Still thawing...

The extent to which this is not a typical winter in southern Finland should be obvious from this blip. This time last year, I took a picture in the same park, but from the other side facing towards where I was standing. It was -10, although a few days before that it had been +6. This year it has just been consistently warm (and quite wet), with almost no snow - the last lot was at the end of January, and there are just a few dirty piles here and there. Two years ago is perhaps more what was expected even than last year. Proper winter in Helsinki. Mind you, there's been plenty of snow in the far north this year - as much as ever. There have been plenty of blips demonstrating that. But the winds in the south seem to have come much more from the south and the west this year, with predictable results.

I got distracted on yesterday's blip, actually done this morning, by the travails of Colin. I should have gone on to say that our flight was so timely into Helsinki that we had time to have a meal at some random place in the shopping centre in Tikkurilla between getting off the commuter train from the airport and getting the (very busy) express to Tampere. I think yesterday was the end of the local half term holidays and this was reflected by the number of people with heavy luggage on the train returning to the cities and towns north of Helsinki. That meant that we didn't have to go and look for somewhere to eat at a suboptimally late hour when we got here, and we could focus on the usual arrival routine. Get the key at R Kioski, walk to the flat, drop our stuff, collect the-bag-that-stays-here from my office, and procure enough bits for breakfast from the local supermarket.

This morning, I was - as I often am the day after travelling to Finland - pretty sleepy. We didn't try getting up too early, but allowed ourselves to move slowly into the day. I've had a fairly successful day with my proofs, and it was pretty quiet - as always - in the office. Things will pick up later in the week.