trip to europe last month - goodbye kuopio (again), hello helsinki

16 February - so - this is an odd thing I saw yesterday:

I don't know what it was, but I'll tell you what it looked like - a bunch of police, some with guns, at a door to a home in Kuopio. No voices were raised, they all went inside. 

This is nothing, just an interesting looking asian cafe. It was open. 

Laura had noted how few cats we had seen on our journey - like, about four. None of them outside. Until this one, which I saw and she didn't. It was a happy story because I got to see a cat but also its owner was just arriving home when I photographed him/her. 

Kuopio apartments. 

Intriguing graffiti at Kuopio station. 

We had a four and a half hour journey Kuopio-Helsinki then got a taxi to our accommodation, not much has happened since then, maybe tomorrow huh. 
 

the policeman's ball

Here's anothery, since I have nothing else of great value to discuss atm. The notion here is someone stating that they crashed the policeman's ball disguised as a horse. Between you and me I went one step further into confusion here by making them actually a horse but wearing a horse mask. At least, that is what I was trying to convey. 

The subtleties of perspective have always eluded me - like a lot of things, I think a month's tuition fifty years ago (or some actually useful secondary schooling - fuck!) would have made a big fat difference to my capacities here. You will see at the very back of the room, behind the bar, there is a mirror. If I had genuine ability I might have done more with this but cram in some vague shapes (in fact, although I said 'you will see...' of course you didn't notice it until I told you and still might be having trouble figuring out what I'm talking about). But once I decided to fill in the mirror details - I had always intended it to be a mirror, but only imagined I would add in the bar staff vaguely - I realised that most of the figures I had populated the dance floor with were too short to be seen in the mirror anyway, or perhaps not even too short (though a lot of them are, possibly they are children?), but too low, because for some weird reason the floor kind of tips downward. 

I'm not saying I'm not really pleased with this drawing though, because I am. I particularly like the top part where you can see what I suppose are roof beams (I think I traced the room roughly from a picture of a big restaurant space) and some shabby streamers and a banner which I suppose says 'Balls Out'. For a split-second I was thinking, there should have been something like a DJ in the picture, and a buffet, and probably some other things besides, and then I remembered, when you go to a place, everything in the place is not instantly visible to you if you are facing in one direction, and if it was, you'd think 'this is weird'. Our faces are only made to point one way. This is how we do it. If a fish or a bird had drawn this picture, well, I suppose it would have been two pictures, facing each other, with no depiction of what was directly ahead. 

body found in litter trap

(written 28/12/2010) Some kids found a decomposed body in the litter trap down at the creek. I heard conversationally when I went down to have a look (creepy? I was interested) that it had no arms or legs and was perforated up the front. The Age online says it is not known whether it's male or female. Being in the litter trap suggests it may have floated downstream but who really knows. As I was leaving the crime scene (4 or 5 police vans, a few onlookers) I think I heard someone shout, 'I have evidence! Evidence!'

* Jan 2010 - the body has been identified as being of Concetta Leone, an elderly woman who went missing in September. The police say there are no suspicious circumstances, which leads me to assume the no arms and legs thing was untrue. As was the 'I have evidence!'