Love and roots

Oh, hello, my old blog! 

All of your followers have probably disappeared, sorry about that. But I have things to tell you, so I'm back!

Kävelin kivisiä katuja,

ajelin kehäteitä.

Hiihtelin elämäni latuja,

ajattelin meitä,

kuinka nuorina tahdoimme

päästä maailman syliin.

Minkä sille me mahdoimme:

jäätiin maalikyliin.

--

Näissä elämän vesikeleissä

hahmottuvat haasteemme suuret.

Tärkeintä loppupeleissä

on rakkaus ja juuret.

I may have done the most radical thing I've ever done. I moved to Finland in August.

Making the decision to move took a lot longer than my decision to move to Scotland. That was something I didn't even have to think about. But moving to Finland was a tough decision to make.

I had fears that I would just "move back" and get stuck. I was worried that Finland would be cold and dark and I that would just get depressed and scared of life. — But actually: Scotland is cold and dark and I had been living there for 7 years. That's almost a decade. Practically (if you use a little bit of imagination and don't think about it too hard or precisely), a 3rd of my life. So I was about to get stuck there and wanted to try something else. I could have moved to somewhere completely different: Germany, Sweden, Japan...?

But no, Finland was worth a try. I had never lived here as an adult before. I have a 5-year old sister and a 3-year old goddaughter. It was about a time to get to know them. Being a bit closer to be able to meet them a bit more often wouldn't be so bad, right?

So I tried it.

I moved to Finland with my new kitten. And so far it's been awesome. I've probably never been this happy. And maybe it's time to share some of this happiness with you! Goodbye depression blog, hello happiness blog! That's kind of what the blog was about in the first place though, but maybe it's good to inform you about the fact that I've just had the best autumn of my life.

Finland has been so sunny. I've met dozens of fantastic people. I feel really extroverted in Finland compared to typical Finns you find in the streets. Well duh, who speaks to strangers in the street? (Apparently me.)  I thought I might be lonely if I lived alone, but it's been quite the opposite. Now, I actually have to leave the house to socialise and apparently I do that. Sometimes I also have guests over. And I have a cat, so there is no boring times at home ever. Not that I even know how to get bored.

I've started a new hobby and somehow got a temporary job where I'm allowed to drink water and go to the toilet. And all of my best friends live really close to me so I actually get to see them more than a couple of times a year. Instead of random messages I now get phone calls of whether I can meet them for coffee straight away. It's so crazy after so many years of communicating primarily online.

I love my friends, I love my life, I love my cat, and my roots are here. This city I moved to has been completely new to me, but maybe I'll grow some of my roots here. Some of them I left behind in Scotland. Roots all over the place. 

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas..."

You better watch out, you better not cry,

"...he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake!"

Sorry. That was probably too creepy.

But basically I just wanted to tell you that I have a new Christmas CD!

This is the first Christmas I have a Christmas CD! Before I've always listened to death metal or Emilie Autumn's joyous songs such as this one:

But it's not a particularly Christmassy song.

But I'm very into Mindy Gledhill's music and when I discovered that she has a Christmas song CD, I felt that it was important for my Christmas spirit to order it all the way from California! It arrived this week and I've been listening to it everyday.

Oh look, I took a picture of it with my phone.

There are several classic Christmas songs and also a few of Mindy's own ones, including the song "Winter Moon" which the album is named after. 

The track list looks like this:

1. Santa Claus is coming to town

2. O Come All Ye Faithful

3. Christmas Waltz

4. Patapan / O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

5. Little Saint Nick

6. Toyland / White Christmas

7. Winter Moon

8. Little Soldier

9. The Christmas Song

10. Silent Night

This is my favourite Christmas music! 

Here, have a wee listen yourself:

This year I've actually been really early with Christmas. I resisted putting the Christmas tree up until 22nd November. I had then been dreaming of having a Christmas tree up for a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately that's almost all the decorating I got to do since we had forgotten to take some of our decorations down last year and they were already up. Has that ever happened to you?

But I'm so into Christmas this year! I haven't really even been excited about Christmas before, and this year I'm not even sure what I'm going to do for Christmas. But this year it hasn't been just about waiting for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This year it's been about all the songs and the smells and preparation. And the general good mood while waiting for Christmas.

What am I waiting for?

I'm waiting for some Finnish Christmas baked tasty things. Christmas stars (joulutorttu) and ginger bread biscuits (piparkakku). The links will take you to recipies in English. I haven't tried out this recipies but the pictures look accurate.

