Kaljakallio

One summer's evening back in the 1950s, five young architects sat on the granite rocks of the Lauttasaari hill drinking some beers and trying to ignore the cold shadow of the water tower creeping across them. They looked down at a bumpy piece of land sloping steeply towards the coast and thought how one day they should buy it and build a house for each of them with a communal garden where they could sit and continue drinking their beer.

The water tower has gone now and so have the young architects but at the end of Pohjoisniementie you'll find a row of five beautiful houses, staggered down a hill with one communal garden. The houses are known as the Kaljakallio, the Beer Rock.

Brexit and individualism

Brexit seems to me to be a continuation of the individualist attitude in British society. After the war, British people, tired of being poor and shot-at and bombed accepted that we needed to try and make a society that worked. By making a nice world and starting to look after each other we could avoid this competition and resentment that leads to war and poverty.

So the British people voted to start the NHS to keep everyone healthy, and nationalised industries so that the money from them would also go into society, and formed unions so that workers would have some job security, and made the BBC so that everyone could be well-informed impartially about what was happening in the country and nationalised the railways so that people could move around easily.

However, since Thatcher, the trend has moved the other way. Moved toward taking away the things that make society work. The NHS is underfunded, there are no more national industries, no more national rail network, unions have been destroyed and the BBC is constantly attacked. No longer is the goal a society that works.

When you lose these things society no longer works and all that is left are individuals. Individuals are not interested in looking after each other, only themselves. As individuals we are not interested in paying taxes to makes society work, we are not interested in making sacrifices to help other people who need help. We are not interested in the bigger picture, we are not interested in unions nor the benefits of a European Union.

Brexit is the strongest indication yet of the decline into individualism that started with Thatcher.

Individualism does not make a healthy society that avoids war, quite the opposite.

Lauttasaari Hill

In September of 2015 the glorious water tower that had looked over the island since 1958 was pulled to the ground, bite by bite. The locals came out and watched and shared memories and said goodbye to this one constant in our lives. The hooded crows nesting on top flew squaking in confused circles, and everyone wondered what would be built in its stead.

I spoke to my neighbour about the tower. He told me that the entire hill is hollow, a giant cave blasted out of the granite to store ammunition; A nod to Finland's precarious geographical position. Perhaps that explains the official-looking building with high fences and immaculate lawns to the north-east on Pohjoiskaari.

I used to live beneath the giant mushroom tower, now I live next to a giant ammunition store. Maybe I should teach the dog to step lightly.

Cycling along the south coast - Long read

Why.

As soon as I arrived in Finland last July I could see that this was a great cycling country. Geologically glaciers have planed and squished it mostly flat but also left it with amazing countryside full of lakes and forests. On top of that (literally) is a beautiful network of well kept roads and, in the cities, cyclepaths. Having cycled all my life, one of the first priorities upon landing here was to get a bike. After a bit of shopping around, Girlf. and I bought a pair of fairly decent crossbikes and from the comfort of our kitchen began to plan epic adventures cycling all around the Baltic and up to Lapland ,camping wild and swimming beneath the stars. Then it snowed.