Sunday, July 10

We all slept late this morning and when Naa finally got up we ate brunch. This is the kind of country-style brunch we are eating. The ice-cream is from the Jatskiauto that comes to the farm every week and the strawberries are from the farm. The chocolate is from Lidl and hand-flaked by Irma. The flower is from the garden.

In the afternoon we will try the boat again but the engine will be completely dead. We will decide that we should have the engine serviced because this will give us a clean slate to begin our boating adventures with.

We will do gardening work instead of boating, and when the clouds come we will race indoors and read. I am reading Westmorland Alone, an Ian Sansom novel in the County Guides seres, that I got from the mobile library last Wednesday. It is good holiday reading and it is entertaining me.

At 18:30 Irma and Naa will leave to Helsinki and I will leave to Aili’s 61st birthday party with Camilla and Ann-Sofie. She lives at the end of a very long road and I confess that I had not realised that any place in Pellinki could be so far from every other place. Mona is there with Jesper and Sofia and we all sit in a line along the jetty. From where we are sitting I will be able to look across at Ville and Margit’s house.

I will drive back because Camilla doesn’t want to back half a mile uphill to get back to the narrow road. I mind slightly less.

In the evening Mika will bale the hay in the field next t the summer house and I will go and spend a coupe of hours helping load the bales into trailers and then unload then into the barn. I will go to bed enjoyably tired.