I’m gonna make a change, for once in my life
It’s gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right…

When I agreed to join thousands of other bloggers in writing a post on the topic of poverty for Blog Action Day, I was forgetting one important detail.

I, ladies and gentlemen, am a fatalist. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. And it’s a bit difficult to come up with an inspiring, positive, let’s-change-the-world kind of post when your default response is a despairing, Sean O’Caseyesque “the whole world’s in a terrible state o’ chassis!”, and what can I do about it?. Trust me - I’ve been trying for the past three hours, and becoming increasingly horrified by my own attitude.

As I turn up the collar on my favorite winter coat
This wind is blowin’ my mind
I see the kids in the street, with not enough to eat
Who am I to be blind? Pretending not to see their needs

I’ve seen poverty. I know it’s there. I know it’s a bad thing. But what can I do?

It’s not that I don’t care. I care. I once made the mistake of watching Comic Relief whilst under the influence of a considerable amount of wine, and as a result discovered the next day that I’d somehow donated my entire food budget for the week. Apparently (so I was informed as I ate my first imaginary meal of the week) I was moved to tears by an old man who had nothing but a tiny mud hut and a stone bowl, and who was fiercely proud of these possessions, looking after them with the care and attention that someone else might give to a shiny Rolls Royce. But he’s so proud of that horrible place! I kept sniffling sorrowfully, as I fumbled for my debit card and dialled the donation hotline. And it’s all muddy and horrible!

A summer’s disregard, a broken bottle top
And a one man’s soul
They follow each other on the wind y’know
‘Cause they got nowhere to go

Had I been sober, I probably wouldn’t have made the donation. Not that I wouldn’t still have been moved to tears, but I wouldn’t have entertained the notion that my small offering would make any difference. Think about it. Nobody can afford to give to every needy, disadvantaged person. There are too many. Homeless people on our streets, starving families in famine-ravaged countries, people with serious illnesses who could be saved if there was more money for treatment or research… the world is full of poverty, problems and pain, and I’m one fairly average girl looking on with an air of helplessness. I don’t have a great deal of money even for myself. And even if I do give what I can spare to a beggar at the train station or someone collecting money to help victims of domestic abuse, what’s it worth? My daily dose of Feel-Good? My spare change, if I actually had any, is pathetic in its nothingness. If I give my last few coins to a homeless guy and then round the corner to find a homeless woman with an crying infant in her skinny arms, there’s no option but to ignore her and struggle with feelings of guilt as I walk past. It’s not like I can go back and reclaim the money I gave to the first guy. It’d probably have magically transformed into a bottle of Buckfast by the time I got there, anyway.

I’ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love
It’s time that I realize
That there are some with no home, not a nickel to loan
Could it be really me, pretending that they’re not alone?

I fought against my own fatalism when I lived in Dunclug - the housing estate that I no longer need to avoid mentioning by name for fear of attracting attention to myself and having a brick thrown through my front window. In a uncharacteristically optimistic move, I threw myself into my youth work amongst the kids of the estate by moving into the area and befriending them. We had games nights in my house, a youth group at the church, and projects run by various charities/groups who worked to Make Things Better. But as much as I enjoyed it, as much as I believed that I was “doing good”, I couldn’t deny what was obvious to me: I wasn’t actually changing anything. I wasn’t giving anyone a better quality of life; I was sticking a band aid over a wound that needed proper treatment.

A willow deeply scarred, somebody’s broken heart
And a washed-out dream
They follow the pattern of the wind, ya’ see
Cause they got no place to be

So today, as I panicked about how on earth I could write something to fit in with the poverty theme when I’m clearly a nihilistic, pessimistic, fatalistic manic depressive, it became obvious that I should never have agreed to take part. Then, as I struggled through a disjointed and half-hearted paragraph about homelessness, Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror video came on VH1 (which has been providing my musical accompaniment today). I can say with some degree of confidence that I’ve never before used the words “Michael Jackson” and “inspiration” in the same sentence, but it all just fell into place in my confused little mind as I watched that video.

That’s why I’m starting with me
I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change.

It’s not about what I can’t do, who I can’t help, how much I can’t give. It’s about what I can do, who I can help, how much I can give. I’ve been focussing on the wrong part.

Saving the world is not my responsibility, nor is it yours. I’m not obliged to give or do anything. And no, the bigger picture will not change just because I give my spare change to a Big Issue seller, nor will the millions of starving children be suddenly fed if I give to one Third World charity. An underpriviledged community will not become free from drug/alcohol/abuse/neglect problems if I play endless games of Monopoly with some teenagers or take a group of kids ten pin bowling. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.

