Six Things I Did Last Week

Photo of Oodi, the Central Library of Helsinki, courtesy of the Oodi website

I don’t want to give any oxygen to an unelected billionaire who is slashing and burning through the federal government agencies elsewhere, destroying many workers lives as he does so. As a former trade union official, (I worked with the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation from 1998 to 2001), I despair at the apparent hopelessness of the workers’ and trade union organisations as they currently operate in the US.

However, I am happy to take the bones of his idea and turn it into something more palatable, such as a blog post, without the bullet points and in no way consice. My friends in Ireland often ask me ‘What do you do all day in Helsinki?’ as they know that, most days, Seán leaves the apartment around 6am and he doesn’t get home until around 6pm. Also, with his work rotas, he works on a Saturday on the weekends he is here in Helsinki. Therefore, potentially, I could be sitting here alone in the apartment quite a lot.

The answer is that if you write (and read), you are never alone or bored. I try to treat writing like a job while I am here and my goal is to spend most mornings at writing/editing/proofreading, from about 9am to 1pm. The goal is, as it is for a lot of writers, to write 1,000 words a day.

Of course, that’s not possible every day and the first ‘spanner in the works’ to that routine while I am in Helsinki is my weekly yoga session. My young-at-heart old school friend from Mount St Michael in Rosscarbery in West Cork, Yogadhara (Colette) runs weekly classes and yoga days from her beautiful yoga centre outside Kenmare. The Covid lockdown wasn’t all bad, as Colette pivoted and began offering her yoga classes online. Nowadays, you can opt for participating either in house or online.

A unique part of the class is that she regularly invites participants to stay on for a cup of shared (herbal!) tea afterwards, focusing on topics she has circulated beforehand. This week’s topic was positivity, and how we can foster it in our own personal lives, in a world gone mad. The beauty of being online is that I can sneak my cup of Barry’s with no judgment. No judgment is a familiar refrain during Yogadhara’s classes. She urges participants to observe their movements, thoughts and feelings as an impartial observer, acknowledging them without judgment. The aim of the class, according to her website, is to connect with the body, developing awareness of what we do in our lives that brings tension, and releasing it. Through awareness and relaxation, we learn to release stress and find the calmness and quietness within.  My excuse to myself then (not that I need one if I am not judging myself!) is that I am in a better mindspace after her class to write more productively afterwards.

When I attended Mount St Michael in Rosscarbery in West Cork as a seven-day boarder, Colette was a day-pupil. She very kindly regularly invited me to spend the weekend in her family home in Castlefreke and those weekends helped to alleviate my homesickness and the boredom of spending the weekend in the school when many of my friends who were gone home as they were five-day boarders or the day pupils were not around. It was wonderful being in a family environment (Colette was second eldest in a family of six) and her lovely parents were always welcoming and kind to me. We also had many adventures. It was while staying in Colette’s house I attended my first ‘dance’ in the Industrial Hall in Clonakilty. The memories from those great nights out as teenagers have been mined for some of my fictional stories down the years.

The second disruption to my morning writing sessions came on Tuesday morning when the monthly walk with the International Women’s Club of Helsinki took place. I caught the metro into the Central Railway Station and then boarded Tram 3. We walked from an area called Kaivopuisto through a lovely residential neighbourhood that reminded me of Ballsbridge, with its lovely homes and embassies, through Kaivopuisto Park and then out to an island called Uunisaari on the winter bridge. I very stupidly asked one of the Finnish ladies in the group why it was called this and she explained very patiently to me that it only exists in winter. It turns out it is a pedestrian pontoon bridge between Ehrenströmintie and Pohjoinen Uunisaari, installed each year on the shore of Merisatama. This year it opened on Friday 15 November 2024 and will be available until Monday 14 April 2025. The bridge will be removed on Tuesday 15 April 2025 if the ice situation allows.

