Monday, January 19

I woke in the night at 3:45 and didn’t get back to sleep. I woke to an odd dream that started with me trying to get the fridge to close. Irma had filled it full of water containers of all kinds, including the plastic lemons that usually hold lemon juice. Eventually I rearranged them so that the door closed.

I then heard a noise downstairs so I went down to see what was happening. I was in the kitchen of the house where I grew up. My uncle Ted was explaining to my father, who was out of view, how to edit video with Premiere; and a little boy of about eighteen months was trying to take my gloves off. His father, who was exceptionally tall, was hidden behind somebody else and I could only see Uncle Ted and the little boy clearly.

Auo was in another corner of the room watching with a sort of sly smile. Then she was whispering to me, “I’ve been trying to tell them about the video that I made, but I don’t think they can hear me”. I asked “what video” and she looked at me and gave a big grin. “You’ll be surprised”, she said, and I woke up.

It wasn’t anything like a nightmare but it left me awake with my thoughts refusing to quieten down. Originally I was trying to piece more of the dream together, and then I was just thinking about it, and finally I started missing Auo. She would have liked the fact that she woke me at 3:45.

I felt very flat most of the morning: like a man with too much to think about and not enough sleep. At 9:00 I did my first one-hour clinic with the Innovations students after which I alternated between writing furiously and staring out of the window. Staring out of the window emerged victorious.

At 12:00 I had a meeting with Nathalie and Tore which was cancelled by email the moment I sat down in the room and opened my iPad. I went downstairs and had cheese soup with herbs instead.

At 13:00 I did my second clinic, and at 14:00 I set off in the direction of Pasila for what was destined to be my final visit to Arja. We talked about the year since Auo died; the ways our feelings have changed, or not changed; and the fact that life without her is duller than life with her used to be. We also talked about my early morning dream and why my Uncle Ted was in it.

Now I have just missed a bus and decided to walk over the bridge to the mainline station and go home that way. I am looking out of the station over the sea to where I have just been.

It will start drizzling wet snowy stuff before I get home. I will arrive home to find snowploughs and trucks clearing the roads of Vartiokylä while a certain cat hides in the woods.

When they have gone I will clear the mess from our yard and, shortly afterwards, Sunshine will appear from the woods.

Naa will be at the cinema with Samppo – a special first night showing of Theory of Everything, the new movie about Stephen Hawking – and then spend the night at Kamppi.