October in the Chair

This morning when I got up it was three degrees Celsius outside, and the jackdaws had gathered on the roof and chimney of the house opposite. I took my tea into the garden wearing my bathrobe, and looked at the tower of Seatown Castle, the bell tower of a Franciscan abbey founded around 1240 at the end of my street, sacked by invading Scots in 1315. The sky was a deep blue, I could see my breath in the air, and a seagull was perched on top of the castle like a weathervane. I was happy that the cold had returned.

For the last few years, I've been writing and rewriting a little ode to October, my favourite month in the northern hemisphere, on the first day of which I was born, with a title stolen from a Neil Gaiman short. It is my own way of welcoming the beginning of the dark and the cold.

But this year it feels wrong to do this. On my birthday in Germany it was 24 degrees, last week in Ireland the temperatures hoovered around 20 degrees Celsius, and I've never seen so many mosquitos so late in the year on this island. I saw social media posts celebrating "this fantastic late summer" yesterday, and I despair. Summer ended on September 23, and it's the twelfth day of October as I write this. You should not be in the park in a short dress, you should be in a woollen jacket, breath visible in the air, frost in the grass in the morning.

This September was the warmest ever recorded, and I dread the coming autumns. I despair over so many things these days, but one of the things that pain me most is that we seem to have managed to strangle autumn and winter in the northern hemisphere; we haven't realised it fully yet. At least the planet still tilts, and the darkness remains.

For some, like me born in October, autumn comes early and stays throughout life. This should be the time for rain, and the storms rolling in. The time for listening to Elliott Smith and Múm. For a runny nose and headaches. For peat and wood smoke in the air, and red and brown and yellow leaves rotting in the gutter. For cold mornings and warm beds, and long walks in the hills. For stories of faeries and trolls and dark things. For skulls and spiderwebs and the first testing fingers of frost. For sausages and strong beer. The eternal reminder that, regardless of how much oil we burn and how much plastic we produce, winter and death are coming.

October in the Chair

For some, born in October like me, autumn comes early and stays throughout life. This is, always, the time for rain, and for the storms rolling in. The time for listening to Elliott Smith and Múm. For a runny nose and headaches. For peat and wood smoke in the air, and red and brown and yellow leaves rotting in the gutter. For cold mornings and warm beds, and long walks in the hills. For stories of faeries and trolls and dark things. For skulls and spiderwebs and the first testing fingers of frost. For sausages and strong beer. The eternal reminder that, regardless of how much oil we burn and how much plastic we produce, winter and death are coming.

Spendenaktion für die Ukraine: Von Ostpreußen in den Gulag

Hallo zusammen,

Diese Woche hat sich der Geburtstag meiner Oma Cilly gejährt, einer Frau die für mich prägend war. In meinem Buch "Von Ostpreußen in den Gulag: Eine Reise auf den Spuren meiner Großmutter" habe ich mich mit ihrer Kindheit und Jugend in Ostpreussen und ihrer Verschleppung in sowjetische Arbeitslager 1945 befasst, und bei meinen Reisen nach Russland - die jetzt fast 10 Jahre her sind - auf ihren Spuren viele fantastische Menschen kennengelernt, die mich mit offenen Armen empfangen haben und mit denen ich damals viele der Themen besprechen konnte die sich heute in Russland manifestieren: die aufoktroyierte Bewunderung von Stalin und der Sowjetunion bei der gleichzeitig Herabspielung derer Verbrechen, die Korruption und Vetternwirtschaft. Mit vielen dieser Menschen bin ich noch in Kontakt, und viele haben mittlerweile das Land verlassen.

Einige meiner russischen Freunde haben Familie in der Ukraine und können diesen aus Russland selber keine Hilfe zukommen lassen, und deswegen möchte ich, so weit mir möglich, die Ukraine auch im Namen meiner russischen Bekannten und Freunde unterstützen. Aus diesem Grund verkaufe ich "Von Ostpreußen in den Gulag" jetzt direkt zum Sonderpreis von 10 Euro (inkl. Versand innerhalb der EU), und alle Einnahmen gehen direkt an die Taras Komarenko Stiftung, die Kleidung, Lebensmittel und Notwendigkeiten für Kinder, die Bevölkerung und Verteidiger der Ukraine sammelt.

Ihr bekommt die Geschichte einer grossartigen Frau aus einer faszinierenden Gegend in Verbindung mit einem Schienentrip von Polen in den Ural und helft der Ukraine. Und wenn ihr mögt, gerne auch mit Widmung nach Wunsch für all diejenigen aus eurer Familie, denen meine Buch gefallen könnte - schreibt das einfach mit euer Lieferadresse in den Kommentar auf PayPal.me. Slava Ukraini!

Jetzt Helfen: paypal.me/kingofpain666

Vyshyvanka

On the bookshelf in my study, in front of my Polish books sits a little cloth doll wearing the Vyshyvanka, the Ukrainian national dress. I received it as a present in 2019, from a group of young people from Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine that I met through Borussia. They were in Olsztyn as part of a study tour and were learning about the history of the region in workshops and excursions, and I talked to them about my own German-Polish history, about how the violence of the past still influences us all today but can yet help us to understand our fellow humans better.

In that time, a time before the pandemic and before a major war in Europe, yet in a time when the ugly face of extremist nationalism had shown its face everywhere in Europe and the war in Donbas, Luhansk and the Crimea was already raging for five years, their presence, their laughter and happiness seemed to me a glimmer of hope, a sign that we all might get along without hate and war. I think about them a lot these days, young poets, social workers, IT managers, students from Luzk, Sjewjerodonezk, Kyiv, Lviv. I think about them and the war - like so many wars started by small insecure men fearing death - and despite my hopelessness and despair I have decided to follow their example. I remain convinced that unity is always better than fragmentation; solidarity is always better than ostracism.

