Paint!

I've been busy with all these creative projects. I painted this stripy painting using acrylics. My acrylics are starting to run out and I find it funny because I am not a painter but a writer. I would like to paint a big version of the stripy picture horizontally onto a wall.

A little mushroom

My second ever little crochet project, pictured here with our new orchid, taking a drink in the sink.

More paper animals!

We made some more paper animals. Now there are twelve!

We're moving to a new home soon, because I am moving to Finland properly for a year or so. The plan is to save for future adventures. I'll teach young children at a very creative school. Everyone wears slippers and chooses what they will do.

The new home has a silver bedroom and a golden lounge. And all these animals will move with us. Perhaps we'll need an ark.

I made my first ever spanish tortilla

And it was delicious! Enjoying my time away from Cambridge.

Oh so quiet

It's so quiet in these Finnish forests that I can hear the snow melting.

Tampere!

Dubbed 'The Manchester of Finland', Tampere is a more industrial, though perhaps less industrious city than Helsinki. Cold and refreshing! Lots of old factories and teenagers dressed outrageously.

Walked around, took pictures, went to a nightclub and to church, to a planetarium and a poet cafe, to second hand shops and to the top of Finland's tallest buidling. The more I see of Finland, the more I realise it's sort of the same all over. Perhaps the world, too.

Also, we saw dolphins:








Five dolphins, some older than me. Beautiful and very splashy. We got wet.

Silence and Snow

A silence greater still
Than this minus twenty silence; desire
Heavier than the snow stacked up
On roofs of schools
Which have to close because of it

You come over with sleds, blue and red
And say nothing, refuse tea.
3 pairs of trousers and 4 sweaters and
I’m squeezing into the buttons of my coat,
Pushing your car when it gets stuck in the snow.

We slide across the ice hockey pitch,
Pull ourselves up the hill
The wind throwing itself
Through the gloves and socks
I’ve stacked up on my hands.

Sitting in our sleds, looking over the city
I think we’ll never make it down alive,
And I’m glad we’re here regardless
But you pull my sled-string from the snow
Wrap it around your hand, and take off

The speed and weight and thin plastic
Pushes the snow out and away before I feel it
Instead I feel the ice beneath, speeding us on
I feel the scrape and dip of every curve
We are caught in the whoosh against the wind

The snow pushes its way between my layers,
Our sleds hit against each another,
Urging us steeper, faster, steeper, faster,
We scream into the rush, rush, rush-
I’m alive, and in conditions such as this.