I can’t help everyone, and I can’t solve the problems. Now, however, instead of shrugging hopelessly and saying “What can I do?”, concluding that I can’t do anything, and then doing, erm, nothing, I’m going to change the emphasis in my question. What can I do?

Has it really been that simple all along?!

I’ve said this sort of thing before, you know, but Tallinn is So Damn Cool.

Today Riho and I joined the hatted and mittened Tallinners out for a Sunday afternoon stroll, crunching through piles of yellow, orange and red leaves and taking in the sights in another nearby area, Kopli. It’s a… how shall I say… less prosperous area. Reminded me quite a bit of the place where I lived in Glasgow, only with imposing Soviet architecture instead of tenement flats and, interestingly, some sort of shandy drink instead of Buckfast. It was amusing, actually - every dubious-looking youth or scruffy old man we passed was carrying a brown, plastic 2 litre bottle in a most protective manner. A search of a local shop was no help in identifying the liquid itself, as the labels were in Russian. Some things are probably best left unknown - which is also how I felt about the ominous yellow tape that cordoned off a small patch of grass, with the words “ACID HAZARD DANGER” emblazoned quite worryingly across it.

We were a little surprised to see a hotel in the midst of it all, to be honest. I mean, it’s a residential area, populated mainly by working-class Russians; it’s slightly run-down, and not at all central. Why on earth would anyone come to stay here?! I asked in wonder. Maybe they just sell it as being close to the beach, suggested Riho -  and indeed, a few moments later, there was Stroomi Beach. It was no Pirita, but it was lovely all the same, with a pleasant little walkway alongside the shore, a beach house cafe, and plenty of sporting facilities and the like.

What makes it worthy of being in the So Damn Cool category? The part that at first looks like a children’s playground, but that on closer inspection turns out to be an outdoor gym, that’s what. It’s an ordinary, sandy-floored enclosure off the main path, with lots of brightly coloured contraptions. Only when you look more closely do you realise that instead of swings, seesaws and climbing frames, the contraptions are actually basic, simplified versions of gym equipment that you’d normally be charged a fortune to use. I went on every single thing, just because I could, and my limbs are now aching. But I was interested to note that the “gym” appears to be regularly used - several health-conscious individuals arrived by bike to work out whilst I was there.

Two points: firstly, what a great idea! Free gym equipment for everyone to make use of any time they feel like it. And not in a warm, sweaty, claustraphopic gym environment, either, but by the seaside, in the fresh air! It’d almost make you want to start exercising. But secondly, I just love that that sort of thing can exist here. You couldn’t have had that in any of the areas I’ve lived in before - vandals would’ve wrecked it in a matter of hours. In the last place I lived (housing estate in Ballymena), there were several attempts to provide a playground for the local kids. It was pointless - every time, it was completely destroyed by the next day, by thugs who seem to dislike shiny new things. If you wanted sporting facilities or playparks or anything of the sort, you had to surround them with high walls and fences, charge an entrance fee, and close them at night.

Yet here there are free parks, basketball courts, games areas, and apparently free outdoor gym sets, all completely unattended and also completely unharmed. No matter how run-down an area in Estonia might be, it never feels as if the residents have some kind of hatred of the place. They keep it clean and tidy. Sure, there’s graffiti, but it’s generally hilarious rather than offensive and pointlessly destructive… and more to the point, when they get something nice, they keep it nice. They look after it - they don’t go out of their way to destroy anything. Why would you, if you have to live there - isn’t it much better to be surrounded by nice things than by destruction?

It’s so, so nice to be asking that question in a tone other than one of despair and sadness…

I’ve just been reading one of Bill Bryson’s hilarious books and laughing merrily to myself all the way through it. The man both delights and saddens me: the former because he writes like I can only dream of doing, making the most mundane things seem utterly hilarious; the latter because, well, he writes like I can only dream of doing.

I was particularly amused by his observation that in some places it’s virtually impossible to to be a pedestrian in this age of getting into the car and driving 200 yards to the shop for a loaf of bread. While I must confess to having been guilty of this on many occasions, I now have a slightly different perspective, being well and truly Without Car, and Bryson’s observation has proved to be accurate for me on several occasions over the past few months. The reason I laughed so much at his earnest tale of trying to walk to his destination (to the horrified disbelief of the man he’d asked for directions, who tried to urge him to take a taxi because it was at least a mile away) is that I’ve experienced the same sort of issues - but, being me, I thought it was just because I was slightly dim-witted and was choosing to walk in the wrong places. It never occurred to me that actually there’s nothing crazy about walking a short distance through a city centre, and that it’s just a reflection of our general laziness as a species that there are large areas that are virtually impossible to traverse with only your own two feet to carry you.