In that spirit and if you will allow me, I'd like to convey a message to you from my friend Olga Khadzhieva from Yekaterinburg.

"My great-grandfather freed Europe. He was killed in Croatia. I visited the mass grave there. I know exactly what gratitude to the soldiers-liberators looks like: fresh flowers in 70 years after the battle.

There will be no flowers in Ukraine. Because no one is being liberated there. There is a war. The lists of orphans in Donetsk and Lugansk are replenished with orphans from Kharkov, Odessa and Kyiv. Souls and families are broken. Pain, hate, and death are being multiplied right now. There is no reason or justification for this. Stop the war. Argue until you're hoarse in offices.”

Helsinki is Hell

A repost from the past. For K.

Helsinki is many things. It is cold. It is dark. It is full of unfriendly Finns who never say hi when you meet them. It is expensive. It does look like in the final episode of Night on Earth; filled with snow, grumpy bearded taxi drivers and sad stories.

I went to a metal show, of which they have plenty here. Like in Reykjavik, the venue served as a bar, a club and restaurant at the same time. Walking through the brightly lit restaurant, I entered the dark club: four tattooed men were standing on a stage, sweating and naked to the waist. But instead of shredding on guitars and screaming their lungs out, these gentlemen were performing a freak show. The floor of the stage was covered in what looked like blood and other bodily fluids in the stage lights. Then one of the men, a bit fatter than the others, pierced both forearms of a skinnier companion with two metal rings, and more blood dripped to the floor. The fat man hooked two long chains to the bleeding rings in his companion’s arms and started pulling. I turned around and walked to the bar.

I took a ferry to an old fortress built by the Swedes in 1748, who ruled the country until the Russians took over in 1809. It is now used by the Finnish army and navy, who gave the Russians a pretty good hiding in 1940 but nevertheless lost the war two years later, a thing some people in the country still remember, as a drunken man told me one night. He rambled on about the Russians and the raped women of Berlin in 1945, and as he started doing the Hitler salute a Finnish friend chased him off. The island was cold and a mean wind made my eyes water when I walked around the 18th-century buildings and a church that had old cannons and chains for a fence. I crossed a bridge to a smaller island, and a young Finn with a colourful jacket walked past, greeting me with a friendly ‘Hei‘. I was so surprised that I stopped in the middle of the bridge and watched him walk down to the ferry.

I walked on the frozen sea, something I’ve never done in my life before. Most parts of Helsinki harbour freeze in winter, so the people here use it as a shortcut whenever possible, even skiing to work or walking their dogs on the frozen water. The wind was cold and hurt my face, and the ice was creaking and there was open water near some of the islands scattering the harbour. I felt nervous for a moment, but the sun was setting and lit the houses on the shore blue and green, and the moon was up already behind a red wooden house on a small island in the bay, and then I felt safe and detached and happy.

I bought the English translation of the Finnish national epos, the Kalevala, to learn more about Finnish history and folklore. While all other Scandinavian countries wave their Viking heritage and their Thor’s hammer necklaces frantically in your face, I never saw any of it in Helsinki. An Englishman who lives in Finland for 25 years told me that there are no trolls or hulder or Huldufólk here, like in Norwegian woods and Icelandic valleys. In Finnish forests, there is only frost and misery, it seems.

After the metal show, where I had too many shots of the local licorice schnaps called salmiakki, I walked a friend home and we crossed another frozen part of the Baltic Sea, covered in fresh snow. We threw each other drunkenly and laughing into the snow and made snow angels, something I haven’t done since I was eight. Our breath was coming out like billowing smoke and my feet were frozen, but it felt as if something eased, deep inside me, lying in the snow and looking at the black sky and Helsinki glowing in the night, just for a moment.

I went to another concert, this time with two melancholic Finns from Lapland. The show was of a teenage crush of mine, and she played an acoustic show in a small club with a friend, Danny Cavanagh of Anathema. We stood in the first row and drank red wine and beer and salmiakki, and Anneke and Danny played ‘Blower’s Daughter’ and ‘Teardrop’ and ‘Natural Disaster’, and the room was eerily quiet after each song. And when they played ‘Untouchables Part Two’ for the encore, I was suddenly surrounded by a room full of crying Finnish men and women, all sobbing without restraint in the warm dark cavern of the club.

Helsinki is many things. It is sometimes hidden behind a curtain of gloriously fat snowflakes floating silently to the ground. It is home to people who do not say hi very often, but cry at your shoulder during an acoustic concert. It is proud of its history, but never rubs it in your face. It glows in the night.

October in the Chair

For some, like me, born in October, autumn comes early and stays throughout life. This is, always, the time for rain, and for the storms rolling in. The time for listening to Elliott Smith and Múm. For pumpkin soup and long walks through the fog. For cold feet, a runny nose and headaches. For the smoke of coal and peat fires in the air, and red and brown and yellow leaves rotting in the gutter. For dark mornings and warm beds. For stories of faeries, dwarfs, and trolls. For skulls and spiderwebs and the first testing fingers of frost. For sausages and strong beer. The eternal reminder that, regardless of how much rubbish we produce and consume and how much we raise the temperature of Earth, winter and death are coming.

St. George’s Channel, August 2021