Actual snow. The sort of snow that seems like the snow you only saw once or twice as a child, but this time I can actually bend my arms. All day I want to bend down and touch snow, lay my palm in it, to check I am still there. The snow doesn't really melt when I touch it, but it crunches a little, acknowledges my presence in the smallest way. Trees stretch themselves across the ground in shadows, maybe they feel the same, all that snow has made them feel small. I am staying in a little wooden house, today chopped a tree. The girl we were supposed to meet is unwell and in hospital, and I can feel myself worrying, wondering if she is Ok, if us poets arriving are the cause of alot of stress. Hope we can meet someday. I hope we aren't a burden to her husband who must be worried about his wife, but he makes us at home. I am staying in her house, looking around at frills she made for the curtains and trying to feel her here. Little Gingham ruffles, red handles on the drawers, a smiley homemade birthday card covered in wallpaper and opening into a photo of her smiling and holding the cat like a baby in her arms. The girl that made the card lies in a little white bed, and we cannot make her smile. I was unexpectedly made to remember all those times I have been unwell, unhappy, unable to do things, and Im not sure I want to. A face of mine I can only see in a Finnish lake,because it has to be hidden. I do not try on the missing poets black glittery jacket I notice, but i do touch the hem.

But many of the things that could have gone wrong sofar have been Ok (touch wood, I am still here.) It is always a worry, because you are arranging to meet people you don't know too well, and are never sure what they think really of these odd English poets, but the Finns have been very good hosts. We didn't get lost finding the hostel. Kalle Ninnikangas unexpectedly came to meet us, and was a wonderful host showing us roundTampere. We have been made welcome in a little wooden house, and been initiated into the love of logs. (They break up the day, you chop them, splinter, carry them from place to place, stoke the fire, make more logs.)

Things seem more cruel here, necessary to survive, and I wonder if I'd been Finnish if I would be more sturdy, all weathers, that comments people make and don't make would fall to the ground all around. Instead I am an Englishman in Finland. It is beautiful here. I am trying to stay on the diet, and finding it hard because I don't speak the language. But I can't worry about that when I am here too much, it is all business, getting from place to place, squeezing things in a case, being polite, trying not to slip on the ice.