Hiatus, and a Hat

It's been rather quiet here recently, and probably will be rather quiet for some time yet - at least until I've ploughed through the pile of work I'm under right now, and had a proper holiday. 

But until then, you can admire my new spring hat, which I trimmed yesterday and am rather proud of. The hat itself cost 2 euros, and was much uglier with a wide, turn-up rim. So I took my scissors, some ribbon I've had in my cupboard for about ten years now, and a few bits and bobs I've been saving for a project like this - and voilá: a 20's style cloche hat. 

I know Bessie Smith preferred much more outrageous headwear (notably the one which looks like a lampshade), but as she's my favourite 20's blues singer, I'll let her accompany my new hat. 

Sunfaraa!

As I mentioned in my last post, my second trip to Kokkola was done with a specific goal in mind: in addition to finishing the literature course I'd started in December, I was on a mission to locate an English rowboat. 

And not just any old rowboat: the one the good people of Kokkola captured from the Royal Navy in 1854 (in a battle known as the Skirmish of Halkokari), and haven't given back to the Brits despite several kind requests.  It's very easy to miss in its little anonymous, snow-surrounded cottage at the edge of the English Park - and it's not all that impressive as far as trophies of war go. But there it is.

The city was lovely this time around as well, despite the skull-cracking ice and the persistent rain. This gave me a good opportunity to visit several museums and art galleries, - including one situated in Pedagogio, the oldest non-religious building in Finland (in the top picture) - and to see an impressive collection of minerals and stuffed animals (not my cup of tea, really -  but hey, it was free and extremely educational).

I also noticed that I'm turning into a stereotypical academic tourist - one who likes to look at obscure paintings and visit one old house after another, all the while trying to think of something clever to say to the curator on the way out.  Then, once I'm home, I can deftly deconstruct my experiences with a hint of postmodern cynicism. 

Which might be the only use I'll ever have for my degree in Contemporary Culture.  

The wonders of the west coast

It's been a busy past few weeks. In addition to trying to finish my PhD, I've also been teaching a couple of courses - one of them some 400 kms from where I live. It was great fun, though, to get an opportunity to take a train to a completely unknown city, stay the night at a fine hotel, talk about literature to  bunch of motivated students, and spend the rest of the time walking around the old part of the city with my mouth hanging slightly open. I hadn't quite realised the Neristan in  Kokkola was quite as amazing as that.

Unfortunately, my camera froze on me (again), so I got very few pictures that are actually in focus. Perhaps better this way - otherwise I would have snapped photos of each and every house and perhaps embarrassed myself in the process. 

Looking forward to going back in January. Then I'm planning to finally lay eyes on the famous gunboat which was captured from the British during the Crimean war, and which the brits have been very eager to get back ever since.  SHS is already planning a re-enactment of the impressive battle in which such a prize landed in Finnish hands.

Getting rather silly

Today the sun manages to stay over the horizon for seven hours and a bit. Despite the snow, days are desperately grey, and everything kind of blurs. It's hard to keep track of deadlines, or even remember if I've managed to do anything worthwhile lately.

In addition to teaching and trying to finish my PhD there isn't all that much going on at the moment - but at least I've had some interesting dreams lately (even compared to my usual standard). Last night, for instance, listening to the constant drip-drop of water outside my window, I finally managed to fall asleep and grew convinced that there was only one person who could explain the meaning and the source of the noise: Samuel Pepys.

I believe this history lark is really beginning to mess with my head. In the nicest possible way. Just like this song.

That is all.

Pretty dreary

Today seems to be one of those days when everything is sort of sticky and slow right from the beginning.  One of those days when you know that no matter hard you try - and in truth you don't try very hard - everything's going to conspire against you having a productive day. 

The weather is grey and uninspiring. The computer is slow. Just when you get in the right mood for some work (writing a thesis in my case), someone calls you, and BAM, the thread of your thoughts is tangled again. In the supermarket everyone moves just as slowly and aimlessly as you do, not looking anyone in the eye, blocking the aisles with their slow trolleys. You pick the slowest queue in the whole darn shop - possibly in the whole universe - and wish you had the presence of mind to open the bag of sweets you're buying, before you've paid for it. 