Bryson was enjoying his saunter through the town, extolling the virtues of a walk on a nice sunny day. You saunter. You amble. Then you come to a mad junction at Burger King and discover that the new six-lane road to K-Mart is long, straight, very busy and entirely without facilities for pedestrians… I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found myself in a situation exactly like this. I’ve had some frightening moments when trying to do something as simple as get to the other side of a road. In several places, I was forced to conclude that you simply are not meant to do so, if you don’t have a car. The other side of the road is not for you. It is forbidden. In other places, I persevered and either made the suicidal dash across what Bryson calls six lanes of hostile traffic, or found an alternative route, usually adding at least half a mile to my journey, cutting through muddy/rocky/private grounds, and/or getting completely lost.

By far the craziest set-up I discovered was Budapest. The day that I explored the city on foot will remain forever etched in my mind. Vividly. With sound effects. My enduring memory is of the road along the Danube, between the river and the parliament building. I’d been walking all day and was exhausted, but I’d just crossed over the Chain Bridge from Buda into Pest and figured it would be a shame to not do the river walk while I was there. This was not as simple as it sounds. I could see the road, but I had absolutely no way of getting to it. Traffic was flowing quite madly in all directions, and I did my usual dance of crossing about 15 roads just to get to the other side of the one I’d started on. Once on the correct road, I had to figure out which side I should be walking on. The side nearest the river had an ankle-high barrier separating a narrow, pebbly pathway from the zooming traffic; the side that I was on had a separate lane that could plausibly have been used by pedestrians, but was instead occupied by hundreds of parked cars stretching as far as the eye could see. I opted to stay where I was, on account of the zooming traffic and the slightly dangerous appearance of the river “path”, and began to walk along the side of the road, getting odd looks from drivers and trying to weave in and out of the parked cars without setting off any alarms or actually getting wedged in (which almost happened on two occasions). Several times I had to wait for a brief gap in the traffic and step out on to the road to get around a badly-parked car, which was great for getting the adrenaline going.

When I reached the end of the row of parked cars (after about 15 minutes), I discovered that the lane, too, had ended and that there was not, in fact, any way to proceed on foot. Gritting my teeth and looking all around me in bewilderment and annoyance, I realised there was only one thing for it.

I turned and walked all the way back. I couldn’t cross the road at that point; it would have been complete madness, and I would not be here now telling you the story. No, I had to walk all the way back to where I’d started, and go in search of a safer, quieter spot to cross. I still ended up having a horn blared at me, but at least I was on the “path” now, with the relative safety of potholes, protruding objects, boat ropes and a sheer drop - mere inches from my feet - into the River Danube should any of these things cause me to stumble. All this, together with the slippery surfaces caused by the constant rain, made it a walk that I will never be able to forget.

The roads in general in Budapest were genuinely confusing, and I had several Brysonesque moments just trying to proceed along a single road before I realised that the reason for the complete absence of footpaths and crossing points was that there were ramps leading to a series of tunnels underground - you crossed the roads by going under them, not over them. Ingenius concept, except that for a foreigner with (a) no knowledge of the city and (b) absolutely no sense of direction anyway, it was near on impossible to figure out which exit you wanted to take when you went down there. I tried at least three at every one I came to, repeating the embarrassing process of emerging into the street, looking around to figure out where I’d been before I went underground, realising that I’d actually crossed to the wrong road, going back down and trying a different exit.

Still. It was much better than running out into the middle of six lanes of traffic, dodging three of them, and causing the fourth one (coming unexpectedly from the opposite direction) to screech to a halt and start blaring their horns as I stood frozen to the spot and panicking about whether to keep going to the other side or turn and run back. Not that that ever happened to me at any point, of course.

Since recent posts seem to have involved supermarkets and customer service, I thought that this would be as good a time as any to tell you my tale about the time I was attacked with a lettuce by an angry Chinese woman. Doesn’t everyone have a story like this to tell?

When I was a student in Glasgow, I had a part time job at the Sainsbury’s Local on Sauchiehall Street. I didn’t mind it - the shop was always busy and so the time generally flew past. However, the one thing I hated was the appearance of the Girl With The Gun at the end of the day. It sent shivers down my spine to watch her walking around the shop zapping perishable goods with bright orange “reduced” stickers.

