Summer Daze

In Summer, Helsinki and indeed all of Finland, take on a whole new life. People around you smile. Your neighbours say "hej" as a greeting rather than look at you in alarm in the corridor. And even the drunks are happy, dancing in front of the pan-piping buskers in happy state of oblivion.

The tourists wander the streets, free from the confines of their Silver Hair Cruse Liner, or fresh from grotty grimy London or an exotic yet "unsafe" southern European port. And so they love Helsinki, with it's clean streets and rubbish bins and clean white people and clean ordered parks.

The tourists lick ice cream cones eagerly just like when they were children. They feel safe, just like when they were children. Their bum bags relax against their smart casual linen shore clothes.

The young people come out onto the streets and terraces and drink and talk and smoke and flash beautiful white teeth.

Bands and dancing fills the esplanade, and tiny ponies walk up and down; the lady who walks them has a larger beige behind than the ponies... The music bounces from the soft tourist bodies to the taut blonde locals; "they're not all blonde, we call that brown hair" a friend comments apropos of someone with dark blonde flecks in their hair.

Everyone is happy. Even when it's a stifling 25C for three days which here constitutes a heat wave.

Everyone is so happy that it infects you and fills you with a fierce pride, a spring in your step, you beam at the tourists who get in your way and say "This is my city! Mine! Aren't I lucky. I live here." You puff out your chest with pride.

Of course, come talk to me in February when the smile is closer to mania and mass suicide is just a step away from the national conscience.

"Aren't I lucky?"