The Lottery Winners

                  

I am now in Helsinki awaiting my impending nuptial with The Finn Named Axel. The culture shock of adjusting to life in yet another country is still taking up most of my attention and I am continuously surprised by the people of this home that I now call Finland ( see blog post The Chartered Gas Engineer).

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? And now, on top of everything else I will also have to tell 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.

   

The Wedding day is now only weeks away. One morning I wake up and its yet another, dark winter's day. Take the darkest winter's day you can imagine in England and triple that. Now, that still isn't anywhere near as dark as what's outside my window. Add to this copious amounts of dirty snow, treacherous ice and finish it all off with blasts of cold arctic wind slicing through you like a hot knife through butter. Then imagine yourself stepping out of your door into that. Not nice and that's my reality. Axel has already left for classes and I venture out of the apartment to go to the local food shop. My journey takes me past the local liquor store, they appropriately call it ‘Alko’. It's only ten in the morning yet already I see a few stewed lottery-winners wobbling around outside. I carry on walking and am suddenly assailed by a terrible yearning for London; ‘I don't like this anymore’, I think to myself and start to make a mental note of what exactly is bothering me;

'I don't like the cold, I don't like the darkness, the only lottery winners that talk to me are the drunk ones and I miss everyone back in England. Maybe that dratted Chartered Gas Engineer was right after all! What am I doing here? ' I ask myself. As I walk around the aisles gathering my food these thoughts continue to trouble me and follow me back to the flat. A cup of tea is in order. If there is one thing I have learned from all my years in Britain it is this: when a crisis hits put on the kettle. As I wait for the water to boil I switch on the radio. Big fat tears roll down my cheeks as Eppu Normaali’s Tahroja Paperille plays in the background and a dark tidal wave invades my mind. ‘I may be making a huge mistake moving here…what am I doing here? Perhaps I should just call everything off with Axel and return back to England’.

Many hours elapse and finally Axel returns home from his day of studies at the Helsinki University of Technology. I run into his arms, he holds me tight and in an instant I feel warm and protected. Then I remember, 'Oh, yes, this is what I'm doing here!' Axel asks me how my day was, and this is a cue for me to expel all the days turmoil in one long and exhausting sentence; ‘I went out today and the weather was awful, and I missed everyone and everything back in London, and I suddenly felt terribly lonely, and I asked myself what I was doing here, and then you turned up and then I remembered'. ‘All's OK then' he smiles gently, and we hug again. The following month we are man and wife. It’s a cold winters day and the wedding is a small and intimate affair at the Huopalahti chapel in the residential area of Etela Haaga. Our union is witnessed by only seventeen persons including Mama, Papa, Sis and her future husband, Harry. Axel and I both decide not to invite the Chartered Gas Engineer. He would only cause trouble. The Finn named Axel has just become The Husband Named Axel, and I in turn become Maria del Carmen Hanninen. After nineteen-years of enforced exile my name is finally restored to its rightful place and it's a safe and warm feeling.

And with this warm memory of a wedding day still cursing through my veins, the Tenerife plane lands in Helsinki. Over six hours have elapsed since we departed the island of my birth. Six hours of contemplating the twists and turns of that river of life and how I came to live the third part of my existence in this beautiful arctic country on the periphery of Northern Europe (see post A Girl Named Audrey). The marriage to Axel will last exactly twenty-five years, two months and two days until its spectacular implosion many years later on a sunny May 13th. Forty-four years earlier on another similarly sunny May 13th, the six-year-old that I was stepped on a plane with Mama and Sis taking us to new lands called England. On this May 13th 1970, a chapter of my life closed and in doing so it made way for another still to be written (see post Share The Moon). As it was back then, it also came to pass on May 13th 2014. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. After collecting my luggage, I leave the terminal and walk out into the bright sunshine. It feels good to be home and already tomorrow I return to work; for not only am I, A Girl Named Audrey, I am also A Guide Named Audrey. Welcome to my world!

The world of The Guide Named Audrey will continue in due time with new adventures. 


In the meantime immerse yourself in the original saga from the very beginning !  Share The Moon

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.