It was at this point, you see, that two distinct groups of people invariably emerged from wherever they’d been lurking. They were the old women (the kind with very hairy chins and trembling hands, who pay for everything in copper coins) and the middle-aged Chinese women. They all made straight for the sea of orange stickers, and began filling their baskets. Before you knew it, you had a queue the length of the shop, just before the end of your shift, full of women with overflowing baskets of reduced items. It made my heart sink every time one of those baskets appeared at my till, because it took a painfully long time to peel the sticker off each item, enter the reduction code, scan the item, type in the new price and then repeat the process at least a dozen times, while the next customer - generally a suit ‘n’ tie type of businessman only just getting home from work - waited impatiently with his solitary pint of milk or microwave meal for one, glaring at you in annoyance. In fact, I frequently tried to either rush through or draw out a particular transaction in order to avoid being the unfortunate cashier who got the next basket of orange stickers.

With the old ladies, it was an assortment of bread, milk, cheese, ham and those sorts of basic groceries. With the Chinese women, quite inexplicably, it was always vegetables; and usually an entire basket of identical vegetables. I never quite understood it - and it was the most annoying one of all, because you couldn’t scan in multiples of reduced items. They had to be done individually, one sodding carrot at a time, even if there were twenty all at the same price.

Anyway, late one Friday night, a basket of orange-stickered Romaine lettuces presented itself at my till. Wearily, I went through the peeling, typing and scanning process, packed the customer’s bag, smiled politely, took payment, gave change, and went on to the next customer. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I watched the lettuce woman inspecting her receipt. The orange sticker people were always the worst. They went through the receipt with frightening intensity, and were almost gleeful if they found a mistake. Not this woman, however. She was utterly furious. Slightly alarmed, I paused in my dealing with the milk-and-microwave-meal man to observe her approaching my till with all the gentleness of a raging bull.

She barely spoke a word of English, but from her raised voice and hand waving and brandishing of the receipt I managed to deduce that I had missed one of the orange stickers and charged her 20p more than I should have. It was an easy (and common) enough mistake, and I apologised and asked her to wait as I finished with my customer. This was not the right thing to do. Incensed, she removed the aforementioned lettuce from her bag and slammed it down in front of me, pounding the counter with her fist and shouting in a language that I had no hope of understanding. I tried to explain that I could not open the till to give her the 20p until I’d finished the current transaction; she, in return, screamed “Racist! Thief!” and tried to hit me over the head with the lettuce.

“Steady on, hen!” said my customer, looking nervously at her, as I panickily tried to open the till without properly completing the transaction. I was too flustered to think straight - everyone was staring, the sound of undesirable accusations filled the air, and an irate customer was trying to knock me out with a reduced vegetable. She flat-out refused to let me press any buttons on the till, and when she actually reached for me across the counter I hurriedly fumbled in my pocket, produced 20p of my own, and flung it down in front of her. She did not appear to want it, and continued to yell “Racist! Thief! Bad girl!” for all to hear. The duty manager, fetched by a customer who clearly feared for my life, appeared on the scene like a knight in shining armour, and I shakily explained the situation to the best of my ability (given that I didn’t really understand it myself). His attempts to calm the woman down failed completely, and in his polite but firm manner he asked the lettuce woman to step outside. By way of response, she attempted to slap me.

I want to assure you, dear reader, that I am not making any of this up. There exist people in the world who will wish to kill you for accidentally charging them an extra 20p for a lettuce. The manager hastily stepped between us and put his hand on lettuce woman’s arm to guide her towards the exit. “Racist!! Bad man!” screamed lettuce woman, pummelling him with her fists. I mean, honestly.

By the time he got rid of her, apologised to the customers, and gently escorted me outside to put a cigarette in my mouth, I was bright red and not sure whether to laugh or cry. The manager wore a similar expression when, at the end of my shift, he summoned me to his office and informed me that lettuce woman’s friend’s daughter had been on the phone to discuss a reported incident of racial discrimination. She was - of course - a lawyer specialising in that particular field. Thankfully she was also sane, and accepted the manager’s account of the incident with a laugh and an apology, but still. What an Utter Raving Lunatic.

As you can imagine, the sight of orange sticker baskets caused me a great deal more anxiety from then on…

So I’m wandering happily around the Rimi (local supermarket).

It’s late in the evening - my favourite time to shop, when there are no queues and the only other people around are those as disorganised as myself who still haven’t managed to make dinner by 9pm. Take… onnnnnn… meeeeeee! I sing merrily as I contemplate the cheese display. Not because I’m an especially devoted fan of A-Ha, but because the Rimi has the most wonderful selection of background music of any shop anywhere in the world. On one grocery expedition you can hear Whigfield, The Monkees, Dolly Parton, Franz Ferdinand and Spandau Ballet, one after the other, like some sort of really weird compilation album for the musically impaired. I love it. Take… meeeeee… onnnnnnn! I add, throwing some mozzerella into my basket and going to survey the pasta aisle.

