The Chartered Gas Engineer

It's late January 1989, and I am now living in Helsinki. After a childhood in Spain’s Canary Islands and an adolescence in England, I have now moved onto my third country. This country is called Finland and it is here that I will spend my adult life and in doing so take on new roles as Wife and Mother. And all of this will be with The Finn Named Axel (see post A Finn Named Axel). The dire warning of the Chartered Gas Engineer that I am moving to semi-communist state, and that I may never be able to return to England has not served to deter me in any way. On the contrary, it has strengthened my resolve to find out for myself if this is indeed so (see post Farewell England). Mama’s pleas to convince Axel that he should be the one moving to England and not myself to Finland have also fallen on deaf ears. The Finn Named Axel and I have fallen in love and we will soon be getting married. Nothing and nobody will stop us, and I have been in Finland just a few short weeks as the preparations are made for our impending nuptials.

The Finland that I arrive in still has the Soviet Union on the other side of the long 1400 kilometer border dividing the two countries, and it will still take another two years for this great Eastern Power to crumble and sweep away with it a world order that has been in place for the past fifty years. But this unimaginable future is still waiting to happen as I settle into Finland’s cozy and compact capital city. Compared to the bustle of London that I have left behind, Helsinki at just 185km from The Iron Curtain and nestled on the shores of the Gulf of Finland is charmingly provincial and imbued with a certain Eastern feel. The city that I arrive in bears little resemblance to that which I live in today: Kamppi Shopping center is still but a twinkle in the eye of the city developers and so is the Kiasma Museum of Modern Art. The shopping center of tomorrow still houses a large bus station called Simonkentta, and the place that the Kiasma museum will occupy is but a large open space opening out behind the Mannerheim statue.

Eppu Normaali and Juice Leskinen are big in the charts and their songs play in the background at the student parties I am taken to by The Finn Named Axel. At these parties I meet future doctors, nurses and engineers. In the beginning Axel’s Finnish student friends talk to me in English, but after a while their enthusiasm wanes and they eventually revert to Finnish and then I am totally lost. But I don't care too much because I have invited a bunch of my own party friends along. Their names are Shogun, War and Peace, The Rise and fall of the Third Reich, and anything else in English from Axel’s bookshelf that I can get my hands on. Whilst everyone parties around me in Finnish, I happily immerse myself in thousand-page books of epic proportions. Next on my list is the Holy Bible. I dare not tell my friends in England this is how I spend my evenings at wild students parties, and especially not the daughter of the Chartered Gas Engineer. She would tell her father and he would just shrug his shoulders and say, 'that's what happens when you go to a student party in a semi-communist state'.

  

 This country really is quite different to Spain and England in so many ways; The ladies public lavatories I visit have dinky hand showers right next to the sink in each cubicle. 'Why the Finnish womens' obsession with washing their hair in public places', I ask myself? Axel later explains that it is not for washing your hair, rather it's a type of hand-held bidet and that they are in all the lavatories not just the ladies. So it's for washing your bottom and now I am beginning to feel even more perplexed. Can they not just wash at home before leaving in the morning and then again once after they return? Clearly not, having a spotless undercarriage at all times seems to be a national obsession. I guess if the Russians invade they will at least all be annexed into the Soviet Union with clean bottoms. I make a mental note to share this with the Chartered Gas Engineer when I next go back to England. He's dead interested in all things Russian. 

A while later into my time in Helsinki I read that Finns consider it a lottery win to be born Finnish. They are seemingly proud of their small country tucked away on the periphery of Europe and on first impression it does all seem rather idyllic. The people Axel has introduced me to have been without exception polite and welcoming, but lottery winners the lot? If I extend this logical chain of thinking then it means that every single person born in this country is by default a lottery winner whereas I myself, not born here, am automatically classified as a lottery loser. Hmmm.. not so sure I agree with them on this one, isn't it a lottery win to be born into a loving family wherever you are in the world? With exasperation I now realize that, on top of everything else I will also have to share this to the Chartered Gas Engineer on my return to England. I will have to break it to him that he is not, never has been and never will be a lottery winner. How on the earth will he take it? I am already anticipating his witty reply: 'That’s what they all say to feel better about living in a semi-communist state'. Maybe I'll just skip this part.

To be continued ......

Next post: 12.08. 2018:  The Lottery Winners

Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.