But yeah, mostly I just looking forward to eating good food and enjoying peacefulness. Candles and some good coffee. Maybe I'll even try to read a book.

O Sing, choirs of angels,

Sing in exultation,

Sing all that hear in heaven God's holy word!

If life is a bar room

Oh hi. Long time, no see!

I've disappeared for a while because I haven't really wanted to talk about my life publicly. But maybe it's time to try again.

Here's a song for you that somehow describes how I feel at the moment.

I'm not sure if I understand what these pretty Irish girls are singing about, but it's just beautiful and I feel that I can relate. Isn't that what music is about? It sounds beautiful and you feel that you can relate although you have no idea what any of it is about — right?

I would quote this song, but I'm not sure how to. But I feel the waiting and the floating.

I have no idea where I'm going with my life but I want to float and I don't want to lose the grip. I fear for the winter and the future health issues. And I've started to burn candles again.

I'm also trying to reach out to new people. I am hoping to find someone who wants to come and sit with me in a coffee shop when it snows. Although the snow is not compulsory. Considering my location it will probably just rain a lot, and I'm ready to accept that.

Singing happy Swedish songs

Fyra bugg och en Coca-Cola!

Vill du leva och vill du dansa?

Våga skratta och våga chansa?

Eh, I've been playing Singstar. I'm really bad at singing, but unfortunately I really like to sing. Don't worry, I won't upload any videos of me singing here. Instead I will tell you about a couple of amazing songs I've discovered while playing this popular PlayStation game. 

Recently we discovered that you can buy songs in Singstar and I wanted to buy this one so that I could practise Swedish:

Haha, this song is so much fun! Especially when you do the dance while you sing it. It's okay, I don't know what they sing about either... Something about four chewing gums and a Coca-Cola.

Do you want to live and do you want to dance?

Do you have the courage to laugh and to take a chance?

That's what life is all about right?

That song makes me so happy. We also bought another song which is not Sweden's Eurovision entry from 1987. But it is another awesome song from Sweden.

Amanda Jenssen via Singing Girls.

This is fantastic! Why did no one tell me about Amanda Jenssen before?

I don't know why I'm so excited, but maybe I just have a thing for really femme girls with a hint of masculinity? I'm glad that no one's tried to create statistics of how many times a day I look at a picture of Katy Perry. Eh, I'm only slightly obsessed.

People say that I drink too much

But I'm as happy as I can be

Hanging by my amarula tree

Amarula Tree is also a very happy song. Kind of hippieish. I haven't listened to Amanda Jenssen enough to say, if all of her songs are like that, but at the moment she reminds me a lot of Sandi Thom.

I love this song! I love everything about it. It was my favourite in 2008.

Okay, okay, Sandi Thom is not from Sweden, she's from Aberdeenshire. But in my last post I said that I need more reasons for being enthusiastic for living here. And this definitely is one.

I think the world would be a better place if everyone would listen to more happy songs. I mean seriously, why are most Finnish songs so depressing? Most folk songs are fairly depressing too, they just play them as if they were happy.

Sandi Thom via KidWhit.

What kind of music do you listen to? Any happy songs?

It's almost Christmas!

Today I woke up. (Well yeah, that alone is quite an achievement for me...)

And I realised that there's only a couple of days left until I'll be trying to fly to Snowland for Christmas. And I have't even eaten all the chocolates in my advent calendar! Also, the snow is not guaranteed. Thank you global warming. But I wish there will be snow!

I have spent the three most recent Christmases in Scotland. But this year it's time to do some crazy flying around Europe and sleeping at airports to get to the Finnish Christmas Wonderland.

Finland, the land of trees and snow.

I have bad experience of flights being delayed, cancelled, diverted and whatever other things could happen to them. So I never really expect to get where I am trying to fly. You can read about it more in my post "About unexpected situations!". From past experience I am flying via Scandinavia, because they are more prepared for snow and will not close the airports like the rest of the Europe tends to do. And when I say Scandinavia, I really mean Scandinavia. First we're flying from Aberdeen to Stavanger, Norway. From there we fly to Copenhagen, Denmark. And from Denmark we fly to Helsinki!

Helsinki Cathedral. Or the "Church of Doom" as the Finns like to call it.

I quite look forward to spending Christmas in Finland this year. I'm taking Laura with me and we'll see where we end up spending it. We've been invited to three different households on Christmas Eve. Fortunately all of them are in the same town.

But Christmas in Finland is fun! Teletubbies even made an episode of it.

