Tuesday, December 3

Jutta decides to go to the shops to buy a salad for herself and some frozen chicken for Hoppu the Dog. I decide to go with her. The weather, which should have warmed up, has got colder. We leave the building into an icy gale.

On the way back from the mall I pause at the front door to take some photographs of the snow that has hung around, and will continue to hang around until the temperature rises convincingly above zero for a day.

Photographs taken, I walk upstairs to discover that the Finnish prime minister has resigned, and that Sanna Marin, the woman who deputised for him during his lengthy sick leave, has raced back from Brussels to try to save the coalition. She will, apparently, “not shirk her responsibility in this difficult situation”.

Let’s see how that works out. Since the Centre Party, who provoked the resignation, do not want to leave the current coalition and thereby force an election, it may well work out just fine.

“Oh look, I’m prime minister,” she may well find herself saying as she wakes up on Independence Day.