Monday, June 19
Alppikatu, 18:10
I woke up to bright sunlight and wished I had had the time and energy to mend my rear tyre (again) yesterday. Irma said I could use her bike, and so I did. What I learned: different bicycles behave very differently. Irma’s bike feels as though it has lighter steering, presumably because my position relative to the handlebars and the centre of gravity differs from my position on mine.
I go there without incident although I felt the need to act cautiously in a way that I simply don’t on mine.
In the morning I ran a thesis seminar in which Monica and I sat around my laptop, the student sat in his office and Tomas sat on some island somewhere in the archipelago. This worked on the second attempt and the discussion sparked some interesting points. I then introduced Emilia and Josefin to Gunilla who filled in their spare time with another project.
I spent the afternoon going through the online summer course, opening Module 4, and commenting on various discussion threads. I also worked with Monica to find out where my Travel plans had gone wrong, and why they had not resulted in payments. After an hour we thought we had it sorted out.
I then answered a surprise email from Lars, an even more surprising email from a former student, and some more mundane messages. At 16:50 I left to see the doctor. I had a dry cough I felt he would benefit from seeing.
The doctor, when I got to see him, diagnosed acute bronchitis and suggested that I do nothing except wait for it to go away. He told me this while wearing bright blue nail varnish and no socks, which meant I believed him completely.
Leaving the surgery I walk back down to the tram stop opposite Linnanmäki where I can hear young people screaming as the rides go round and round and up and down. A woman next to me at the bus stop drinks big slugs from a bottle of gin, dressed as though she expects 1968 to arrive shortly before the tram.
When I get home on Irma’s bike, riding with great care for fear of oversteering, we will leap in the car and buy a grasscutter for Pellinki before heading home again to do some gardening in the remains of the summer heat.