That's exactly what it used to be like in my childhood! I'm not sure what I'm going to wear this Christmas, now when I don't have an elf costume.

Loimaa, the little town in Proper Finland where we're going to spend Christmas, is not that bad either. As long as there is Christmas food, Christmas tree and my cat. It might even be enjoyable. It's a small town - most of which is agricultural field or forest. It's name basically means "countryside". The greatest landmark is the grain elevator - the huge building for storing the crops. They even put fancy lights on it.

Loimaa! Photo by 16valve at taloforum.fi.

But what! I didn't realise it was almost flying time already! I better get on with doing laundry and packing. I can't really do laundry without emptying my suitcase that I currently use as a laundry basket. And I can't pack anything because I am almost out of clean clothes. And if I start doing things with it I could just start piling Christmas presents in it already. Tomorrow I'm also going to meet a friend I haven't seen since first year, do the rest of the Christmas shopping and then go to our Japanese society's Christmas meal! Where having hot pot. I'm so bad at eating hot pot, but thankfully there will be skillful people there to help me.

Icy Tampere.

Can you feel the Christmas approaching?

Love confessions

Oh look, it's December!

It's time to open our advent calendars! Mine is a Hello Kitty one. Yesterday I was telling my girlfriend about my nightmares and about how I probably would get nightmares if I ever had to enter a house of someone who is obsessed with Hello Kitty. Then I was trying to light candles, dropped the burning match and nearly set the carpet and my leopard patterned blanket on fire. In the end it was all okay, except my finger that now has a Hello Kitty plaster on it. Don't play with matches or this might happen to you.

To celebrate the start of this crazy party month, I thought it would be time for some self-examining "...and that's who I am" picture therapy. For me. But you can do this too if you haven't already!  In the meantime you're just welcome to learn more about my secrets.

This time I'm going to tell you about things I love. Except I find love as a very strong word and almost never use it. It makes me sound too passionate. And I'm not a passionate person! Or maybe I am, but just don't want to show people that I am? To be honest, I'm just overly worried about people finding out what things I really like or even love. Because then they'll know how to hurt me most. And it will leave me in a really vulnerable position. By telling people that I generally like many things but nothing in general will leave them in a lot less clueless position and then they can just mock me about things I don't really care about! But then only those, who I will tell my secrets to, will really know anything about me. But maybe it's time to change that.

Would you like to hear confessions about my feelings?

Who even am I?

I find it very stressful to introduce myself. Especially when I have to tell people more than just my name. Should I tell them things that I don't even identify with? Not lies, but just things about me that I don't feel that really describe me very well. It would help to keep the distance and stop them from knowing the real me. I am afraid to tell people anything that would let them close to knowing the “real me”. What if they don't like me?

Am I cool enough to pull off these shoes?

Lately, I've started thinking about this problem more. I'm not sure why I feel that way. But then again, I'm not even sure how I would describe myself. What could I tell people? I'm not even sure if I am enough anything to present myself as something.

Then, I stumbled across a tumblr page called "...and that's who I am". There were many pictures with little sentences all ending with “and that's who I am”. I scrolled down the page and saved all the pictures I felt I identified with on my computer. It actually felt really therapeutic. I feel that seeing things that I identify with written on the computer screen made me feel that it was more justified to see those things as something that I am. It kind of felt like I was given a permission to be me. I looked at those pictures again today and I think I might be ready to be brave enough to share those pictures that represent me with the blogger world. It's scary, to show people who I really am, but I think I might be ready to do it. The blogger world is probably tired of “and that's who I am” related blog posts, but this is my first attempt, so I'm going to do it anyway.

I am going to use these pictures as a tool to show my readers who I am. I have saved so many pictures that I will have to do this over several posts. To make it even more personal, I'm going to say something about each picture. Although I will be using pictures I saved directly from the tumblr page, showing these things makes me feel very naked.

This first post will be the deepest and the darkest one.

Are you ready?

Jonna's Challenge

This blog post will be very different from my other posts. I will take part in a blog challenge where I have to answer some questions and also come up with some questions. I've seen these challenges in other people's blogs, but I've never been challenged before. This time my friend Jonna challenged me though! I will tell you more about her and how we met in a separate friend post that I will write at some point in the future. Thank you for the challenge, Jonna!

The Challenge

• tell 11 things about themselves
• answer the 11 questions asked
• ask 11 new questions
• challenge some bloggers

Sometimes we end up singing karaoke together.

Stories from Finland

Hello!

