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Highlights this month

Oh January, bad, bad, bad. How did you survive it? An awful business. I felt like I was lugging around a big lump of granite where my stomach used to be, EVERYTHING was difficult, even the smallest things like cleaning my teeth (and I have an electric toothbrush, all I have to do is stand there and hold onto the sink, swaying gently.) But anyway, it’s over now and let me tell you what’s happening. On the good news front, Rita-Anne youngest of my sisters is with child and it’s THRILLING. She had a ropey time of it, which is why I haven’t mentioned it before now, but she is now 21 weeks and in good health and fingers crossed all seems to be well and they are having a boy! The hunt for the perfect name is on.
Further youngling news – Tadhg and Susan are after getting a puppy, a boxer pup called Katie and they are BESOTTED. However, I have a terrible fear of dogs, I am genuinely phobic, so I’ve been to visit her while she’s a pup in the hope that when she’s fifteen stone of prime canine muscle that I won’t pass out with fear every time I see her. I was hoping we could ‘grow up together’ but alas that is not to be becaaaaauuuusseee…… Here is the first instalment of bad news! If you feel too fragile, please skip the next 4-5 paragraphs and go straight to the stuff about Finland, which is very nice. For those who have the constitution to take it, here we go. Our house has damp! Bad damp! I knew this was the case and I knew builders would be coming to make my life hell but I thought it would be a shortlived thing, maybe 2 weeks. It now transpires to be 3 months. Yes, mes amies, 3 of your earth months. And Himself and I have had to move out because the place will be unliveable in, except that Himself has told me that I’m not to advertise that we won’t be there, because the local burglars will hire a removal van and show up en masse. It will be like the million man march. So I’m going to be mysterious… Oh yes, we may or may not be there. We will be coming and going. Yes, you burglar lads, you might break in and find me and Himself in sleeping bags amongst the piles of rubble! You might break in to find me waiting for you with a hurley and a psychotic gleam in my eye. And you might also find a frisky boxer (dog, not actual boxer) who will be gagging to gnaw the leg off you! Yes, local burglars, we have a dog in the family now! So think good and hard and ask yourself, Is it worth it? How will you climb through other people’s windows if Katie Keyes is sitting in her dog basket, gnawing her way through your right femur and flinging it up in the air and making it do majorette twirls? Hmmm? Yes? Having second thoughts?

(May I say that although it’s horrible to be burgled I do sympathise with the people who do it. It must be an awful way to live. I appear to be the last surviving Socialist on earth – Himself is a Trotskyite – but it would be thrilling to have a government who addressed the gulf between the rich and the poor. And yes, I would happily forgo nice shoes and Himself’s fancy car so that others wouldn’t be skint.)
However, Himself and myself genuinely are not at home at the moment (although we could be popping back at any minute) because of the second instalment of the bad news. This is way more serious than the house and should really be in first place not second, but sometimes that is the way the narrative is structured. Himself’s mother’s cancer is back. Regular readers may remember she had breast cancer 18 months ago and was a total hero about it. She had an operation on Tuesday and she’s meeting the consultant next Monday, so we’ll see what transpires. Himself and I are sequestered in Saffron Walden, England for a while.
Also, another member of the immediate family is not well, but they have requested privacy, therefore I will respect it.
Also Luka (nephew, 6) broke his leg skiing, although to be fair that isn’t a matter of life and death and while I feel sympathy for him it hasn’t added to the weight of the granite boulder in my innards. Also my poor poor mother has the most terrible eczema or psorisis or some terrible flaky thing – ON HER FACE – and she’s tried millions of ointments and steroid creams and all sorts and it isn’t getting better and even though that isn’t a matter of life or death (although if I had it, I would top myself) it makes me so so so sad, I feel so sorry for her. I’ve cried more this month that I have in the last ten years put together.

On the happy side, let me tell you about the mini-break in Finland/Lapland. Well, it was DELIGHTFUL, really really gorgeous. Starting with the magnificent Hotel Kamp in Helsinki, where they were kindness itself. The fabulous thing was that we arrived at 6pm on Friday evening and I assumed all the shops would be closed. However – however! – I was entirely wrong. There were about 48 – OPEN! - Marimekko shops, all within touching distance of Hotel Kamp and they were ENORMOUS. The biggest collection of Marimekko merchandise I’ve ever seen. The greatest density of Marimekko merchandise in the smallest radius, it could be in the Guinness book of records. I was suitably restrained, as per my new year’s resolution, and eventually purchased only 2 nightdresses and not an entire crate of towels, bedlinen and much much clothing. Just the 2 nighties, one a teal and dark-blue stripey item and the other a charcoal-grey with a fruit-bowl pattern. These are what I wear when I work, they are in essence my uniform, so I didn’t feel guilty about buying them.

