I lie on the bed with cucumber on my eyes and my classes on top. I'm pretending I'm in a spa (please don't mention the word sauna, which here is a verb, not an adjective, a way of life, not a shed, an emotional bond to family and country, not something like Lemsip). You have to catch your moments like this on field trips, before there's a knock on the door to say so and so has thrown up in their Converse or worse, there's been a diplomatic incident. And bloody hell it's miserable out there, a dull, gray, cold, wet cloud sunk to envelope this granite face of Northern Europe, the Swedes have sent their weather over to rub in defeat, the Finns are no doubt scouring their bookshelves for a suitable volume of angst. Angst is written big on the face of your average Finn each morning, just as unbearable chirpiness afflicts Californians. It's not good to feel good here, so no wonder they wait patiently for the booze and the karaoke (see below).
Perhaps happy people cannot make such beautiful cities, it takes stoic patience rather than bombast and boom and bust to create something that will last. But you build paradise, and there's nothing left to do but sob at the meaninglessness of it all. The alternative of course, the Mediterranean way the north have been so disastrously jealous of, is a little more hit and miss.
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