I pick up a nectarine on my way past, as I’m pretty hungry what with the whole forgetting to eat until 9pm thing mentioned previously, and I always find it incredibly difficult to walk home with a rumbling tummy and a bag full of ingredients. This is dangerous - it’s the sort of thing that might lead a person to purchase a hotdog from a street vendor, and we all know how badly wrong that decision can go. Fruit is a much safer, healthier and cheaper alternative. Plus, it makes me feel better about the pint of cream I’ve just picked up for my pasta sauce when I see the nectarine sitting comfortingly in the corner of my basket, radiating healthiness and goodness (and partially concealing the crisps).

I indulge in a happy little dance past the freezers as S Club 7 begin to Reach for the Stars. The security guard gives me a troubled look. I expect he is sad that he is on duty and therefore cannot ask me if he can have the next dance, and I smile sympathetically at him, skipping breezily past him to the checkout, and put my shopping on the conveyor belt in time to the beat. Kas sul on kümme? asks the checkout girl. Jah, I reply, giving her the right change and trying not to look too pleased with myself. (Yesterday I went to the library, and asked the girl there if she spoke English… but now I can ask my familiar question in Estonian! It’s a nice change.)

I stride out into the night air, the opening chords of American Pie drifting after me, and rummage in my bag for my nectarine. It is not very nice, but this is only to be expected when you’ve been standing at the checkout staring at a display of sweets and chocolate. I concentrate on my feeling of nutritional superiority as I pass a guy eating a Snickers, and take another bite. It is only as I am passing under a streetlight that I happen to glimpse the large hole in the middle of the part I’ve just taken a bite from. The hole itself is not overly distressing. Nor is the decidedly brown colour of the rotting circle around it, all things considered. No, the part that concerns me most at this particular moment is the undoubtedly wriggly nature of the centre of the hole.

I stop mid-chew and try to calmly assess the situation. My calm assessment lasts for approximately an eighth of a second before I decide on an appropriate plan of action, and then I spit suddenly and forcefully. Bits of nectarine and worm spray elegantly into the air, and I gurgle panickily as I continue to spit in a slightly melodramatic fashion, oblivious to the disgusted stare of the Snickers man. Then I realise I’m still holding the offending piece of fruit, and fling it from me with an admittedly hysterical shriek. Snickers man makes a hasty decision, and walks away rather quickly.

I can spit no more, and yet I am terrified that a bit of worm may be lodged in my teeth or something, and will at some point slither down my throat and begin to build a nest in my colon and lay eggs there, or whatever it is that worms do in colons. The only thing for it is to ensure that any remaining worm in my mouth is well and truly dead, and so I grind my teeth furiously the whole way home, pausing occasionally to get the retching under control, and then dashing to the bathroom to brush my teeth somewhat violently for a very long time.

And this is why I shall never eat fruit ever ever ever again. The End.

Sorry, you weren’t eating or anything, were you?

Having made the decision to stay in Estonia for  while, the time has come for me to learn the language for real. The CD thing was - let’s be honest - a complete disaster, as it taught me random words that were of absolutely no use whatsoever when it came to trying to get by in real life. And so, after some searching online (do you realise how few teaching/learning aids there are for the Estonian language? Funny, that. It’s not like it’s ridiculously, ludicrously, impossibly difficult to pick up or anything), I found a recommended textbook with lessons and practice exercises. It’s like being at school again, only this time I’m conjugating verbs of my own free will, and not because Le Prof will make me write them out fifty times if I don’t.

Riho is giving it a go too, although his version of learning seems to involve complaining that it doesn’t make sense and then suggesting that I just teach him as well as myself. So far I have refused on the grounds that we would undoubtedly kill each other if I attempted such a thing. I am, however, fairly impressed that after just two days of fairly intensive study, I have a much better grasp of how the language works than I did after two whole months of trying to pick it up in a more casual, haphazard way. I can write sentences and everything! I exclaimed in some surprise as I finished today’s grammar exercises. Riho just muttered something from behind his computer screen. Apparently not everyone learns in the same way; Riho’s problem, sadly, is that he doesn’t actually know what his “way” might be.

It was decided that we would unwind and destress by going for another brisk evening walk - this time, however, we went through the Old Town. Partly to avoid the sheer terror that comes with walking at night in an unlit area, but also in the hope of seeing posters and signs in Estonian and attempting to identify the verbs. Look, I never said we were cool people.

Sina oled siin! said Riho enthusiastically, pointing at the map on the first sign we encountered. You… are… here! we chanted like schoolchildren. It was happening. We were applying our newfound skills to Real Life. Hurrah! Of course, we both knew that we were there before we read the sign, but what if we hadn’t? That could’ve been a real lifesaver, and one that would not have been available to us had we not learned how to conjugate the verb to be. I’m telling you. Practical advantages all over the place.

