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: 5th December 2021: 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.