REALLY NICE WIZARDS
And the long, dark, terrible Night of Surprises. Plus, an artistic offer!
I spent much of the winter working at an artists’ residency in Finland. There’s not much to do in rural Finland in the middle of winter, so imagine my delight when I was invited to a ‘Night of Surprises’ in a nearby town. I didn’t exactly know what to expect, but the flyer promised over-popular eggs, quench riding, the smell of ponies, and a race car raffle, all of which did sound exceptionally surprising, if not legitimately shocking. Sadly, this event turned out to be a little more pedestrian than the google-translated marketing promised. The smell of ponies was conspicuous by its absence. ‘Over-popular eggs’ turned out to be the same thing as ‘much-demanded poops’ which turned out to be something I didn’t want to know about. Even the race car raffle turned out to be not a raffle in which one could win a race car, but a tombola in front of a broken down Mini.
The biggest Surprise of the Night came when I accidentally insulted a lady selling handmade woollen goods—a lady with no sense of humour and six knitting needles in each hand. It was mostly google translate's fault. A small matter of a missing ‘m’ had me telling Edwina Needlehands that her socks looked like “a battlefield of charred dead bodies,” rather than what I actually wanted to say, which was, “warm.”
All in all, the Night of Surprises was way less surprising than the Traditional Christmas Porridge and Elf Sex Dungeon event I attended later in the year. But it did bring home to me a lesson about the importance of learning foreign languages.
I had been studying Finnish on Duolingo for a couple of weeks, but ended my streak the very moment someone actually spoke to me in Finnish, and I realised my Finnish language knowledge was worthless. Duo the Owl had been wasting my time. Not only did I not know the words for ‘hello’, ‘yes’, or ‘no’, the only thing I did know how to say was, “you’re a really nice wizard’.
I thought this was utterly pointless, but as it turned out, the very next day I got on a Finnish train and a wizard sat next to me.
I knew the wizard was a wizard because she was dressed head to toe in black and silver robes decorated with moons and stars, topped off by a tall pointy hat. “You’re a really nice wizard,” I whispered shyly to her, but she didn’t hear me, partly because of the whispering, but mainly because she had headphones on—presumably she was sick to death of Duolingoed tourists telling her she was a nice wizard every time she stepped out of the house.
It wasn’t only me who struggled with the Finnish basics. To be honest, it was pretty much everyone except for the occasional smug European with eight languages under her competent little belt. So we improvised. In the absence of knowledge of how to say ‘yes’, some of us took up saying ‘nice’ instead (a word we all knew, because of the wizard thing). The Finnish word for ‘nice’ is ‘mukava’, which has the great advantage of being able to be articulated in the manner of a drunken Viking. Indeed, when drinking, instead of clinking glasses and saying ‘kippis’, we stamped our feet and yelled ‘MUKAVA!’ Duo the Owl would have been most disappointed.
However, given that the residence housed artists from around the world, these Finnish issues (Finnissues?) didn’t really matter because the lingua franca was actually English. This was good for me, as I know how to speak that language. So much so, in fact, that I was able to teach it to others including a brilliant Korean artist who was keen to improve her already excellent English by the addition of some spicy swear words.
As everyone knows, English is the best language for swears. For example, when I called my Korean friend a fucking idiot, she responded by laughing and saying she felt thoroughly invigorated. “I feel alive!” She exclaimed. “No one has ever called me a fucking idiot before. I love it!” I also taught her how to say, “Alright darlin” in the manner of a bricklayer from the 1980s, or Danny Dyer. This was a useful expression to be deployed any time a naked person entered the sauna room. “Alright darlin” we’d say, adding the occasional ‘phwoarrr’ for good measure as the person sat their naked arse on their butt towel.
The Finnish for ‘butt towel’ is ‘pefletti’ but I once convinced an entire cohort of artists-in-residence that ‘pefletti’ was actually Finnish for ‘I love you.’ I had visions of couples gazing into one another’s eyes and whispering butt towel before falling into a passionate embrace, and these visions pleased me greatly. Annoyingly, my subterfuge was eventually exposed by a Swiss woman who had been ranked number one on Duolingo’s Finnish leaderboard for three weeks running. Smug polyglot wanker spoiled everything. But she’ll never know the joy of a much-demanded poop or war socks, so who’s the real winner here? Alright, it’s still her. Mukava!
P.S. for no reason except my genuine awesomeness, I'm offering all my subscribers a free pet portrait in pencil/graphite, similar to the examples below. I'll ask you to pay p&p and a small donation towards my materials. Message me if you'd like to take me up on this offer! (I can draw cats, too!)
Oh I love Finland. I've been trying to move there but the bastards won't let me.
I once had an entire pub in Helsinki sing Chas n Dave's There Ain't No Pleasing You. they didn't look convinced that it was a classic.
I read this while I was donating plasma earlier (it's what writers do) and I almost my shit at this line: "presumably she was sick to death of Duolingoed tourists telling her she was a nice wizard every time she stepped out of the house."
The staff came running over to me to see if I was okay, I was convulsing in laughter!
I'm glad the mystery (it was to me) of where the writing retreat was is now solved. For some reason I thought Germany.
As for swearing, I've had Ukrainians and Russians tell me that their languages are far richer for swearing, but what do I know? English can certainly hold its own.