They're all going on a summer holiday...

...whereas I'm destined to stay put for all weeks to come. Isn't summer supposed to be the high time of freedom, beauty, truth and love (above all things, love)? But no! Here it rains every second day, thunder storms and hale showers keep one up at nights, there is no one to talk to, and to cap it all, Italy didn't make it past the quarter-finals. Plus the longest 'holiday' I get to have this summer is three whole days.

Now that I got that out of my system, I can mention some agreeable things that have happened to me:

The Good Luck Shamrock my friend P left in my care for the summer is blossoming. Beautiful, pale violet flowers!

My balcony is full of flowers and bright with rich colours, the sort only nature can create.

In a week I shall witness the wedding of two friends: a match made in heaven if there ever was one.

Behind the window I can see a beautiful, peaceful summer evening sky...

I had a lovely midsummer with my family (including an uncommonly prolific photoshoot with my sister):



Our lovely miss Nekku hovered around the grill in the hope of catching a stray sausage.




What is marshmallow but fluffy sugar? Not the most salubrious of comestibles, perhaps, but o so good! (And please note my use of Grammar Hell vocabulary there.)

The child that is born on the Sabbath day

It's my birthday today. My Dad told me that the day I was born was very hot and that he and my elder sister visited my mother and newly-born me at the hospital by bike. I was born on a Sunday, and according to that English nursery rhyme I ought to be 'bonny and bright and good'. Which of course is true.



When my sister left Tampere for the summer, she was concerned that I might sink to the level of watching Smack Down on tv and drinking beer (well, I'm not certain that she mentioned beer). I haven't done that, but I've entered a jolly bachelor's life so far as to watch football on the net: Portugal played Turkey last night and I was disappointed in the outcome. Italy will play tomorrow and I will be glued on to the sofa. Maybe I'll even get some beer.

A week ago I went swimming in a lake for the first time this year. In Finland, we call that first out-door swim 'throwing off your wintercoat'. I threw mine in the lake Näsijärvi in Tampere, and the waters received it with cold arms. By the lake is a public sauna, which you can enter for the fee of 4.5 euros. If you walk quickly enough, you can retain some of the sauna's hotness in you before plunging into the waters - a wise precaution in the early summer!