Tomorrow could be boring

Package from Finland

It felt like another birthday to get this in the post today! An old uni-friend of mine wanted something from UK a while back, so we agreed to swap parcels. The package contains two packs of Suffeli chocolate-covered corn sweets, one pack of Hot Rod spicy potato rings, more Finnish reggae and a book by Seppo Jokinen.

Yes, I realise getting junk food in the post all the way from Finland is pretty sad. At least at the Finnish Easter fair I was restrained and mostly bought porridge oats.

Tonight will be fun!

Perfumery tour of London, anyone?

I'm almost on holiday again (in the timeline of my blog entries, "again" seems appropriate, as I tend to update more when I'm not buried under worky things).

I'm going to spend some time with my close, old friends Katja & Tuulia next week in London. We're probably going to make some museum trips (Tuulia likes museums even more than I do and she's visiting only for a few days). Science museum is always cool and we'll pop over to the V&A museum too.

On Wednesday evening, we're planning on seeing Mamma Mia in the cinema. Timo groans when I mention this. I can understand... we went to see Avenue Q on our wedding anniversary recently and Mamma Mia, the movie, is hardly in the same league. Still, Katja really wants to watch it and I do too. So there!

However, I'm probably the only only one of our little group who would love nothing more than to devote an entire day to a perfumery tour of London. I might just set out to do that on my own sometime. I even made a Google map to help.

These re-issued CDs are lovely (if I say so myself)

The illustrations I did for Frank Farrow's solo project This Life look so much better on the re-issued CDs. Kunaki's site is also designed so that you can rotate the jewel case. Cool.

Below are a some of pics of the MAGIC and ORGANIC albums.

Frank is working on a new album and I wish I had the time to do another cover. Then again, Frank's own painting will look wonderful and vibrant (I've seen a sneak preview!). Most importantly, I've also had a sneak preview of one of the songs due to be released on the next album and it made chills go up and down my spine because suddenly things moved up to a whole new dimension. So far This Life's style has been instrumental guitar, sometimes soothing, sometimes playful, sometimes experimental; always inspiring. I've loved Frank for letting me do pretty much whatever comes to mind after listening to his albums non-stop for a few days or weeks. Don't get me wrong - we've obviously discussed what he would prefer and I've sent him proposals and sketches via email, but the briefs have been loose. My favourite when illustrating.

I find music such an easy thing to draw about. Sounds are often of a particular colour and texture anyway and they transcribe themselves on paper without much cajoling.

Instrumental soundtracks to films are my favourite kind of thinking/creating music. Frank's albums could be used for something that way; they sound of stories.

Actually, he took the names for both of these from something I said to him about the music. That was an honour.

You know what's funny - we've never met face-to-face. With Frank being in USA, it may be some time before we do. I look forward to that day.

Hello from HelSTINKI

Just a quick "hi" from my friends' computer at Helsinki's Punavuori. It's been a mixed visit so far. I am over the moon about being with my family (that's who they are, really) and it is wonderful to eat lots of Finnish chocolate, sleep enough and mill around aimlessly. Kind of like being on holiday, oddly enough.

But there's a melancholy tone to this visit. It breaks my heart to see a certain kind of veil - part dirt, part apathy - covering what used to be my old hunting ground. I've posed a question to my dear friends: what the hell happened to Helsinki? More to the point: what the hell happened to Finland?

The standards of maintenance, availability of fresh produce and type of customer service you might expect now resemble any random European country, but before they used to be better. It really used to be true when we described Finland as a clean and pure place. It doesn't appear to be true any more. I'm so saddened by the drop in standards that I've considered sending a letter to the editor of Helsingin Sanomat (Finland's largest daily newspaper).

Anyway. It's not all doom and gloom! I guess I'm just feeling a little odd at the moment. Trying to establish how much of this is the outside-in effect of coming back year after year to an ever changing country and how much of the change is actually for worse.

Meanwhile, Timo and I have started to make real wedding plans. We're meeting a Finnish wedding planner tomorrow and we might end up booking their services. Depends how complicated an affair it's developing into. We're still not in favour of pomp, but it seems that Timo has a guestlist three times the size of mine, so we may need some help in arranging even a simple kind of party!

I'm not really on the computer much this week (we'll be in the countryside tomorrow, swimming in a lake somewhere), so apologies if I don't reply to comments until I return to UK.