FLASHBACK #37: Vappu 2003 / Joshua In ROOM

May Day was coming around quickly once again and, straight after work on Vappu Eve, I drove down to Helsinki to join my friend JP for a drink, and to see Bree. Vappu Eve this year would be a Wednesday night affair and I would need to drive back to Tampere the following morning to do my shift at work.

When I arrived in Helsinki, I parked up in Erottajankatu and dashed across the rain-water flooded road. I rushed into ROOM, a gay bar that had recently opened and was serving quite well as a meeting point before the wild nights out.

JP introduced me to one of his friends who was a doctor; he had olive-coloured skin, short cropped hair and a laugh dirtier than a sewer! We got on really, really well, but this visit to the crowded ROOM would introduce a person who would be around for a very long time to come.

I introduce Joshua. He was standing at the bottom of the 3-step staircase while JP, his friend and I were catching up and laughing about stuff at the top. A remarkably simple looking guy slightly shorter than myself, Joshua introduced himself. He was politely spoken and, as he spoke, was clutchin a violin case close to his chest, protecting it against the crowd in the room. He oozed intelligence and, so different from the two guys I was with, I deduced that we some kind of swot.

We got into the usual conversation about how we both, as ex-pats, had come to live in this cold land. Like myself, he was a fellow-Brit and I recall how brave he must have been to introduce himself unprompted. Joshua was rather gentle, very different to anyone I had met before, both at home and in the UK. I explained that I live in Tampere and, after our brief ten minute chat, I didn't see him again. However, that wasn't to be the end of our encounters. Oh, no! Fate had other things in store for Joshua and I.