Sunday, October 26

This morning the clocks went back, so Naa got to the book fair earlier. Samppo had been even earlier to try to get Naa an appointment with a publisher – and he succeeded. She left home happy.

Now we are in the garden doing autumnal things. It is drizzling in a rather unpleasant way, although this eases up after a while. We have cleared branches and now we are about to completely remake the compost heap. The good news is that the compost from two years ago has completely turned into soil. We spade it into bags to use next Spring, and then create a new compost heap that should be ready for use in 2016.

We carry on putting things away for winter. This metal frog will stay where it is for the time being. The garden seat will have bricks placed under it. And so on.

Just before Irma sets off to collect Naa from the book fair, she will phone to say that the publisher said that she can obviously write well and that they would like to read the entire manuscript with a view to considering it for publication. Naa is really happy, and we are really happy for her. Somehow in all of this it feels that some part of Auo lives on inside of Naa.

Irma will mail someone she knows about this, and then late in the evening someone from another well-known Finnish publishing house will send her a message asking Naa to forward the manuscript to them as well.

I am impressed.