Monday, February 20

 

 

I slept very well last night and woke to a dream in which I had to carry trays of glasses on a boat in a stormy sea. I managed most of them but occasionally one fell off and hit someone on the head. They sat while I walked between them and some of them had wet heads where the glasses had spilled on them. The atmosphere felt vaguely hostile, as people dabbed themselves with handkerchiefs, while others waited in trepidation for a drink or a soaking.

I leave the house to find a bright blue sky. I look at the wall of the house and notice the slight crack where thirty five years of subsidence has left its traces.

Most of the snow has melted and the path and road are clear for the first time in weeks. I bounce Tigger-like to the bus stop. The bus arrives a couple of minutes early and I jump aboard. I board the metro at Itäkeskus and when I step out at Sörnäinen twenty minutes later I will find myself in a different world. From under a uniform gray sky a continuous curtain of slushy snow drops onto everyone and everything. A thin wind blows it unpleasantly into people’s faces. When I get to Arcada the snow will fall in huge flakes, and the ground will already slide under my feet.

I will spend the morning writing, assessing, and working with Jutta to devise a pre-exam assignment for this year’s lucky applicants. Jutta will refuse to believe that anyone will accept the one we come up with as serious. I will assure her that they will.

In the afternoon we will present our förehandsuppgift to the team meeting and, eventually, people will accept it as valid. The assignment: draw two circles, one old and one young, and then describe your thought processes in less than 2 sides of A4 paper.

At the very least I will be interested to see the responses.

By the time I leave the snow will have stopped. By the time I arrive home it will have started again. It will continue all evening until after I have gone to bed.