Sunday, December 15

This morning we left Naa in bed and drove to Pellinki at 7:00. It was pitch dark when we left, or as pitch dark as Helsinki ever gets. As we drove it of the city and into the country it became properly pitch dark.

At Tirmo we ate sandwiches while we waited for the ferry, as the sun was just beginning to lighten the sky. When we crossed onto Sundö we noticed branches all over the place. There had been a violent storm last night.

Irma started to set up her stall while I moved branches and other rubbish from the land round our summer house. I noticed two things. The canvas in front of the summer kitchen had held and everything inside was still dry. The piles of leaves that I left in September were still there.

I got a wheelbarrow and cleared them away. They seemed to have frozen into clumps before the wind blew, with the result that I was able to slice them and put them in to the wheelbarrow as cold leaf bricks.

At 10:00 I put on my Santa outfit and spent my third December entertaining the visitors to the Sundö Julmarknad. As I stood at the start of the road waving to cars it started to snow. It then snowed hard all morning, so that by 11:00 it was looking festive and by 12:00 it was looking realistically wintry.

At 14:00 the market finished and we all went in for some deer soup that Gita had made, with glögg and the star shaped Christmas tarts that I can’t stop eating. Now I am standing looking out over the bay. An hour ago it was shrouded in mist. Now it is just monochrome.

We will get home feeling exhilarated from a long morning’s activity in the cold and sleepy from the sudden warmth in the car. By the time we go to bed the temperature will have risen and all the snow will have melted again.