NORMAL LIFE: Rough Family & Fun Friends

Wednesday, 9th April

And so the time came, having returned to Finland just two and a half weeks earlier, from the four-day trip to Lisbon and the Easter visit to the North of England, to return to the UK to spend some quality time with family. Like sand, time was slipping through my fingers, my departure to Australia drawing ever closer. The purpose of my visit was manifold: to spend time with various family members and various friends from over the years who I may not see should a job offer come along, whisking me away to the other side of the world.

I decided to fly from Tampere, taking a cheaper Ryanair flight to the island of my birth. First, I took the train from Helsinki to Tampere, sleeping on the silent-but-rapid InterCity train most of the way. I woke with a start, unable to sleep for the last thirty minutes of my journey so I read a chapter of my latest read, Country of Origin, a suspenseful fictional story of a missing woman in 1970s Tokyo.

The train arrived in Tampere around 7pm and I made my way to Amarillo, a tex-mex restaurant next to the Koskikeskus shopping centre. There, I met Alan, whom I had seen during my recent trip to Lisbon and was quickly becoming one of my best friends. Over dinner, we laughed and joked about the highlights of our trip and about Alan’s forthcoming move back to the centre of town. It was by total surprise that Alan slipped a package across the table, containing chocolates in the shape of lips together with a message that said: “Happy Birthday to a very dear, dear friend!" Awww, I thought.

With plenty of time before my departure to England, we paid a visit to the nearby Café Europa for an after-dinner coffee. It surprised me how many foreigners were in this café: people of all colours spoke numerous languages in each corner, with one corner of the room resembling a Puff Daddy convention: big black guys donning thick, gold necklaces, sipping from fluted glasses with a champagne bottle resting in a cooler nearby; someone obviously had good news to celebrate on this Wednesday evening or maybe they were just embarking on yet another Little Saturday, the popular name for mid-week gatherings in Finland.

Alan kindly gave me a lift to Tampere’s Pirkkala airport where, having already checked in online, I waited in the security queue for my flight. It was a very painful and slow hour. And people think Heathrow is bad when, in contrast, the only flight leaving this evening was the flight to London Stansted. Thank god I had hand luggage only: not only would I avoid a repeat of my lost luggage between Heathrow and Manchester at Easter, I would also bypass the need to sit down for an hour while the baggage crew at London Stansted got their fingers out of their arse and unloaded the plane!

After dashing across the rain-swept tarmac and boarding the plane, I was somewhat amused by a stand up comedian wearing a Ryanair uniform who boarded last. “Who wants to visit London?” he encouraged. “We do!” responded some brave passengers who were now buckled into their seats. Possessing a Northern accent (perhaps even Irish), he jeered: “Why does anyone wanna go to London?!” People laughed, getting the joke of the North-South divide, something Finns can easily relate to what with the more populated South and the remoteness of Finnish Lapland. I was a bit concerned when, high on his own humour, the guy suddenly disappeared into the cockpit: it was a comedian who, twenty minutes later, was managing the controls of the Boeing 737-800 some 36,000 feet above the Baltic Sea!

I downed a cup of tea together with what remained of the package of lip-shaped chocolates. Afterwards, I dozed, unable to find a comfortable position because the seats on Ryanair don't bloody recline. Having lost track of time, I was surprised to find the plane rapidly descending, making it's way to the strip of tarmac alongside London Stansted Airport. Having landed at 23:50, I was in and out of the terminal building with thirty minutes, a record!

My arrival sparked a reunion with a dear, much older friend of mine. Alex is 54, but young at heart: with a boyish grin, he stood out among the crowd as one of the tanned sort. Weighing more than 100 kilos (15½ st), Alex was a hunk of a man, as pleasing to the eye as my new-found ability to actually move after three hours fixed in an immovable Ryanair seat!

