the people of oblivion

The little plastic bag broke, of course, as I was loading it with apples. As it often does, in the little corner shop.

Red apples bounced on the floor and rolled among the feet of two men nearby who were waiting for the cashier to ring up their groceries.

And none of them lifted a finger to help me pick them up.

Yet, I know what it's like. The Finnish sense of independence and self-sufficiency, that strength and pride, is so powerful that the instinct to help doesn't even penetrate it. You see someone have a little mishap - nothing serious, just mildly embarrassing - and your Mind Your Own Business-gene only registers a mild relief that it's not you, and you move on without another thought.

Sometimes I hate my own people.

aux armes, citoyens

In the middle of a work meeting, we stop our discussion of quality control issues in order to listen to La Marseillaise on YouTube and marvel over its blood-and-entrails-heavy lyrics.

That's what you do when your boss' kid is in the office and needs help with his homework.

wish list - and what to do about it

* a dog - bookmark "dogs for adoption" website
* clothes in delicious shades of chocolate, russet and copper - raid second-hand shops (again)
* novels celebrating New York life - check Amazon lists
* downshifting - pray to God for a miracle in boss' attitude
* freedom from my mother's influence - grow up ( but how? )
* perfect boots - keep looking
* White Collar, season 5 - wait. And wait some more.

the happy highways where I went

For four blissful years, I drifted around Ireland.

Well, I worked hard. But work was fun too, more often than not. And when it wasn't, it was still intense, dramatic, volatile. Tempers flared and tears flowed and I seemed to be always madly in love or mad with rage.

No wonder that I was content, during my free time, to have quiet drinks in the pub with friends. Or take leisurely strolls in the beautiful valley. Or hole up in my attic room on wintry nights and watch science fiction on TV. And a boyfriend got me hooked on reading good novels - something not even my years of university studies in literature had managed to do.

Oh, the freedom. To hop on a bus or train ( or even rent a car ) on my days off and take off to the other side of the island with a friend or two. Killarney, or Donegal, or Belfast. Stay overnight in a cosy Bed & Breakfast, or talk our way to a cheap rate at a castle hotel. Do some sightseeing, have a nice dinner, maybe go dancing. Back in time for work on Monday morning. Money never seemed to be a problem those days.

I didn't even have to go far to have a good time. The thing about living in a foreign country is that even your most boring Monday morning at work is spent - in a foreign country. There are strange people, of a strange culture and with strange customs, surrounding your daily life. There is a new horizon behind every corner of the road, and marvellous things to discover even when you are just shopping for groceries in the supermarket. I felt as if I was on a continuous, four-year holiday. When I got tired of the valley, I treated myself to a really good meal at a local restaurant, a cosy picnic all by myself in the mountains, or a whole day exploring Dublin - and coming back always seemed like a fresh start.

Leaving, after those four years, was the most difficult thing to do. It was necessary, because life goes on. But I still hear the siren call of those green hills.

caterpillars, raspberries and other office items

Waiting for emails.

That's what I do at work. In high summer they are few and far between, because our customers in Finland are soaking up the sun on some beach and our suppliers in China are being hospitalized for heatstroke.

In the meantime, I have taken up tea-drinking ( but only in the mornings, afternoons are still dedicated to coffee ), and raspberry-picking behind the office.

Marvels to study in the workplace:
* A customer who has ordered 700 pairs of jeans in a size only a Barbie-lookalike could wear
* My desk neighbour's tales of strange Chinese customs
* A huge caterpillar in the parking lot
* The boss, who sometimes makes phone calls when he's in the toilet. Today I could hear him through the door, calling his teenage daughter to ask: "How much do you weigh?"

Music on the radio, Facebook, green tea with mint, practicing languages, news headlines, speculating what the new season of White Collar might contain, leisurely lunches in the sun, Pinterest, counselling my desk neighbour, online shopping, waiting for 4 pm.

I know what I did last August

Russian smoke and angel dreams (2006)
Endless corridors and meaningful dust (2007)
Black holes and trade secrets (2008)
Old enemies and an even older dollhouse (2009)
Hot players and a sleepy museum (2010)
A cute guitarist and job applications (2011)
White laundry and a blinking cursor (2012)

the no-love curse

I am single and I meet one perfect man after the other.

They are: Single, handsome, strong, smart, funny, caring. Everything that I like. AND then they have some other attribute that I find enchanting - like a talent for music, a love of dogs, the skills to fix anything, a taste for adventure and travel. Some of them even seem to like me.

And then I just, simply, fail to fall in love. Maybe I'm cursed.

on white denim and dead fathers

Things that seemed very significant today:

Being dressed in white lace and white denim, making the most of summer with a trendy terrace lunch on a workday.

Sharing an evening cider with someone who knew exactly what I meant when I said, with tears in my eyes, "there is never a right time for a father to die".

Longing for someone to say, "I'm stronger than you. You can't ruin me."

glittering days

I grumble a lot over my home town. But I must admit, in the summer it has its bright spots. Mainly the  seaside cafés.

