cycling off into the sunset

I had a three great messages left on my last post moaning about work, from mates and also from Iain who I've never actually met but know via a web-community that we're both long-time members of. It's really nice thing to know that you have moral support. I shouldn't whine anyway: my work situation is hardly the end of world - just very messy, unpleasant and really tiring as you spend all your time and energy doing crisis management and not doing your real work. But if nothing else, working on international politics means that you can very quickly make a mental list of a hundred places where it would be infinitely worse to be than where you are (my personal list is headed currently by Eastern Congo or Mogadishu - everyone who isn't in Somalia or the DRC should thank their lucky stars that they aren't). It's good to put things in perspective.

Last night I stayed in the office too long and didn't leave until 9 pm. It's amazing how long the evenings seem to have become so suddenly - at 9.15 the sun was still setting in the northwest (see photo above) and Helsinki was pretty and quiet as a cycled home. The air was cool, the stars were starting to shine, and I was listening to Hardeep Singh Kohli standing in for Mark Kermode doing the BBC FiveLive film reviews on my iPod. I like Hardeep a lot, in part because he has exactly the same accent, manner and rather odd sense of humour as my mate Roddy. In fact, if it wasn't for the turban I think it might be quite tricky to tell them apart.