Alex drove us some 20 minutes away from the airport, to his wonderful home in a still-picturesque Essex village. Both of us had napped during the evening and, having saved some energy, we shared a bottle of Rose and wolfed down some crisps as we caught up on love, life, travel and families. Within minutes, the two years since we had last seen eachother melted away. Such is true, genuine friendship when you grant your friend that space to go off and do his own thing so that you can regale eachother in the rich experiences each has had. It was nearly 3pm when our heads hit our pillows that night and it wasn’t until 9am the next morning that I woke up, having slumbered quite deeply.

Thursday, 10th April

Alex and I had a cup of tea, continuing our non-stop discussion, battling for airspace as each told of yet another story or happening the other had just remembered which was considered worthy of sharing. After a shower and shave, we took a walk into the town, just a ten minute walk away where we downed bacon sandwiches (two for £9!), about as English a breakfast as you can get.

The time came from me to leave so, rushing back to the house to collect my bags, I was transported to the nearby railway station. Alex and I bade eachother goodbye, but in my heart I knew I might not see him again before my departure to Oz. I bought my ticket, which cost an astonishing £22, and watched as the landscape got denser and denser as the train sped towards the City of London: Chelmsford, Shenfield and Romford sped by, becoming a distant memory as the London skyline drew near. On a cloudless day, the train drew into Liverpool Street Station moments after passing a seemingly completely regenerated Stratford, with countless apartment blocks and new developments making a welcome change from the inner-city grime of yesteryear.

I made my way across the main concourse at Liverpool Street Station, admiring the engineering of the station’s Victorian roof laden with countless metal supports. Descending into the depths of the London Underground, I hop on board the uneventful Metropolitan Line, bound for Kings Cross. With minutes of arriving at Kings Cross, I dashed for the train that would transport me to North Hertfordshire. It was rather amusing, having just left from Finsbury Park station, to see a man using an exercise bike on his balcony which looked onto the railway station: clad like a boxer with a hooded jumper, his facial features obscured from view, he aggressively pounded the pedals of the stationary bike going for the burn.

When the train passed Welwyn via the elevated viaduct, you sensed that, despite the chill outside the train, Spring had truly sprung: down below, horses galloped among the short, fresh green grass while, in the air, a sky of rich blue proved that Autumn and Winter was indeed old news. I arrived at my destination just after lunchtime and was greeted at the station by my Father who, despite his countless afflictions, was as lively as ever.

After a brief stop at the family home, where my mother and I were locked in a heart-squeezing hug for quite some time, the three of us clambered into the car, headed towards a Chinese restaurant where we would join my eldest sister and my niece for lunch. Over a long lunch, we all caught up, swapping news and plans: there never seems to be enough time in the world to truly catch up with family when you live so far apart.

After lunch, my sister and my niece went their way, my parents and I went ours. We stopped at a camera store, which I had researched online and, there and then, I invested in my new camera: the newly released Canon 450D SLR camera, a perfect model to take my photography to the next level. With my new camera and countless accessories in a box, I returned to the car where my parents awaited me. Together, we set off for home for a comfortable night in, watching TV and drinking lot’s of tea, about as British as a night you can get too!

Friday, 11th April

After a comfortable night’s sleep in the soft bed in the spare room, I awoke to what promised to be another clear, blue day in England. Two days in a row? It’s a miracle! The day was set to be a big one since I had planned to visit my Grandmother, who I hadn’t seen properly in eight years!

Just after breakfast, my Mother and I set out; my father and my grandmother have never seen eye-to-eye so he stayed at home. When I arrived, I was somewhat thrown by the area in which they lived. In contrast to my relatives and their somewhat dismal community of greyed-out concrete abodes completely devoid of character, my mother an I were Hyacinth Bucket and the elusive Sheridan respectively. We made our away along the badly cemented path towards my Grandmother’s home.

Within seconds of knocking, my Grandmother answered the door and the first thing that struck me was how agile this 83-year old head of the family still was. And so I should be, she later said, what with the fact that only the only thing hasn’t been operated on is my left knee! Her humour was still spot on as was her charm. My Grandmother had a certain class which only my Mother and, in turn, myself, have clung onto, despite the fact that my Mother has six siblings and I have two.