You can have a salad lunch by a trendy art museum and follow it up with a pavlova outside the ancient pavilion and a drink on the deck of an old ship. All without ever losing sight of the sunlit sea, the tanned people and the happy smiles.

Your company should be giggling friends or a mysterious man who is telling you his darkest secrets. Everything works when the summer sun is shining over this town.

after all that, I became English

( Another lost tale from my wasted youth coming up. If you can't bear it, go away. But be advised that there may be a mention of Johnny Depp in there somewhere. )

Finally, the relative quiet of a B & B room in Oxford city centre after a very, very long day. A day when I moved from one life into another.

The morning had involved a quiet, chilly walk in the most peaceful of places, the magic valley between the mountains, and saying goodbye - maybe forever - to some of my dearest friends. Two of them took me to the airport and chose the scenic route across the mountains to entice me to come back soon. The rest of the day consisted of sobbing on an awful flight, being nasty to a screaming toddler in the next seat, feeling lost and confused in airports and bus terminals, and lugging around a suitcase as heavy as my heart.

I moved to a foreign country that day ( for the second time ). With no job and nowhere to stay, only the ghost of a promise of a job interview. I got off the bus in the beautiful city of Oxford and dragged myself to the nearest guesthouse I could find.

Later that mild February evening, a slow walk through the city centre and the lively but intimate atmosphere of a university town - birds singing, a bright evening sky, students cycling past along cobbled streets, normal people shopping at Sainsbury's. Yes, there were some of those "dreaming spires" I had fantasised about, but at this particular moment I was more cheered by the sight of a real Starbucks. Compared to the previous two countries I had lived in, England seemed filled to bursting with cities, roads and people - of so many races and looks and accents.

Buying a few groceries in the nearest store, I was struck by a moment of fear again: What had I done? What if there were no jobs? Shouldn't I really buy a cheaper loaf of bread than the one I had just picked out?

Still, to be HERE. In Oxford, in a new country.  In a new life.  Texting a few friends from the privacy of my room later, I felt comforted.

The next day I breakfasted on cheese and the cheap bread and went out to buy a British SIM card for my phone. My first call a few minutes later, made in the relative quiet of a back alley near the Sheldonian Theatre, went to a local hotel that I had emailed a couple of weeks earlier and which had tentatively offered me a job interview if I ever came to Oxford.

"Well, sure, come and see me", said the assistant manager on the phone. OK, that was vaguely promising at least. When he heard that I was staying at a B & B he offered me a room in staff accommodation for the next night, as his hotel was outside the city, in the picturesque Cotswolds area. So I took my suitcase to a storage facility, packed a smaller bag and headed to the bus stop. The logistics of setting up a new life are very complicated. At the hotel I expected to get my interview but was just shown to a room, and the next day the manager drifted past once and only asked me one question: "Can you start tomorrow?"

Well, the strange and wonderful world of hotel work has never been much bothered with things like employment contracts, salary negotiations or compliance with regulations on working conditions. The general rule is: start working, and you'll find out. ( Sometimes even things like your salary, or your boss' last name. )

So that was the beginning of my stay in a cute Cotswolds town. A place where I used walkie-talkies, was bit by a parrot, took long walks in spooky palace gardens and had the worst ( and almost only ) hangover of my life ( which also unfortunately happened to coincide with a fire drill ). It was also the place where I felt very lonely and spent many, admittedly cosy, evenings in bed in my tiny room with thick English novels and trying out various English delicacies. Haunted all the old-fashioned tea houses in town ( one of them had been an inn ever since the 12th century ). And then finally made many lovely and weird friends.

I lived in an attic room in the hotel - a gorgeous labyrinth of hidden rooms, creaking narrow stairs and forgotten passageways. I became an unlikely expert at beating the receptionists' computer back to life, having whistling competitions with the resident parrot and avoiding the weird manager. I also roamed around Oxford and became an authority on its history and where to find its cutest pubs and most bountiful second-hand bookshops.

My workplace also turned out to be a good place to meet celebrities - if by meeting you mean sorting John Malkovich's laundry or accidentally snarling at Johnny Depp for getting in your way in the hotel lobby. ( And yes, he apologised very politely. After that, I was the envy of every woman in town. )

That turbulent and wonderful spring in a medieval English village ended three months later when I got on a bus again, irresistibly drawn to another new life in another new city. I cried all the way there.

* * *

( PS. For all the weirdoes out there who believe in serendipity - I count myself among them: Much later, reading through old diaries, I surprisingly discovered two earlier mentions of this same little Cotswolds town. On my first and only trip to England, thirteen years before, I had travelled through it and even made a brief stop. And forgotten all about it. And about four years before, when I first started applying for hotel jobs all over Ireland and the UK, I had received three job offers - one was at the Irish hotel where I ended up staying for four years, and one of the others was in the Cotswolds town. I forgot all about that too, but by complete chance I ended up there anyway. Coincidence? )

( Maybe my destiny was to settle down there with the parrot and Johnny Depp? Huh. I blew it. Is it too late now? )