My proudest moment, however, came when I stopped to study a homemade, text-filled poster. Not only was it possible to identify the verbs, but I even knew what most of them meant! We spent about ten minutes standing there in the bitterly cold wind, staring intently at this poster on the wall as others hurried past and turned their heads to see what was so fascinating about it. My excitement at being able to form a loose translation of every single sentence was perhaps a little over the top, but honestly - you’ve no idea how utterly bizarre and alien this language has seemed to me since I first encountered it. It’s genuinely amazing when the words all start to mean something, right in front of my very eyes, rather than just being incomprehensible gibberish.

Plus, if I end up actually finding the lost dog and claiming the reward, Estonian will be well on its way to being the most lucrative language I have ever studied…

Last night, feeling a bit restless from having been cooped up indoors for most of the day, Riho and I went for a spur-of-the-moment walk around the local area.

Tallinn by night is something of a new experience for me, given that when I was here in the summer I very rarely saw any hint of darkness. This is, however, a country of extremes, and the sillily long days are rapidly being eaten up by increasing periods of darkness. Gone are the midnight sunsets and 3am sunrises; when I got here last week it was already getting dark by 8pm, and now darkness only waits until late afternoon before going about its work. It doesn’t bother me - after spending my very first summer outside the UK, I’ve had my fill of long, hot, sunny days. I’m from Northern Ireland: there’s only so much bright light and warmth I can take before my brain explodes and my body melts in protest. I’m loving the cooler weather and dark evenings, and am suddenly feeling enthusiastic about the idea of spending winter in the Baltics. I mean, having just experienced the hottest summer of my life, it’s fitting that I now go for the coldest winter, too. More on that later, once I get photos of the Estonian winterwear that I intend to kit myself out in. It’s the first time I’ve ever been excited about fashion! If you can call funny hats and furry boots “fashion”…

Anyway, for now it’s just refreshingly cool - perfect for an evening stroll. We headed off through a residential area rather than taking the more familiar route through the Old Town, and I have to say that all the little wood-panelled houses look even more sweet and endearing at night, in the glow of the streetlights. It really is like walking through a fairytale sometimes.

The fairytale became more like a scary story when Riho had the bright idea of getting home by following the old disused railway track. I don’t mean by walking along beside it, on a brightly lit path, oh no. This railway track stretched off into the distance, crossing the road we were on and plunging into unknown territory of broken sleepers, rubble and long grass. We had to walk on the track itself, which gave me another of my Famous Five moments. I had just finished explaining to Riho about the one where they followed a railway track in the middle of nowhere (and then it broke off and they got lost and captured by a group of Bad Men), when I realised that we’d completely left the lights of civilisation behind and were now in near darkness, with only the faint lights from the harbour to guide us. Faint light is worse than no light, because faint light means scary shadows. And scary shadows play tricks with your mind, especially when the wind is making noises and the trees are rustling and you’ve just finished talking about Bad Men lurking at the side of an abandoned railway track much the same as the one you’re currently stumbling along.

Riho lamented my overactive imagination as I became more and more convinced that we were going to die at the hands of smugglers or be run over by a ghost train. I jumped nervously at every cracking twig or moving shadow, and Riho showed his sympathy for my nervous condition by yelling “what’s that?” at regular intervals and doing the age-old reaching around and tapping me on the shoulder furthest from him manoeuvre. When a small heap of rubble shifted beneath my feet and made a sudden noise, I jumped so violently that my instinctive grab for safety and reassurance almost dislocated his thumb (this did not go down very well with Riho, who did a whole big song and dance about his injured thumb as if I hadn’t just almost been killed), and by the time I inadvertently stood on something soft and apparently moving, my nerves gave up altogether. I screamed rather loudly, and shot along the track at a greatly increased speed. I have no idea what it was. Possibly a victim of the Bad Men. Or a large, poisonous rat. So much for a relaxing walk - I could’ve cried when I finally saw the main road in sight.

Darkness is all very well, but I much prefer seeing it by streetlight.

Last night I finally got to go for dinner at Peppersack, a really nice Medieval-style restaurant in Tallinn Old Town. You know… good hearty cuisine, candles, wooden beams, waitresses in traditional costumes, sturdy furniture, stone walls, and a bit of a swordfight when you’re waiting for your coffee.

