I absolutely adore the jolly, free-spirited, gorgeous Aunties by Inge Löök, a gardener and illustrator living in Finland. Apparently, her illustrations are mainly inspirations from her own surroundings or life. The Aunties are my motivation for life. They don’t care about looks or what others think, they just enjoy every moment to the full. But I wonder if things are too good to be true…?
14 December
There are people who say living with another human being keeps you young. Those people have never lived with the Finnish version of Buddy the Elf. Every day has to be an adventure. ‘Carpe diem, Greta!’ ‘We’ll sleep when we’re dead!’ ‘YOLO!’ ‘Come on, let’s go skinny dipping/hula hooping/slide down the bannisters/play football in the street/stay up drinking champagne until dawn…’ And don’t even get me started on what the village thinks of us. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to walk down the street with all the looks and snide comments. I definitely heard Mrs Heinonen from the post office muttering she’d be calling the police if we do any more naked forest bathing.
Before I’d even had my morning coffee, Edda was bouncing around the kitchen, shovelling cinnamon buns into her mouth (not a pretty sight before she’s put her false teeth in) wearing a tea cosy as a hat, desperate to get out into the fresh air and embrace the day. It was snowy and cold outside, plus my chilblains were playing up so I suggested a day relaxing in front of the fire reading Val McDermid’s Christmas is Murder but Edda insisted we could sit inside like squares when we’re old. I am old! I feel old! I can’t take anymore. I’m going to carpe bloody diem, alright. Just not in the way Edda expects.
After getting Edda to accept that the last time we went ice water swimming, I’d almost ended up in a coma, we settled on sledging. If Edda liked adventure so much, she’d love the hill I’d read about in the local paper. The steep hill with the cheerful little red fence and the big warning sign about ‘sudden drops’ that Edda won’t be able to read without her glasses.
We reached the top of the hill. ‘You go first,’ I said. ‘Show me your technique.’
Edda plonked herself on the sledge, cackling like a madwoman. One extra‑firm shove and I sent her rocketing down the slope slightly off‑centre, towards the gap in the fence where the hill simply gives up and turns into air. Edda was screaming, snow spraying, the sledge arrowing straight for her new destiny. Then something flashed towards me like an orange missile: our neighbour Annika on her own sledge, wearing a ridiculous parka and a knitted scarf flapping in the wind.
She shot by me so close that the wake of her passing knocked a hanging clump of snow and ice off the tree above. There was a thump, a whoomph, and suddenly I was lying flat on my back, submerged in the middle of a snow drift. Through a white fog I saw Annika lean out, grab the back of Edda’s sledge and wrench it sideways at the last second. They spun together, shrieking, and came to a stop.
‘What a blast!’ Edda squealed. ‘I’ve never gone so fast!’
‘I’m so relieved you’re okay,’ I managed, spitting out snow that tasted suspiciously yellow.
Annika trudged back up towards me, pink‑cheeked and heroic. ‘You alright there, Greta?’ she called. ‘You picked a dangerous line for her.’
‘I slipped,’ I said, still half‑entombed.
After lunch (Edda’s ‘special’ fish stew, which I strongly suspect began life in 1997), Edda decided we needed a tree for the roof terrace. This meant hiking far into the forest before Edda finally picked a tree which towered over the others. We tied the tree with a rope and Edda held the end of it as I did the hard work (as usual) sawing away at the trunk. Edda was away with the fairies (as usual), talking to a pair of robins pecking at the berries on a nearby holly bush. If I could cut through my side of the rope whilst she wasn’t looking, in theory, Edda would be standing exactly where the tree landed.
Instead, the stupid rope, which had obviously been rotting in the shed for years, suddenly snapped in half, and the tree whipped back, walloping me in the stomach, leaving me lying on the ground bruised, winded and gasping for air. Edda hardly noticed and continued to chat to the robins about her Christmas plans.
Back home, aching all over, I slipped off for an hour’s kip before Edda was banging on my door, announcing she couldn’t wait a minute longer to decorate the roof terrace. The ladder to the roof terrace is steep, wobbly, and was propped up on what looked like a patch of solid ice. Edda was apparently still feeling ‘delicate, like a soufflé’ after her sledging accident, so couldn’t lift anything (never mind me, oh no, doesn’t matter how battered and beaten I am).
‘You go up then,’ I told Edda sympathetically while villainous thoughts raced through my mind. ‘I’ll heave the tree up to you.’
She started up, singing about tinsel and baubles. One swift withdrawal of my foot from the bottom of the ladder and gravity would do the rest. I could already hear myself saying, ‘It all happened so fast.’
Edda reached the top rung. I eased my foot back the tiniest fraction and the ladder slipped backwards a lot faster than I anticipated and, caught by surprise, I lurched with it, cracking the back of my head on the top of the chimney hard enough to see stars. When the world stopped ringing, Edda was standing safely on the terrace, and I was sitting on the ground clutching my skull. She peered down at me in bewilderment.
‘What on earth are you doing down there, silly? Can you pass the tree up?’
By evening, my patience had curdled, shrivelled up and completely evaporated. Edda, untouched by the day’s disasters, decided we needed homemade glögg. Her recipe is a crime against humanity involving cheap wine, brandy and mystery spices. While she rummaged in the pantry for the glass mugs, I googled the information I needed. A few crushed cloves. A little too much grated nutmeg. Half a bottle of that industrial‑strength schnapps she hides behind the flour.
Accidents happen. People drink too much. Hearts are delicate at our age.
I poured, stirred, imagined the calm silence of a house where no one sings along to the radio in three keys at once. Edda shuffled in, humming, and proffered the mugs for me to fill. She sniffed, suspicious as a cat.
‘Did you follow my recipe?’
‘More or less,’ I said.
She sipped. Her eyes watered. She coughed so hard I considered that I might have overdone it from ‘undetectable in a post-mortem’ to ‘weapon of mass destruction.’ Then she smacked her lips.
‘Perfect!’ she announced. ‘Strong. Just how I like it.’
She had five mugfuls. Five! She is, apparently, pickled from the inside out. At midnight, carols playing at full volume, she was reorganising the spice cupboard and explaining at length why my method of stacking mugs is ‘morally wrong’.
So now, I’m still awake while she snores in the next room like a snowplough full of bagpipes. Edda is exhausting, annoying, and, so far, indestructible. But tomorrow is another day. And everyone knows Christmas is the most dangerous time of the year…
BARBED WORDS 