On most days, if things start piling upon me like this, I just get pointlessly angry. Today, as befits a slow and sticky day, I've just been drifting around in a half-awake haze, hoping that the aforementioned bag of sweets might brighten things up a bit. 

And it has. The best part of the day is already hopelessly wasted, but at least now I'm fully awake.  The other thing which contributed to my newfound alertness was this startling piece of poetry: 

Right on.

Treasure

As is my habit, I spent last weekend in Helsinki, watching films and catching up with friends I see far too seldom. What made this year's gathering a bit different, however, was that the person responsible for it all was getting married on that same weekend. Thus there were only two films (but what films!), and considerably more voluntary work involved - which suited me just fine, as over the years I've been getting quite good at handling ridiculous amounts of food, fetching and carrying, and just generally trying to guarantee a pleasant time for all. 

During my career as a party organiser/cook/fetchercarrier/Ms Fixit, I've come to the conclusion that the trite sentiment of "giving is better than receiving" works pretty well in practice, too. Even better than giving things, however, is giving time: helping out with things that require more than one pair of hands and more than five minutes of your day - doing instead of buying, being there when someone really needs you, and not just in a mental sense. Even for such a non-sociable person as myself, building up a party from scratch can be great fun if you're working with like-minded people and know that in the end, you'll be enjoying the fruits of your labours with those very same people.

Don't get me wrong: giving and receiving things is also very nice, too. Especially when that thing happens to be handmade Belgian pralines, delivered straight to my door. That's what, dear reader, I got for my trouble this time.

The moral of the story: help thy friends, and thou shalt receive chocolate.

The fruits of 22 labours

It's been some time since I've written any kind of a book report here. Let me amend that lapse now. I know that's what you're all have been clamouring for at the backs of your minds, without really even knowing it. 

I won't go through all the historical books I read last summer - for after checking my reading diary I noticed that there is quite a number of them, most dealing with the Austen/Napoleon period, most appropriately. The memory of most of those, however, has now been blocked by Wolf Hall - which I'm reading now, and which is every bit as fantastic as they say it is. The (perhaps only) problem with a book of that stature is that it tends to overshadow everything else I'm reading at the time, diluting the pleasure of other books by reminding just how good prose can get. 

Fortunately Wolf Hall is facing some fierce competition; one of the books I read about a month ago refuses to be blotted out by another. I'm talking about Stella Tillyard's Aristocrats, a real-life story of four Lennox sisters whose lives spanned the latter part of the 18th century. The book has been made into a TV series, and that's how I first became aware of  the lives  of these quite amazing women some years ago. The splendour of the setting is one thing (after all, Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox were aristocrats born and bred, and wed into well-connected and wealthy families), but what strikes me most is the sheer tenacity of the Lennox women and their strong mutual affection and loyalty, which must have carried them through some hard times.

I mean, if you've given birth to 22 children (like Emily did), you'll be mighty glad of some family support. 

Tudor times were also an era when family connections paid off; this at least was emphasised in Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl.  I really liked the novel, especially Gregory's effortless depiction of Renaissance England and the court of Henry VIII, as well as her frank descriptions of the ribaldries that went on there. Placing Mary Boleyn in the centre of the story (instead of her more illustrious sister) is a good choice, as it gives the plot an element of suspense (after all, we all know what happened to Anne Boleyn). Yet I was somewhat disappointed in the rather straightforward solution of making Anne the scheming shrew and Mary the motherly lady-in-waiting who is all heart and loving tenderness. The Career Woman vs. the Mother debate in a nutshell = one gets her head chopped off, another gets to settle down with a good man of her choice.

Another book which gave me some ambivalent feelings is Mrs Caliban and Other Stories by Rachel Ingalls, which I just finished. I liked the slightly twisted starting points of the stories (including people being kidnapped by grannies in Switzerland, cheating their wives with a lifelike doll, or getting caught in a rain of frogs), but their solutions were depressingly rather similar. Most of the men (boyfriends, husbands, bosses) were portrayed as heartless bastards who only use women for their own gratification and start slapping them around when they show some character. That may work well to illustrate an important point in one novel, but after seven or eight of the same, the reader (or at least I) begins to feel the need of some more life-affirming stuff. 

Perhaps that's why I've been listening to a lot of Monty Python lately.