Spring, St Patrick's Day

It's been officially Spring for 3 days, according to my esteemed Far Side Gallery. That's normally a bit of a cruel joke up here, but this winter has been terrificly mild, so there's a certain unWinterishness, even if there's not a speck of green anywhere yet.


St Patrick's day saw Helsinki's first ever parade - I half marched, half ran up and down snapping pictures like an eejit, with my camera wrapped in a bandana to keep it dry. Not only was it raining, it was sleeting - big, cold, wet clumps of ice. In spite of that the craic was good - everyone singing (not necessarily the same song, or in the same key), and there were a bunch of dancers there who must have been sodden, who not only danced their way around the route, but put on a show in front of the Cathedral afterwards. Fair play to them. The whole thing seemed to be rather confusing for the locals, who might have thought it had something to do with the parliamentary elections in progress at the time.

Now I'm off to take a nap or something - I stayed up really late, then got up really early to have some documents ready, and now it feels like someone is drying my eyes out from inside my head.