I’ll admit that this last one is a little unusual, but there really aren’t enough live brawls in restaurants around here, if you ask me. Bickering, yes - elderly American tourists are always good for that. It’s great when you find yourself seated next to Mr. and Mrs. “How Awful!”, although usually you’re not lucky enough to get much more than a bit of cringeworthy dialogue. Like the prim and proper couple in the Embassy Of Pure Food who complained in great detail about the dryness of the melon. Which they’d consumed in its entirety, with great enthusiasm. The poor waitress was extremely confused. It wasn’t like she could take it back and get a fresh one, nor did they want second helpings. They didn’t want an apology or to speak to the manager. In the end she just sort of stood there, hovering uncertainly, with no idea how to respond - but of course, all they wanted to do was make their point. Estonia is a terrible, terrible place, where all the melons are dry! It would never happen where we come from. Ah, America… now, there’s a country!

Slightly more dramatic was the “gentleman” in a nice little bakery in Vienna, where I’d stopped for some lunch. I was eating my Unidentifiable Pastry and people-watching at my table by the window when an almighty roar filled the air. I said I wanted coffee! The Texan accent boomed out as if through a megaphone, and everyone swivelled nosily to see what was going on. It turned out that Mr. Texan had been given a cappuccino instead of an ordinary coffee - which wouldn’t have been so bad in itself, if only he hadn’t already been shortchanged at the counter. The coffee just tipped him over the edge. I’d love to say “…and then the staff tipped the coffee over him“, but unfortunately they just grovelled and quivered and rushed around in a panic to get the correct drink and make the shouting stop. This was not good enough, however. A full-on speech about customer service and The Way Things Are Done In America ensued, for the benefit of not only the staff, but everyone in the place. It wouldn’t hurt you to smile, either, he finished up, glowering at the young girl who reached him his drink. Several people rolled their eyes. I resisted a very strong urge to get up and tip the coffee over his head myself as an act of assistance to the girl, who was clearly bound by the rules of her workplace and unable to give the necessary punishment without fear of reprisal.

I was a little surprised, then, when she gave him a beautiful smile and said in a clear, sweet voice Thank you, sir, and it would not hurt you to remember that you are no longer in a country where arrogant customers can say whatever they like to workers without the workers having the right to point out that they are being a complete asshole. Admittedly, her colleagues looked a little surprised too, so I can’t caim that this is the way things are done in Austria as a rule. However, I hope that it is. Abuse of staff by customers is one of my top pet hates (and I must remember to tell you about the time when, working in Sainsbury’s in Glasgow, I was verbally and vegetably assaulted by a screaming Chinese woman who later tried to sue me for racial discrimination), and nothing pleases me more than seeing one of the oppressed rise up against the - well, assholes. I nearly cheered. Someone at a nearby table gave a brief round of applause, though, so I decided to stay out of it and let that speak for everyone.

Last night’s was the best yet, though. We’d just finished dinner and were contemplating coffee when some bickering started on the old wooden staircase nearby. One of the waiters, it seemed, had been caught with one of the waitresses, who apparently belonged to another waiter… it all looked a bit complicated, and we couldn’t understand anything they were saying, but we got the general gist of it when the girl ran off and her secret lover was attacked by a rather irate young man waving a sword. To our great alarm, a full-on swordfight followed, and they came crashing down the staircase and almost into our table before finishing in a sort of stand-off back on the stairs. I found myself cheering when the girl returned and gave them both a quare slap roon the ja’, as they* say.

Probably completely staged for tourists, you know. But part of me desperately wants to believe that you can be sitting at your dinner in a medieval restaurant in Tallinn and witness two lovestruck young men in frilly shirts duelling earnestly to win the love of a woman.

* and by “they”, I obviously do not mean the Estonian people.

I got you something to fix your brain, said Riho, a genuinely helpful and sincere expression on his face.

Unaware that my brain was in fact broken, I accepted his gift with some surprise. It was a book of puzzles intended to develop logical thinking, and he presented it to me with a pleased smile, telling me it’s like exercise for the brain. Lesser people would almost certainly take offence at this sort of thing, you know.

So, apparently I am not prone to regular bouts of logic, and this has been on Riho’s much too active mind in my absence. I can imagine his distress as he pondered the problem, and his relief when (in a fittingly logical manner) he found a solution. Just start at the beginning of the book, he told me encouragingly, and as you get the hang of it, and they get more and more difficult, you will train your brain to actually use logic!

Good grief.

Not one to be ungrateful for a present, I settled down to attempt the puzzles. What a nightmare. I think that when they were handing out logic I probably got lost on the way to claim mine, being unable to follow my map. The book is full of those puzzles with grids, where you’re given a handful of clues like the oblong box was made two days before the yellow box, which was not circular or decorated with glitter, and some time after the square orange box which was decorated with either sequins or stars, and you have to work out all the information about each item through a series of wild guesses by employing logical thinking.