Then onto Ivolo, the most Northern airport in Finland, and there was so much that was beautiful and unusual that I probably won’t be able to do it justice, but Himself has included photos so they might help. Basically, it felt like we’d come to colonise a new planet. Because the sun never actually rises during Jan, the sky was strange and beautiful, it was light, but it was a funny colour, sort of lilac and there was snow everywhere, which reflected the lilac light and the clouds looked like huge purple satellites, just hanging above us and everywhere were endless forests of fir trees. We stayed in a place called Kakkaslautenen (that mightn’t be the right spelling) and it was wonderful. I suppose you could call it a resort, there were log cabins and glass igloos and ice bedrooms scattered throughout a snowy landscape and while we were there they were building an ice-church and an ice-restaurant. Now, I must stress one thing, it was very, very very cold, it was -15 every day and we had to wear several layers of technical long johns before we could leave our little log cabin. Which was the cutest thing ever. I’d expected it to be – yes, loggy – but also quite grim and functional, but it was soft and comfortable and full of delicious little touches, like a carved heart-shaped table, which was nothing like as kitch as it sounds, but sort of reminded me of Minnie Mouse’s house in Disneyland (a very, very good thing.) Also there was a 4-poster bed and other furniture which was carved in a way that reminded me of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yes, delightful!
And we did loads of great stuff. We went on a sleigh ride, pulled by reindeers through a stunningly beautiful snowy forest. We could have done a similar thing with huskies if I wasn’t phobic about dogs. We did all this mad ice-driving and rally driving (Himself LOVED that. In fact he said that although we were having a lovely romantic time that this would be a great place for a stag weekend. Yes…) And the best bit of all – a night-time snowmobile trip to see the Northern Lights. Everyone was at pains to warn us that we probably wouldn’t see them because they’re not like trained seals, who entertain on demand. But would you credit it, we saw them! What looked like pale green dust swirling above us and shapes, one that looked like a flying saucer and another that looked like a bridge and more that looked like massive mountain ranges in the sky. It was stunning and magical and in fact, even writing about it now is dissolving the granite lump a little.

We also met a lovely, lovely Japanese girl called Tamoko Ono, who was there with her husband, who seemed like a Japanese Himself (quiet, supportive.) You know when you meet someone and you feel like you’ve met a soulmate, well that was Tamoko Ono. (We share a love for Marimekko, Hello Kitty and we are both burdened by being born under the Virgo starsign.) She – being Japanese – had these fantastic disposable heat pads that you put in your gloves or boots or stick to your body and they heat up and keep you from dying of cold. When she and her Japanese Himself left she bequeathed me her remaining ones. The kindness of strangers…

On our last night we stayed in a glass igloo, the purpose of which is to lie in bed and gaze through your see-through roof at the Northern Lights, but sadly there were no NLs on that night. But it was still fun. It was sort of like glass camping and I would thoroughly recommend the entire trip. Bring lots of layers and you’ll be grand.
Thank you to all of you who wrote in with suggestions of where we could go, you’ve all been so kind, and I appreciate it so much.

I’m so sorry to burden you with all of my bad news and I don’t mean to sound sorry for myself because I’m not, it’s all just life, this is part of it. No-one ever said being alive wasn’t a painful condition. They should give us a disclaimer when we’re born. ‘Life: You may experience some discomfort.’
And listen, I’m so sorry but we’ve had to suspend emails to the website because of all that’s going on, we just don’t know when we’ll get the chance to reply. (I know that on the website it says that one of ‘Marian’s team’ will get back to you, but I’ll be honest with you here, I don’t have a team, I only have Himself, who is astonishingly hardworking and industrious but there is only one of him.)

Here’s to February, here’s to the Spring and the days getting longer and the daffodils appearing and sandals in the shops and lumps of stomach-granite dissolving!
I hope your January was bearable and that your February will be pleasant.
With lots of love
Marian