We Really Are Resident

Day Two- Helsinki to Takahuhti

8pm (Naoise watching “Puss In Boots”)

Coffee was very much needed this morning. Coffee as thick as tar, twice. Naoise wasn’t impressed with the Finnish cuisine and turned his nose up at the cheese, rice and pastry fancy thingy. I wasn’t impressed by the middle aged english man who seemed completely full of himself  being over familiar with a young woman at least half his age on the table next to us.

 

I found a plain white roll for Naoise which he liked so much that I fetched he ate another as well. I made sandwiches for us with more white rolls and cheese and took some chocolate brownies as well, all wrapped up in a paper napkin.

The lift at the hostel is of great amusement to Naoise. It has no exterior door. Going back up in the lift we have to wait twice, the transvestite and the thin wired looking man that he is with are going to the 7th floor. They  are impatient and refuse to share the metal box with us.

We dragged our luggage on and off the tram to the train station. On the tram we watch white prams with buggies and babies being pushed on and off. A little boy with his wooden push along bike gets on and tries to swing around the metal bar on the bus like a monkey. An elderly woman smiles at me and Naoise she shows me her postcard of Greta Garbo. I smile and respond “Yes, beautiful”. I must make an effort to try and learn some Finnish. So far me and Naoise have picked up the word for thanks…kitos.

Helsinki Station is magnificent. The waiting room ordered and neat, wooden tables with train tracks to entertain children. Even queuing is controlled wth a ticketed numbers system. I booked our tickets to Tampere and back to Helsinki for our return journey in a couple of weeks time.

The VR train was clean, green and fast. Only 1.5 hours to Tampere. We draw our journey, a line of firs and silver birch and yellow cut fields of wheat. Green, red and pale blue wooden houses, barns, a house on an island, one with a burnt out roof. Naoise tells me he would happily live in the house on the island.

We are very tired. We drag our luggage, but we drag our luggage well, as we are a team. Naoise listens and waits and holds open doors and is able to negotiate an escalator on his own now, and thankfully the escalator at Tampere is tiny compared to the mountain descent that we faced in Helsinki.

Despite being offered a lift directly from the train station, we take the bus as I have misread the time table. We take the bus rather than wait around at the station, its functional not glamorous like Helsinki. We don’t want to hang around, we want to get home. The bus stop to Takahuhti is conveniently located only a couple of minutes walk from the station. So the dragging is brief. Note to self, next time I go anywhere alone abroad again with Naoise, take even less. Less is more. Less is less of a drag. I literally became mummy donkey.

Naoise says:

Everything is different, different rug, different table, different plate, different bed, different shop, different money, we have to learn about everything that is different

All is welcoming at Takahuhti. Jam. croissants, bread, fruit, milk, eggs, butter, jam. All thoughtfully organised by Nicola and fetched by Varpu. Varpu lives upstairs with her family. Sometimes I hear their feet on the floorboards above, but mostly it is very quiet and still.

Naoise runs excitedly around the studio and the apartment. We open doors and cupb…..

 

 

<Shower Time>

Naoise struggling, tired, crochety.

Racing cars down the long white board in the studio that I propped up against the table to become ramp…

Naoise is compliant. In the shower he is Bruce Nauman squirting water fountains from his mouth.

Patrick reads Mr Tickle to Naoise via Skype.

How much do you say. What do you take? Naoise does not always want me to take photographs of him. Now I ask his permission about what I can take, about what I can publish. I don’t always ask for his permission for what I can write. What about ethics?  What about his privacy?  Where do I draw the line between public and private? Will I regret this? He gets annoyed if I take too many pictures if I spend too much time on my phone. He needs me to be present. So now I write these words in a book, and type them up after I have got him to sleep. Some days I might no even manage this. Its enough to just be looking after him.

Too tired. We have found our home, unpacked, arranged and rearranged our things, we have played and made art and we have hunted down food at the supermarket, we have cooked dinner, washed up, walked down a long corridor past a laundry basket of stones and a printing press and washed ourselves clean. Too tired to write anymore.

 

 

WE ARE RESIDENT !