Guess what? I have a new favourite song! I really wanted to share it with you.

This song is by a new Finnish band called Sallan ja Miron matka maailman ympäri, which means “Salla and Miro's trip around the world”. These two young Finns make their own music – Miro composes and writes their songs and Salla sings. Miro also plays instruments and sometimes sings. There are also two other members in the band – the boys, Aku and Aarni sitting on the bench in the video.

For a moment I had thought there was nothing worth listening to coming from Finland these days. My favourite bands had either quit or started a long break. But then I discovered this band! And they haven't even released their first album yet.

I also think that this music video is fantastic. It has all of my favourite things in it! Finnish summer, planes and holding hands. To be fair, I like everything about this video. It's different in an ordinary way, and it's cute and happy!

I don't listen to music very often anymore. And when I do, I mostly just want to hear happy music. I have heard enough angry and depressing music already. I probably could listen to something like that, if I was angry or depressed at the time – but these days I just want to be happy. And it's a lot easier if there is happy music playing in the background.

In this song, Tarinoita - “Stories”, she's singing about how she's not sure if she wants her to tag along. She's asking her to tell stories – and it's irrelevant whether they are true – in order to get to know her better.

She asks three questions:

1. Can you ride a horse?

2. Do you believe in God?

3. Could you save me?

In the end she concludes that it's pointless to beg the world for love or forgiveness – and that she does want her to tag along.

When it's summmer in Finland, I like to sit in a cage with a cat.

Did you like the song?

Snails and bunnies

Hey!

So, moving house happened. Life's looking a lot brighter now! About a week ago we packed our bags and moved to our new place. Instead of broken glass on the street and seagulls screaming outside that we had at the old place, we now see snails on the road outside our house and there are bunnies jumping around in our backyard.

Our fellow resident.

Moving house was really exciting. Unfortunately all of our stuff did not fit into a suitcase. We did a few trips with bags and suitcases, but last weekend I hired a van, so that we could move rest of our stuff. I miss driving. I would like to be able to drive more. Then I might get better at it and stop worrying about it so much. But having a car made moving a lot easier than shifting all of our stuff on a public transport. I'm not an expert house-mover, and I actually kind of hate moving. But it's probably because I have more stuff than I would like to. But I own too many things that I don't want to throw away. Having my own museum would be useful. All the things, I don't actively want to have in my life could go there. Like weird presents and old school books that might come in handy one day.

Waiting for a bus to take us home.

But now when the move is almost done, I like knowing exactly what I have. Some things have gone missing, but I've found things that I didn't know I had. I didn't know I had 10 toothbrushes or chopsticks! Okay, the chopsticks look kind of disposable and I have probably nicked them from a Chinese restaurant when I ended up using a fork and decided that I should really practise using chopsticks at home before I end up in an Asian restaurant the next time. I have since then realised that you can just stab the food with one stick and use the other to pretend that you are eating with them sophisticatedly.

Eating cereal is a lot easier than eating Asian food.

Since moving to the new place, a thought has occurred to me. I realised that some of my headaches and migraines might be caused by my sight. I went to see an optician, and my sight hasn't actually changed too much, but enough to get new glasses. So now I'm going to get new glasses too! My girlfriend thinks they look too hipster. But she's going to get glasses I won't like, so it's all even. That's what relationships are about - compromises and making sure all the feelings are mutual.

I have also been wondering about how I don't know when to come out to people. When should I and when shouldn't I? Does anyone know? Because I am really not sure. 

Is it appropriate to tell strangers that I have a girlfriend? For instance, when an optician asks about my week, is it acceptable to talk about putting furniture together with my girlfriend? For some reason, I feel that she might not want to hear about it – that she might see it as something too private. But if it was a boyfriend I was putting furniture together with, I maybe would not feel that it would be too much information to the poor optician. But why should homosexuality be more private than heterosexuality? And what about when she's just assumed to be my friend? When, for instance, a waiter asks me about “my friend's order”, should I tell them that she's actually my girlfriend? Or would that be rude? Should I just settle for people assuming that I'm out with a friend? I mean, girlfriend is still a friend, right? 

This is probably something that is not only a problem same-sex couples have. – Or at least I hope that people don't assume anymore that when a boy and a girl are seen together that they are automatically a couple. But what do you think?

Moving on

Hello blog!

