Bielsa

A comment I wrote about Marcelo Bielsa.

And herein lies the Bielsa conundrum.

He takes his team to the limit, maybe psychologically, certainly physically, and it shows. He makes the average good and the good better, but like extracting hydrogen from water, exciting as it seems the end result is a net loss.

That's not to say that it's been a waste. The modern game is all abouts Bielsa's technique. However, other coaches realise they have to reign it in a bit in order to get through a season alive.

Wonderful exciting coach. Would love to see him in the Premier league.

Jaakko was a rolling stone

Many a stone has made it into the history books. For example, the one that Sisyphus pushed repeatedly up a hill only for it to roll back down again.

OK. So that was more of a rock. But what about the Rolling Stones who are in many ways like the punishment handed down to King Sisyphus. They're even beginning to look like they've been pushed up and down hills for eternity.

Then there was 'Like a Rolling Stone', basically the original version of Pulp's Common People, but a never-ending version with Bob refusing to stop screaming "AAAAAAHH" before launching into yet another verse.

Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (Live... by toma-uno

So, what have we learned? Stones are generally bad news.

Finland also has a famous stone, that which Jaakko throws into the lake every 25th of July. Jaakko? Who he? Well, Jaakko was some poor bugger who on his name day* threw a stone into the lake and then got blamed by everyone for the subsequent decrease in water temperature.

Jaakko and his mates

Essentially Jaakko and his rock were blamed because people were either not ready or not willing see that it is infact the tilt in the earth's axis that will inevitably cause the changing of the seasons and the onset of winter. Much easier to draw a specious connection between Jaakko and the end of summer.

If only Jaakko had had this diagram

Lisa explains specious reasoning

More excellent logical thinking. 

Incidentally, today the water temperature is hotter than yesterday.

*Every day in Finland is dedicated to a name. Today it's Martta so you should high-five all of the Marttas you know

Great Finnish covers

Normally I'm not a big fan of cover versions. They are usually about as interesting as karaoke night and generally indicate that the artist has:

a) run out of ideas
b) sold out
c) fallen in love with the sound of their own voice so much that they think their boring karaoke versions are worth bothering us with
d) all of the above

There are exceptions of course. Stevie Wonder blows this one out of the water

And Wilson Pickett and Duane Allman do the same here. 

Ouch!

However. I do have a soft spot for foreign-language covers. Everyone has a copy somewhere deep in their computer of Seu Jorge singing Bowie covers. Of course you do, they're great. There's something wonderfully exotic yet accessible about a song you recognise filled with strange words. 

Finland has a great selection of cover versions. Listen to the radio long enough and you'll hear them, they play them all the time. I've managed to scramble to my phone and catch a few on Shazam. Here are my Top 3.

My Finnish isn't good enough yet to understand the lyrics. I'll probably go off them when it is. Anyway, if these songs have terribly offensive lyrics in them then I apologise.

Number 1. Let's not mess around. Straight in at number 1 this sexy gem from Markku Aro. Go play it to your wife/significant other and thank me later.

Number 2. Tumppi & Problems? Love old school punk? Love this.

Number 3. Replacing Tom Waits Neigh-Bour-Hood with the name of Helsinki's hippest drinking area, Kal-Li-O, Sir Elwoodin hiljaiset (is that a real knighthood?).

Honourable mentions go to:

• the inevitable David Bowie cover, 
• a lovely Bob Dylan cover 
• the perhaps less-inevitable Boney-M cover (you love it). 

If you have any more then let me know. 

Gossip Mirrors, Porvoo

As I wrote in my previous post, last weekend I went to Porvoo. It's a lovely place full of charming buildings, cobbled nooks and wooden crannies.

But perhaps the most intriguing were the strange mirrors that were mounted on metal legs jutting out from house windows and into the street.

Here's a photo.

Gossip Mirror, Porvoo

Further investigation (Google) explained that they were Gossip Mirrors.

In the UK we have Curtain Twitchers, the stereotypically pointy-faced old women standing at their net curtains waiting to pass judgement on the neighbours' comings and/or goings.

Presumably in Porvoo, some gossip also had the mind of Archimedes and cunning of Edison and decided that being nosy would be much easier if mirrors were mounted outside the windows allowing for easier viewing and greater range.

This is all supposition on my part. Perhaps the mirrors were for Submarine captains on shore-leave scared of the vastness of the world when not viewed through a periscope. Or perhaps the Porvoo winters were just too cold to risk hanging around by the window for too long, better to stay next to the fire like a cat ready to react to a flash of a movement in the mirror.

Who knows? But fair play to these nosy pioneers who forwent the normally secretive peeping of the gossip and instead badgered their husbands into the workshop to forge metal mounts then told them exactly where to mount them and sent the eldest son out to pretend to be a sneaking ne'er-do-well whilst they got everything lined up.

I guess kids today wouldn't believe how difficult it was to be a psychopath before the invention of Facebook.

N.B. It's probably terribly sexist of me to suggest that this is all about women being gossips. Maybe the system was devised by the man of the house hiding from debt collectors. Maybe it is also sexist to suggest that it was just the men that handled (however badly) the finances of the house. If so, I apologise and offer a final (hopefully) non-sexist suggestion that the mirrors were for looking out for angry bears. Male or female. Or Trans.

A review of my day in Porvoo in the style of a child writing about their summer holiday

On Saturday I went to Porvoo and it was nice and I went with my girlfriend and her friend and she is very tall and we saw the red buildings and the church and the river and we had beer in a restaurant and it was a boat and I had a burger and my girlfriend had falafal because she doesn't eat meat and she is a vegetarian and it was nice.

By Henry aged 37 years old.

Happy Eino Leino Dayo!

Not my neighbour

My poor 75 year old neighbour always looks round like he's half expecting to find death itself looming over him, sickle in hand. "How's it going?" I had shouted across the hedge. "Why are the flags flying?"

The lovely old boy braced himself, rueing the minutes his English neighbour had scared from his lifespan, and explained that today is the day of Eino Leino, according to Wikipedia not only one of Finland's poetry pioneers but also, he is beloved.

Eino Leino (6 July 1878 – 10 January 1926) was a Finnish poet and journalist and is considered one of the pioneers of Finnish poetry. His poems combine modern and Finnish folk elements. The style of much of his work is like the Kalevala and folk songs. Nature, love, and despair are frequent themes in Leino's work. He is beloved and widely read in Finland today.

Apart from a great sounding name, a bit like Arnold Layne, it turns out that Eino Leino lived through a civil war, married three times and published over 70 books of poems and stories. Holy Moly! What people got done before YouTube.

Here's one of his poems translated into English. Definitely melancholic, a man waiting for death against a Finnish backdrop. Very nice.

Nocturne - Poem by Eino Leino 

The corncrake's song rings in my ears,
above the rye a full moon sails;
this summer night all sorrow clears
and woodsmoke drifts along the dales,
I do not laugh or grieve, or sigh;
the forest's darkness breathes nearby,
the red of clouds where day sinks deep,
the blue of windy hills asleep,
the twinflower's scent, the water's shade-
of these my heart's own song is made.
You, girl as sweet as summer hay,
my heart's great peace, I sing to you,
O my devotion, tune and play
a wreath of oak twigs, green and new.
I have stopped chasing Jack-o'-Lantern,
I hold gold from the Demon's mountain;
around me life tightens its ring,
time stops, the vane has ceased to swing;
the road before me through the gloom
is leading to the unknown room. 

Translated by Keith Bosley 

I raise my glass to you Leino.