Girls still got it

Kati took me through a stroll around the back of Helsinki, actually I have no idea where I was. But there were a few pretty flowers and the like and we were in a photographic mood, albeit a bit of a crazy one.

Our antics caught the eye of a blonde chiselled Nordic type trying to read nearby. Either his book wasn't very engaging, or the choice of dressing a little feminine was paying off because he kept looking our way.

"Kati, I keep looking at that guy," I say without any trace of cool. "And I think he's looking at me."

So of course we both look. And keep looking. We walk away. He looks. And so the ridiculous chain of "is he looking?", "he saw me looking!" begins.

Kati is urging me to go over and talk to him but I am frozen and for once a little speechless. Since when did she get all this confidence!?

But I don't need to move because he comes over. We are stunned by amazing blue eyes. For a moment. Because then I am wondering where the rest of him is. I mean I am a good few inches taller than him. But he's cute so we'll at least answer his questions, which he's asking in Finnish.

I pick up that Kati tells him I am Australian and he makes an attempt in English to ask if I am exchange student.

"Ahh the flattery," I think. "No I live and work here," my reply.

"Where?" he asks.

"I have my own business."

His eyes fall out of his head. They're pretty colours so we pick them up and pass them to him.

"How old are you?!"

I mock horror at this question and then start to hear the crack in this young man's voice, note the soft fuzz on his not shaved face.

"I'm thirty," I declare.

The guy looks like he needs smelling salts.

He reverts to talking to Kati and I see his hand gesturing high up in the air, which I take as a reference to Torni, where we're going next for cocktails, and out of politeness have invited him. Kati is also doing this upward hand gesture thing but then its meaning becomes clear.

"Thirty," he says, swallowing hard, "thirty is a long long way away for me," and the hand goes up in the air motioning it's up there in space as far as he's concerned.

Kati explains that my translation of his age being 20 is more exactly that he's not even twenty.

I give him a sweet smile, to show that despite my age, I still have all my own teeth and declare "menan".

Kati and I walk away shaking to control our laughter, leaving Little Boy Blue standing in shock at the close call. As we round the corner, the laughter is an uncontrollable cackle and I'm bent in old age posture, begging for someone to help an old lady across the road.

Well at least we can say these old girls have still got it.