I'm writing (again) because I'm meant to be packing (again). Years ago, I wrote blog posts about how to pack. The reason why I wrote those was to inspire myself, because I really suck at packing. Mostly my strategy for packing is the following: 

1. Wait until I have only 20 minutes before my train leaves. 
2. Throw everything into a backpack. 

3. Realise that the backpack is too small.

4. Stuff the rest of the stuff into three smaller backs.

5. Somehow fasten all the bags around me.

6. Run to the train station.

7. Realise that I forgot pants, toothbrush, etc.

But this time the occasion for packing is different. This time I have to pack everything! 

I'm getting keys for a new flat tomorrow. It's like getting keys for my future life. 

Went for a flat viewing.

The reason why I originally started looking for a new place is that my landlord is going to sell the flat I'm living in. I had some time to mentally prepare for this, because my previous flatmate, who also happens to be the daughter of my landlord, warned me that her parents might want to sell the flat when she spontaneously moved to Switzerland after love.

Now, however, I am looking forward to getting away from this place, because this is where I experienced the suckiest year of my life. It has absolutely nothing to do with this flat, my ex flatmate or my landlord - they were all absolutely wonderful! I'm not moving anywhere as extreme as Switzerland - I'm only moving to the other side of the city, but the idea of getting out of here sounds relieving. It's like a whole new adventure!

This time, instead of living alone, I'm going to live with my girlfriend. We're going to be sambos - like they say in Sweden! I had to register that with the government, because my funding form asked for it. It felt fairly official. And as an added bonus, we're going to get a pet! My friend Kata is coming back to town!

Perhaps, technically she should be called a flatmate.

We're going to have a backyard, 2 coffee machines, a leather sofa (like Kata wanted), a hob and a roof over our heads. My favourite supermarket is going to be behind the corner and my least favourite street is going to be very far away. 

I will also have to register with a new General Practice. I'm hoping there will be more competent doctors than at my current one. I've had enough of these health problems and doctors who just keep giving me antidepressants and testing me for pregnancy and chlamydia. At least I can safely say, that I don't have STIs or people growing inside me. And I am not so depressed about it that I would need antidepressants for it. I just feel like they have wasted quite a lot of tax payers money on testing it when I could have just told them that I don't. And I still don't feel okay. I feel better than I did a year ago, but worse than two years ago. And I want to get fixed. I hope that my new GP will actually listen to me.

So new keys, new drugs, new housemates, new neighbourhood - here I come! After I get my suitcases packed.

First times

Someone once said that you should try and do something new everyday. After spending a year mostly sitting alone in my room, it sounds very extreme to me. But it also sound like something I should really try to do!

This week I've done many things!

I've drank champagne dressed up in sequins,

There's just no space for unhappiness if you have champagne and sequins.

had a house party at my flat,

There were two of my favourite people and two people I had never met before.
The blinds fell down and the floor I had just washed got very sticky.

broken some rules,

We also polkaed on the beach barefoot.

found a random taxi driver who was just picking up his wife from work and convinced him to take me to the airport to catch a flight that was supposed to leave in 45 minutes.

Miraculously we made it although the check-in desk had already closed when we got there.

And stroked a hairless cat dressed up as a dinosaur.

Thank you, Henri!

It's been a busy week.

Other than that I've come to realise that I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life. But this year has taught me that trying to keep working when life is full of stress and there's no happiness – it's not worth it. If I had known what I know now, I probably would have quit earlier. My life involved long days of trying to keep on top of my part-time job that was there to help me pay my rent and doing all of the uniwork for my masters. I felt too busy and too stressed out to meet friends in my very limited free time which I mostly spent crying alone at home, and as the year went on I became too nervous to even try and meet up with anyone. It was a very lonely year. My job was lonely as well, I was working alone when there was no one else there and my class situation at the university alarmingly reminded me of secondary school. I felt socially lonely – which is even a worse feeling than just feeling lonely when you're on your own.

That's not how I imagined my life to be. When I was little and obsessed with the TV series Friends, I wished that one day my life would be like theirs: I would live with my friends, have fun and they would be there for me when it hasn't been my day, month or even a year.

But basically, after somehow (barely) surviving this year, I want this all to change. I am currently looking for a flat where I could live with friends. Haven't found anything yet, and am mentally preparing myself to live in a cardboard box, but at least I don't want to be alone anymore. I also never again want to be in such a toxic environment that it's slowly killing me. If one day, for instance, I would manage to get a job, where I have to work with complete arseholes who are not treating me nicely and try to smoke me out, I am not going to stick around to see whether they mange to mess up my life or not. All I want from my future from now on, is happiness and I am not ready to negotiate it anymore.

Have you done anything new for the first time recently?

