wakey wakey

 

A treat of every evening is when Helmi wakes up and comes into the sitting room all sleepy and stretching, etc (and has to reacquaint herself with the awful social realities of her life). For some weird reason, and this has nothing to do with that but it just happened again then while I was writing the above sentence, I have lately often been reminded of the part of Oulu between the station and the main shopping centre. I just looked it up on google street view but the reality doesn't do justice to my ridiculously rose-coloured-glasses memory of the actual place. 

The station. I guess the street view vehicle was just about to topple over onto its side as this picture was being taken. 

En route to the main drag. Absolutely nothing special I have no idea why (or even how) it is imprinted on my mind as something wonderful. What can I say, I cannot explain this abiding affection for Finland except it is very real and seems hard to dispel, although I don't really need to. Let's talk about something we can agree on. The old Mount Royal hospital has a certain something, I walked through its grounds with my brother Michael last week, if I was going to make a sequel to the wonderful film Patrick (and the original location in South Yarra wasn't available - jeez, so much qualifying) I would seriously consider using this as the location. Lots of sinister and precarious high balconies and little courtyards that you could totally do nuts shots with filters and lenses, and so on. 

This big courtyard is sort of absolutely awful, the asphalt is so 1971, but for that reason (and the luxurious foliage that's absolutely 1871, however ahistorical that may be for a building that's just pre-WW1) it has a real ambience. 

I used to walk through here quite a lot when Mia and I lived in West Brunswick between 2001-6 or whenever it was. Almost never see anyone around, but I assume it's generally in use, for something. It's all open, never see anyone around though. 

Little dickens.