My Aunt arrived minutes later, very much a carbon copy of Rose, the fictional character from the BBC's Keeping Up Appearances. She is well-intentioned, perhaps the closest I am to any of my relatives, but I can’t help but feel that she has let herself go. Rumours in the family persist that, since her husband’s death five years ago, she has dabbled in drink and drugs. And it is no coincidence that, in the same period of time, her once-pert, lithe presence has given way to the wrinkled and decrepit form of today. Just over fifty, her deterioration is somewhat astonishing. And to top it off, she has come to live in this abysmal community where, any moment now, the exhaust pipe of a car belonging to a real-life Onslow might just give out a loud bang!

Being a snob aside, the four of us in my Grandmother’s living room made for a very entertaining afternoon. We popped out for a quick lunch, during which I told them about my plans to quit my job and go to Australia. They listened on in awe and, as time drew on, I noticed my Aunt withdraw into silence - I sensed that my exciting plans might be whipping up a bit of envy so I changed the subject. It wasn’t long (during my Mother’s visit to the toilet surprisingly enough) before my Grandmother asked about my lovelife. I had to lie – now certainly wasn’t the right time for her Grandson to declare his homosexuality. I concocted a story about dating a Finnish girl called Riikka who was the same as me and understood that I really wanted to fulfil my dream of going to Australia. “As such,” I explained “we’ve agreed to cool it!” If they had somehow figured out I was hiding something, I hadn’t detect anything. And did I care? Not much!

When we had returned to the house, cups of tea were poured for the four of us and I reminisced about my childhood at the Holiday Centres in the good old days: how my sisters and I couldn’t cycle back up the steep hills in Brixham; getting a black eye on the bumper cars at Breans Sands; one of our Uncles dunking our heads into our ice-creams in Devon one summer. I declared that my childhood was a good once, despite my Grandmother’s insistence that my father had been too strict with us, always trying to get the last word.

Determined not to have my father’s name dirtied in his absence, I pointed out four names: Madeline MaCann, Holly Wells, Jessica Chapman, Sarah Payne. “What did they all have in common?” I asked, not giving her time to respond. “They all had parents who let their kids run riot, that’s what.” I admitted our childhood was a strict one, but we are alive, healthy and doing well for precisely that reason: our parents didn't just have kids, they did the job that comes with it too! My Aunt shot a look at me that wasn’t a welcoming one because she, by my standards, had not done her job as a parent. Her husband had, posthumously, become suspected of having abused his own step-daughter while all three of her children have gone on to have children, forgoing the tradition of marriage. Furthermore, one of her sons, together with his girlfriend and newborn, are living with my Aunt contributing a measly £60 per week to the cost of the houshold. And all the while, my Grandmother is still judging my father’s parenting skills twelve years after I official entered adulthood!

The afternoon was a successful one, despite the brief disagreements. It was a relief that we departed that afternoon, but not before a brief visit to my eldest cousin (from my Aunt’s lot). Grossly overweight at the age of 31, my cousin kind of ‘wobbled’ up her front path and threw her arms around her closest-in-age cousin. As we hugged, I felt her soft breasts, devoid of a bra, flatten again my chest and, instantly, reminded myself that I was hugging what would have been one of Rose’s offspring if she had actually got round to doing the dirty deed with Onslow. She dragged me into her home while my Mum waited outside: she wanted to show me the hot tub in her back garden. A hot tub? In a garden? In a run-down council estate in England? She boasted that it cost £10,000, but her friend had given it to her for nothing. I immediately came to two conclusions: she was either sleeping with her ‘friend’, or she had done a ‘deal’ with said friend. Rumours of drug-use (the Class A type) had persisted in this particular home and, true to form, I was able to speak the lingo. I was glad to get out of there, however.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t over. There was one more stop. In the car, with my Grandmother, Aunt and my mother at the wheel, I gagged at the accumulating smoke generated by the three chain-smoking women in the same family. I probably caught cancer that day, but I guess we won’t know for years to come. Next stop: my Aunt’s youngest son who had, just a month earlier, become a father - as had his elder brother - for the first time. Now, here was a nastier piece of work. Aged twenty-five, you could be forgiven for thinking that he had made an earlier-than-usual start to fatherhood and was well on his way to maturity. Not so!