This year, that should be no problem as the temperatures have been so relatively mild this winter and it was noticeable as we walked that there is very little ice remaining in the water. The bridge is put in place so that pedestrians have a direct route to Uunisaari Island to enable the recreational use of Uunisaari during the winter season. Located in front of Kaivopuisto Park, Uunisaari is about three hectares in size and consists of an interconnected northern and southern island. It has nice beaches and is a popular picnic location. The bridge cuts off the normal boat route between the island and the shore during these months but, normally, the water would be iced over at that time of year and so the boats would not be able to use that stretch of water anyhow. It is too shallow there to send in the larger boats with the ice-breakers to break the ice. Having said that the temperatures are currently so mild, the forecast is for a significant snowfall later this week, but today it is a positively sweltering 3˚ Celsius.

My part-time work with Emu Ink Publishing involves a variety of tasks, but usually involves editing and proof-reading one of their many books written by members of school communities, sports clubs or community groups of various types. However, I was delighted to be asked to read the author Verona McColl’s middle-grade book and to interview her. The book Spell 30, Book of the Dead is based on a time-travel adventure of two young people to Ancient Egypt and is a great read. It also complements the Irish history curriculum very well and primary teachers will find it to be a great resource in their teaching of Ancient Civilisations. While the interview with Verona took place a few weeks ago, it was released on Wednesday and was circulated to the 3,000 or so Irish primary schools as part of an e-zine. The book is available to buy from Outside the Box, which all Irish teachers know has very high-quality resources to complement various aspects of the curriculum.

In my defence, early in the morning suited best for my meeting with the lovely Seija Hälvä on Thursday. Seija is a friend of my neighbour Mary in Knocklyon and it was she who suggested that we should meet. I am so glad she did. Seija is Finnish but she has lived for many years in Cambridge near Boston and now divides her time between Cambridge and Helsinki. She worked for much of her working life designing gardens, but for the past number of years has devoted her time to her work as a visual artist. Naturally, I explored her website after our meeting and I love her artwork, with so many of her pieces depicting the beautiful Finnish landscape. Seija gave me many tips for exploring more of Helsinki and its environs. It is always great to get insider tips.

We arranged to meet in the café in the Central Library, which is called Oodi. It had been on my list of places to visit since I got here, so this was the perfect excuse. What a wonderful space it is. It was the flagship project of the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence in 1918 and the library doors were opened to the public on the eve of Finland’s Independence Day, December 5, 2018. The library’s name was chosen through an open contest. The winner from over 1,600 suggestions was Oodi, which translates as ode, a lyrical poem. It comprises 10,000 square metres, has about 70,000 books on the shelves in 23 languages and has about 2.5million visitors every year. Throughout its three floors it has event spaces (which are all free), workstations, a youth space, a play area, games rooms, urban workshop, meeting areas, reading rooms and even a cinema that accommodates 250 people. In Finland, as in Ireland, libraries are open and free to all. The Finns hold another interesting world record. They loan more books from libraries than any other nation on the planet. Needless to say, I will be back to Oodi, if only for their lovely, buttery croissants.

On Friday I attended my regular Friday Flashing hour-long workshop on Zoom with a great writing community in the UK called Retreat West. Unfortunately, Helsinki is two hours ahead of GMT, so the time from 1-2pm is not as suitable as it is when I am at home in Ireland. However, it is a great session where the facilitator Debbi Voisey reads a flash fiction piece and gives us a prompt, based loosely on a theme or concept from the piece she has read. This week the piece involved the theme of colour and the group was encouraged to write a piece that involved various shades of a particular colour. We were encouraged to look at a colour palette to get inspiration from the various names of the paints. Naturally, as it is coming up to St Patrick’s Day, I explored green and looked to names such as Putting Green, Overtly Olive, Crushed Aloe and Emerald Glade to give me inspiration. I drafted a piece, so it remains to be seen if it goes anywhere in later drafts. Looking at the names of various paints is an interesting way for writers to get a prompt if they are not feeling particularly inspired for a creative writing piece.

A gang of six of us went to watch the Ireland vs France Six Nations rugby game on Saturday afternoon in an Australian Sports Bar in Kampii. That’s enough said about that.