Individuality, equality and diversity!

Big words, guys. But if I'm going to start talking about things without censoring most of my thoughts, this might be a good topic to start with. And I will without a doubt be coming back to this. I'll just write about individuality today, but all three of these topics are interlinked.

When I was at school we had a photo competition which theme was “individually together”. The concept made sense to me then, and it still does. But unfortunately it does not make sense to everyone and it's very sad. So many people are trying to “fit the crowd” and look “normal”. Do what “society thinks is right” instead of being who they are.

Okay, I must admit that I was never the coolest of kids. And still am not. I mean, I look like this in my holiday photos:

It was a holiday in Lewis in 2010!

And surprise, surprise! I was bullied at school. I never really understood why I got bullied. I didn't really think of it at the time, I just did my best at ignoring it. But then I came across a news paper article where the journalist had interviewed a class and found out what kind of reasons will be used as excuses for bullying.

Here are the reasons they listed:

Wrong clothes. Clothes that are five years old, discount store clothes, charity shop clothes, cartoon character -tops, Gothic style, Lolita style, heavy rocker style, or anything that might make you look gay.

Wrong music. Anything ancient or classical. Church music. Anything that the majority doesn't listen to. Basically you have to listen to bands that are on top10 lists.

Wrong hobbies. Guides, computer games, larping, archery, violin, golf, church clubs, fantasy books, Irish dance, martial arts if you're a girl and ballet, riding or piano if you're a boy. Basically you're not “allowed to” have any “weird” or different hobbies – such as dance if you're a boy.

Wrong ideologies. Religiousness, vegetarianism, or accepting gay rights. Basically you're not allowed to enjoy reading or fantasy. Or have much opinions about anything.

Thank goodness I'm not at school anymore. This explains why I got bullied. I could post pictures of myself doing all of those things “wrong”, but I probably don't have to. And I'm glad I did. I never wanted to be a robot who wore what the other girls told me to wear, listened to crappy top10 lists and had no opinions. I had a lot more fun wearing Tinker Bell -tops, going to church clubs and camps, listening to emo music, playing computer games, reading fantasy books and generally just being a weird, opinionated homosexual.

This is how "amazing" the picture quality was in older camera phones.

It was way more fun being weird! My freetime activities were amazing. Here, for instance, I went to a clothes store with my friend and we both chose each other the most awful outfits and then took photos in the changing room. This is what teenagers should do, instead of learning how to became a robot.

And this topic is not only relevant to those who are at school and going through those horrible teenager years trying to figure out who they are while being under constant pressure of not doing anything that wouldn't be accepted by their peers. This is relevant to anyone! No matter what your age is, you can still discover new things about yourself and new ways to express yourself. Start a new hobby, explore new hairstyles or get into motorcycles. There are mums out there who are afraid to get tattoos and piercings or other mums wouldn't let their children to play with their kids. There are grandmas who wonder what their friends might say if they got a purple mohawk*. There are men who really want to wear skirts instead of trousers because it's hot outside. Such things won't change their ability to function as members of society. Those little things that would be a part of their individual appearance would only make them happier and more lively. And happy people can do anything! Those who judge should go home and think about what makes them so angry.

One of my favourite bands, PMMP, released this song 4 years ago.

It is amazing. Here are some bits of the lyrics in English**:

They shout furiously: “No! Men don't behave like that!”

I guess beauty offends them

But although they make fun of my body

They can never touch my soul

My clothes that people make fun of

and my feather boa that is so despised here

need more glitter when I get there

or otherwise I will be unnoticed in the eclectic crowd

There, family cars are not the only cars stuck in the traffic jam

There are buses and limousines side by side

I will not swallow tears but champagne instead

I will dress up in sequins from head to toe

The mouths don't mock and not a single finger rises

I'm not afraid that I won't find anyone

And like a bird I will rise up

I was never a prisoner of my body after all

Seriously it's the best song ever. It's all about equality and being accepted as who you are. Sadly in this song, the person had to leave somewhere else, but that's just something you need to do if you're surroundings are poisonous. But we are all gorgeous as who we are! And all of us are allowed to wear whatever we like, whatever makes us confident and happy. And that's the beauty of it. Life would be boring if everyone just wore hoodies and jeans.

So, who wants to dress up in sequins and come and drink champagne with me?

Featuring Scottish countryside.

I have muffins.

* True story! She came in to book an appointment when I was at the hairdressers.
** I'm sorry, but my translation skills suck. Please let me know if you know how to translate this song better.