Poor Riho. I could see his face crumpling as he realised that the situation (or my brain) was much, much worse than he first suspected. He let me wrestle hopelessly with the first (i.e. “easiest”) puzzle for as long as he could endure the wailing and groaning and hitting things as I exclaimed This is Just Not Possible! in an increasingly high-pitched voice. To his credit, he remained calm, taking the book and pen from my clenched fists and attempting to talk me through it. Three hours and several arguments later, the first puzzle was complete, I had a pounding headache, and Riho looked bewildered and decidedly disturbed.

Is it just me? Does this “logical thinking” stuff come naturally to most people? Are other people more resistant to being wound up than I am because this unknown thing called logic steps in and tells them “you know what, think about this - can it really be true?”?

At one point in my life, I believed that chicken fillets came from pigeons. Now, to be fair, I was very young at the time and, having just discovered that meat came from birds and animals, had gotten into the habit of asking “and what animal does this come from?” as I ate my dinner. Having dutifully answered my sausage, bacon and minced beef queries on successive evenings, Dad seemed to have run out of patience by the time I tucked into my chicken dinner. He looked seriously at me, perhaps exasperated at my lack of basic logic even as an infant, and said “pigeon”. My horror earned him a stern glare from Mum, and he hastily assured me that he was joking, trying to explain why it should have been obvious to me that chicken did not come from pigeon, but the damage was done. I was incredibly suspicious of chicken for quite some time.

You think I’m joking, don’t you? You haven’t even heard any of my driving lesson stories. Consider the following exchange between myself and my unfortunate driving instructor friend, which occurred when practising in an unfamiliar area shortly before I attempted my test for the third time:

It’s good to be back in Tallinn.

The absence of blog posts this week is an indication of how exhausted I’ve been - finally being able to lie down in a comfortable bed, cook healthy meals in a familiar kitchen, and lounge around in pyjamas all day reading and chatting and sleeping has been a real luxury. It’s also caused my body to groan “Finally!” and give up. Little things like blogging, working, and actually going outside have fallen (temporarily) by the wayside in favour of letting myself rest and recover from the most manic and unsettled few months of my entire life.

Monday was a longggggg day, with possibly the most bizarre flight I’ve ever had, even by Ryanair’s standards. The main problem was that the pilot really didn’t seem to be concentrating or - to be honest - to know how to fly a plane. Not that I’m judging, because I suspect that I wouldn’t have been able to fly it much better myself, but you tend to take these things for granted, don’t you? And for a start, he was convinced it was October. He kept telling us that it was. I’m pretty sure it’s September, but I don’t know what end of me is up any more, so I could be wrong. Anyway, after a very up and down sort of flight (I mean that very literally) during which my right ear had become more and more fuzzy (of hearing, I mean - i don’t mean to suggest that it suddenly sprouted a lot of hair or anything), he announced that we were coming in to land in Lithuania (it was Latvia, actually, but hey - they’re right next to each other), local time was 3pm (even though it was 2pm) and the weather was, once again, fairly typical late October sunshine. At this point I can only presume that he pressed a large button saying STOP, as opposed to performing any kind of complicated and expert landing procedure, for the plane didn’t so much “land” as simply fall out of the sky, end up on the runway (possibly by sheer happy accident), bounce a few times and skid to a halt in front of the terminal.

“Oooooh!” squeaked several women as we did the bouncing thing. Then they broke into spontaneous applause. I mean, WHAT? What the hell were they applauding? The fact that the plane didn’t technically go on fire or shatter into pieces? It’s not like it was the most graceful and delicate flight and landing anyone had ever experienced. Or maybe it was, and that’s a sign of the way things are in Latvia, I dunno.

Anyway. The day was greatly improved by the absolutely AMAZING bus from Riga to Tallinn - I was dreading 6 hours of bus, but this one had comfy seats, leg room, a coffee bar, WiFi, and a little TV screen with the politest bus host I have ever seen. He spoke in Latvian for about 10 minutes, then repeated his speech in Estonian, and just as he was kindly starting his English version I was thinking to myself “The only shame is that my battery’s going to go done in my laptop in about 2 hours - what would make this perfect would be if someone would invent a way of putting electric sockets on to buses!”. And little TV host man, so very politely, says “Internet access is free for your unlimited use, to while away the time or catch up with some emails, so if you want to power up, please do make use of the power sockets located between the seats”. Super-impressed, I was. And the toilet was not just a toilet, it was “a comfortable space for you to refresh yourself in privacy”, and the seats didn’t just recline to make you more comfortable, they allowed you to “curl up and doze off peacefully with the soothing sound of the road beneath you”.

I seriously love Estonia.