Just months ago, he had narrowly escaped a manslaughter charge when, as the driver of a vehicle, he knocked down a twelve year old boy who died on the scene. An inquest found that the driver had driven within the speed limit, but the under-inflated tyres, the bends and the wet surface had contributed to the loss of control. A verdict of ‘death through injuries sustained in a road traffic collision’ was recorded. It didn’t matter that my cousin didn’t even have a driving license, was therefore uninsured nor was he an experienced driver. He walked away from the court scot-free and, standing before me with his newborn son, I wanted to warn him of potential eye-for-an-eye revenge. All his life, this ‘boy’ has been smug, lazy, arrogant and, by the time I had left his house (my mother had refused to go inside), it struck me that neither of my cousins had asked how I was, how my life was going. Such was their self-absorbedness, this family with an alcoholic mother, a drug-taking daughter and the killer (without a license, he shouldn’t even have been driving) of an innocent twelve-year-old.

We bade goodbye to my Grandmother and my Aunt, both of whom wished me luck on my travels and instructed me to keep in better touch. As I got in the car, I urged my mother to drive on, thinking to myself: Keep in touch? Not likely! We sped up the motorway, towards our next engagement of the day – my Mother had organized a get together with the immediate family in advance of my birthday the following Monday. To cut a long story short, we feasted on KFC, after which we all settled down with a cup of tea on the sofa, where I opened cards and presents. My youngest sister was absent, since our estrangement some two years ago. Her absence was somewhat welcome, however, since I had had enough drama for one day! My father, mother, eldest sister, her husband and their energetic four year old all settled down in the living room and listened to my mother and I provide an account of our day with the ‘family’. In conclusion, I felt compelled to admit that my life was bloody good!

After my sister, her husband and my niece departed, my parents and I remained: the calm after the storm! I was exhausted and, later in the evening, my exhaustion led to crankiness and I admitted defeat by turning in early. As I laid in bed, Bree was in my mind on what was the eve of the sixth anniversary of our meeting. With that realization came a flood of questions: Where would I be now if I hadn’t moved to Finland back in 2001? What would have become of me if I had not had my hearing restored? Venturing further back, what would have become of me if my parents hadn’t have done their job as well as they had? Would I, too, have succumbed to the drink? Would I have careless got in a car and killed someone? In the security of the family home, I slept soundly, grateful.

Saturday, 12th April

The moment I woke up, my Dad started clanging the pots and pans which marked the start of one of his infamous English Breakfasts. Once my Mum had risen, the three of us dined on fried eggs, sausages and bacon with mushrooms, tomatoes, toast, jam and tea. I was stuffed, but that didn’t put me off eating the last of the birthday cake!

Just after midday, having said goodbye to my parents, I was on the train, bound for London to meet my friends, Nick and Vlad. I made my way to Kings Cross and, from there, to Victoria. I bumped into Nick by pure chance at WHSmiths while I was checking out the photography magazines. We went to the nearby Costa Café where, later, Vlad strode into the place, his presence bringing smiles to both of our faces. When we hugged, we kissed and I could not believe that it had been two and a half years since I had last seen him: he had been taking care of himself - he was smartly dressed, looked to be in good health and spoke positively about Australia, galvanizing me even more into ‘making it happen’.

We boarded a train together, bound for Nick’s place, marking the start of festivities which would last until 5am the following morning! During the journey, we gossiped about Kylie and formulated an extension to mine and Nick’s Hand On Your Heart routine with the current hit, Wow. It goes something like this: dum, dum, dum, whoa, whoa, whoa….you’ve got it, wow, wow, wow, wow! Hilarious!

