Wednesday, July 12

 

 

I woke sometime in the middle of the night to the sound of fighting. Irma remained deep asleep. I lay awake listening and decided the cat had embarked upon unneccesary night-time combat practice.

We woke at 8:00 to discover a dead water-vole on the floor. For whatever reason cats never eat water-voles, so it lay there in one piece.

We got up to find thin drizzle falling.

I washed my hair and body in the morning and then we went to look for the chicken. We found lots of chickens, including one Irma claimed to recognise. It didn’t seem to recognise us though.

In the afternoon we drove to the Machine Man to see if he had a motor he could sell us. No, he didn’t. We possess a boat customised to steer the motor with a wheel, but no motor to steer. I realised that this could become a lifelong project in which we own and store a boat we can never get to use.

At 16:40 we drive to the midweek market. Mist blankets the island, and Irma says that this means the weather will change. At the market I wander down to the jetty and photograph the boats and the sea – and the mist. The islands nearby have turned invisible.

We buy fishcakes and pies and talk to many people from Pirjo and Jammu to Titti and Eva and onto friends of friends whose names I may never have known.

The weather will indeed change rapidly. The mist will dissolve and the sky will brighten.

We will end up outside Benita’s with Ville and Margit and Pirjo and Jammu. Ville will introduce me to Steve, an English programmer who lives in Helsinki, and his wife Sylvia, a Spanish doctor and economist who does distance work for a hemorrhoids clinic in Ibitha.

Time will pass in the sudden warmth.

We will drive home and notice the queue for the ferry contains about thirty cars. The wind will rise and Sunshine will demand to come in.