Princess Polly

Princess Polly I went to Tampere on Friday. It was closed. Or at least the airport was. An 8-hour wait between flights had not seemed problematic when I booked: airports are designed for waiting and I would have work with me. An opportunity to get on with it. But arriving at Tampere after lunch I found the Ryanair terminal locked and dark, and the Finnair terminal at which I had just arrived just about to close. Should I take a cab into town, or a nap under the trees in the fine Finnish midsummer? I should decide before the two standing taxis left, for the drivers would surely ask me if I wanted a ride. But no, to my quiet amusement, they each emerged from the closing terminal, glanced at me and drove away. Dour Scots seem positively frivolous by comparison. I counted reasons for visiting the town and got as far as zero. I made my bags into a cushion on the bench, closed my eyes and was just drifting off when a voice asked Are you Australian? And so I met Polina Sergeyevna Shayksi, who was hoping to board the same flight as I, but wearing roller blades.

Полина — if you’ve been writing emails, please write again, for I suspect the spam filters on the webmail service that handled my mail while I was travelling are allergic to messages from Russian mail servers. Better still, write to phone at 5jt.com. You need to hear about the British Society of Aesthetics conference at Oxford in September.