After downing a pizza, taking a shower and putting on my favourite stripy pink shirt (it’s nicer than it sounds!), we headed towards Clapham where we had a first drink in the Kazbar up the High Street. For both Vlad and myself, it was like a time-warp: nothing had changed in two years, not that we expected it to. From there, we took the bus to Vauxhall, stepping into the head-thumping Barcode. Getting in a round of silly-mood-juice (booze), we made our way to the dancefloor where unknown tracks emanated from the speakers, causing the floor, the walls and the multitude of disco balls hanging from the ceiling to vibrate.

Nearby, two guys towered above all others. Perhaps of America or Czech origin, the guys stood perhaps nearly 7ft tall (210cm) and signaled their coupledom by holding hands. Muscular and wearing only vests (hello, it is still cold outside, clunk, clunk!), the two guys got perhaps 97% of the attention in the room that night. The minute one of the guys started dancing however, I became completely disinterested: he was soooo camp. How can such a handsome, tall, muscular guy be so ingrained with feminine characteristics? Watching him dance like a drag queen doing a Shirley Bassey routine with pointed fingers, I wanted to hurl, preferably down the front of his vest!

The evening drifted on and we paid a visit to next door, The Depot, which was having a special night sponsored by Manhunt.net. In the Boyz magazine which Nick had collected from Soho, it promised lots of eye-candy for my two friends, but at gone midnight, it was empty. Having paid the £10 entry fee, we begged for a refund, which was not forthcoming. They told us we could come back later, however, so we decided to check out Fire, another nightclub in the Vauxhall Arches, in the meantime. Costing £16 - it’s extortion, that’s what it is - to get in, the three of us made our way through the throng of people across two large dancefloors. In my semi-drunkenness, I became quite distracted by a floor, beneath which disco light emanated, reminding me of Jamiroquai’s Little L video. It was beautiful! We danced, we drank, time wore on and we left the thumping club at 4am, surprised to see a long queue outside.
At Vlad’s insistence, we headed back to The Depot, only to find it had closed. As a result, we were unable to come back although we were told that the place was until 5am. Vlad felt cheated, as did I. The evening had been so much fun, but this kind of fun comes at a price, a shocking price, actually. We took a taxi, getting home about 5am.

Sunday, 13th April

I woke up at 8.30am, unable to sleep any longer. The silly-mood-juice was so full of energy that deep sleep had been brief and when I woke up at 8.30am, the bright curtainless sky light denied me further sleep. I woke up, took a shower and got dressed, calling Bree from the living room while I waited for the others to wake up. It was at this time I realised that I needed to go into town to do some last minute shopping for Bree so, gently waking up Nick, I told him about the situation and he woke up. Within minutes, Vlad was also down in the living room where the three of us congregated.

Nick surprised the both of us by giving us birthday presents, a Tom of Finland book for me and a sachel for Vlad. My gift was perfect, a complete surprised and costly; I reprimanded Nick for spending so much money, but thanked him all the while. I packed up the rest of my things, now conscious of the fact that I had too much weight for the Ryanair flight home - I only had a right to carry 10kilos, but had more than 15, I was sure.

First visiting the stores in Regent Street, I then made my way to Liverpool Street where I took the Stansted Express to Stansted Airport; the train was packed, with a group of loud Italians taking up most of the verbal airspace. By this time, tiredness was setting in and I was in dired need of sleep. Having checked in already online, I proceeded straight towards Security. Luckily, the officials had an issue with the passenger in front of me: his luggage was too big, not fitting into the baggage sizer. Preocuppied with that passenger, I was able to squeeze through and spent the next two hours spending my pounds and pennies!

The 3-hour Ryanair flight to Tampere went relatively quickly as did the subsequent two-hour bus ride to Helsinki. When I sidled up alongside Bree at 1am in the morning of my 31st birthday, I couldn't have been happier; six years and two days later, we were still going strong...