The Smell of Slush

I've been thinking that I want to make a post called Helsinki, My Beautiful Hometown. I would post a picture taken from the city center. There would be some sidewalk and perhaps whatever you could see in the darkness, some lights from some cars or some adds. The sidewalk would be, as they all are now, covered with thick heaps of dirty snow which would be already halfway turning into slush and between the biggest heaps you could see people's footprints as deep holes in the brown slush. There would be lights shining from the wet black asphalt where there might be some dryer patches and you could see the big wet snowy drops pouring sideways above it all. And there would also be people dressed in dark thick clothes walking fast with their faces turned down and leaning slightly forwards.

There is something very distinct about the wet darkness that governs the worst few weeks of the Fall. No more leaves, no white snow yet. Simply the shining wetness of it all and the total darkness and the smell of the rain. It is not totally unpleasant. In fact, last week when I was walking to my dance class I remember thinking: "What a lovely mellow Icelandic weather we are having, the air is fresh and I feel quite alive" and when I got to the dressing room I was confronted by a crowd of whining Finns who were declaring the weather to be of the most horrible sort imaginable.

However, the point of this post was that there will not be such a post. I've been so busy that I've just been running back and forth in the rain all day long every day not having the time to stop and take pictures. And let's face it, the idea of stopping, opening your bag, ferreting out the camera, adjusting it and having your fingers freeze and your camera get soaked is not the most pleasant of ideas that might occur to me while slushing towards the next place I need to be. In fact the only way to find such a weather tolerable is if you don't have to go very far and you can keep going pretty fast.