Farewell England

                                       

             
         The inconceivable has come to pass; Axel and I are an item. Four months have elapsed since we met in England (see posts Canada, A Finn Named Axel, My language Versus Yours, Spanish Omelette, Toronto), and soon I will be moving to Finland to be with him. Romance finally blossoms between us during the weekend in Brentwood just before Axel returns home to Helsinki (see post Spanish Omelette). Sat in the dim lit theatre of London’s West End watching its longest running play, The Mouse Trap we finally hold hands, and by the time we visit the ancient Greensted Church in Ongar the following day we have kissed; our destiny is sealed. Everything preceding is now forgotten including the awkward detail of a girlfriend awaiting Axel in Finland, as well as the exhaustingly unpredictable behavior of the man himself. This must be what Love does to you. I have already been to Helsinki for a two-week vacation to visit Axel, and besides a leafy birch tree leaning into the water on the shores of the beautiful Lake Kaitalampi he casually proposes and I respond in the affirmative. I am thrilled and soon Axel and I will marry. Mama is not at all happy. She is not happy for three specific reasons:

Number one; I will be marrying a person that Mama and Papa have met all of once and who they know virtually nothing about. They are alarmed. In addition to this, no-one in the family knows a thing about Helsinki, let alone Finland. The country is one big unknown up there on the map of Europe somewhere close to the Arctic Circle, seemingly frozen over most of the year and if that were not enough of a deterrent, next door to The Soviet Union, an even bigger unknown. Do I have any idea of what I am letting myself in for? I am constantly asked. Besides all this, Axel is only twenty-one and I am already twenty-four. Can I not find someone nearer to my own age Mama sarcastically asks me? I wisely choose to ignore this comment.

Number two; I have resigned my stellar job at Ford Motor Company so that I can move to Finland to be with Axel. Mama is more than annoyed, she is cross. How can I renounce a career with such potential?  She cannot understand the way my mind works. I have the job and Axel is the student, so logically thinking he should come to England to be with me and not the other way around!

Number three; The Roma fortune teller’s prediction indeed came true! I am leaving England and moving abroad to begin a new life with a mysterious foreign man (see post Canada). She said that she saw Canada, not that I was moving there. Mama is now more than annoyed or cross; she is fuming with irritation and would like  to box the ears of said Fortune Teller if she were ever to cross her path again. How dares she predict a future that came so terribly true? Roma Fortune Tellers are now being very wise and firmly staying away from our home at 51 Crescent Road. Perhaps they can predict that if they come anywhere near to it, they will be on the receiving end of boxed ears? After a while, Mama realizes that it is futile to try to dissuade me; my mind is made up and I am leaving.

A few weeks before I move to Finland I pay a visit to my childhood friend, Jennifer to share with her the exciting news. Jennifer’s father also happens to be at home, so he too is privy to this thrilling development and I expect him to be as equally captivated by my news as his daughter. I am disappointed. ‘Don’t do it!’ comes the immediate reply delivered with a tone of measured concern. ‘You will be going to a semi-communist state bordering with The Soviet Union and once you are there, chances are that may not even be able to leave.’ Now Jennifer’s father is a Chartered Gas Engineer and the epitome of all things British and educated, so I must presume that he knows what he's talking about. But I am not quite convinced; 'That's funny'. I think to myself, 'I was there just a few months ago, and they let me out at the end of my holiday.’

Of course, I listen to the Chartered Gas Engineer as much as I listen to Mama, which is not at all. In fact, he makes me want to move there than ever. In any case, what does he know about Finland all the way from England? He has never been there, so I value his opinion as much as that of ex-Norwegian boyfriend Anders (see post Spanish Omelette). There is only way to find out if there is any truth to what he says; I must go there and see for myself. And so it comes to pass that, on a cold December’s day in 1988 and with my most precious valuables crammed into one suitcase, I  bid farewell to Mama, Papa and Sis and board the Finnair London to Helsinki flight. 


History is once more repeating itself; Just as Mama bid a tearful goodbye to her own Mama many moons before in May of 1970 to move to England, I will be doing the same but this time to Finland (see post Share The Moon). Along with this farewell I also bid goodbye to the name that has identified me for the duration of my time on this emerald island. Upon arrival in Helsinki my name will revert back to Maria del Carmen; Marie will remain behind on English soil. The plane soon disappears into the clouds and along with it vanishes the only home that I have known since the age of six; after many years spent in exile it is time to move on. The Little Bird has finally spread her wings and learned to fly. Great Grandma Celia looking down on me from her place in Heaven would be proud (see post Little Bird).

To be continued ......

Next post: 29.07. 2018:  The Chartered Gas Engineer

Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.