On the shore of the frozen lake Pyhäjärvi. We found this route back to our hotel from the city at the end of our first full day in Tampere. We couldn’t have hoped for a better location to stay - close enough (2 miles) to the centre to walk, but far enough that we were basically in the ‘countryside’…

click for large

Did we do it?

Oh yes we did!

This was my third of five dips in the water…

The temperature difference was greater than previously estimated… The sauna was at just over 110° C and the water at -0.4°C

Good things about earthquakes:

You get a free chimney sweep instead of having to pay a man £50 to do it.

Bad things about earthquakes:

They don’t put up dust-sheets before they start work.

Spotted in the Näsinneula tower, Särkänniemi.

No dancing barefoot on the escalator!

Spotted in Stockmann’s, Hämeenkatu, Tampere.

If someone goes for highlights and their stylist completely messes up, and they get really depressed to the point of feeling suicidal…

…do they…

(wait for it)

…jump off…

(are you ready?)

…Bleachy Head?

A conversation with a guest on Sunday morning…

- Morning! Cup of coffee?
- Ooh… yes please… I already made one but I’ll have another.
- Ok! Toast?
- I had thought of making toast, but I wasn’t sure if you had bread.
- Ah yeah… we keep it in the freezer.
- …cos I saw the toaster…
- Uh? Oh look! I have a toaster! Well how about that!?

You see, that’s the danger of someone moving in to your already familiar house - especially when they’re a doer and stuff that comes into your house finds its way into the right place without your knowledge.

There was a similar incident on Saturday evening when I went into the spare room, closed the curtains, and then on the way to the light-switch I walked slap bang into a cupboard I don’t have.

I had a birthday party and H had a house-warming party and it was the same party so that was good and it was very nice and lots of nice people came and we had a lot of fun and didn’t need to play games like scrabble and monopoly and chess and cards and cranium and things because everyone got on very well and chatted and played the piano and sang and threw paper aeroplanes around and ate really really nice cake which H made and blancmange and jelly except they didn’t eat it for ages and then someone pointed out that maybe if there were any bowls and spoons maybe they would eat it then and they drank salmiakki vodka and beer and cider and lots and lots and lots and lots of wine and things like that and nobody invited 2000 people off myspace and so no-one trashed the house and so it wasn’t very hard to clean and it was lovely to see lots of happy people and we love you all and baklawa is a difficult word to spell.

Anyone know how to get paper aeroplanes out of absolutely everywhere? We’re still finding them.

So we finished moving H’s stuff in at around 5:00pm on Saturday, and just six and a half hours later - by 11:30pm - I was locked out in the freezing cold street in just my socks*. I was stuck out there for a good couple of hours**.

She first denied all responsibility, and then finally conceded that maybe it was an accident.

I’m not so sure… what do you think?

* that is I was fully clothed except for my feet which had no shoes on… not that I was stark naked apart from socks… that would be very bad

** about 27 seconds in non-exaggerated time

Introduction

So… we’re soon off for a holiday in Finland to experience some proper snow and ice and amazing sub-arctic weather.

Temperature comparison

Loughborough: -3.2°C
Tampere: -1.0°C

Conclusion

FAIL