I have discovered that this saying has a very literal meaning and I think it may have been first coined in Finland. My stay with Jessica Brass was in the delightful small city of Turku on the west coast of Finland and we walked every where to discover the Medieval Castle and Cathedral, the public art (strongly influenced by Workers History) and the River promenade where many people go Nordic walking. The two ski pole sticks are a great protection for older people who want to keep their balance in quite tricky conditions.

It is spring in the northern hemisphere and those countries close to the Arctic circle (half of Finland is actually above the circle) are beginning to melt. Snow piled up on the side of the roads and footpaths is defrosting but at night it often refreezes and becomes black ice. For those people who are used to these conditions they are wary but for the uninitiated (for this read Australians) the healthy option of walking becomes quite treacherous. Jessica, who as an exchange Rotary student has been in Finland for six weeks now, kept having to put her hand out to catch me as I slipped and slided along the paths. To protect myself I began a type of shuffle that didn't require me to lift my feet up very far, in fact in retrospect, I could have done with the nordic poles.

I had a great three days in Turku with Jess and her generous Host mother Tea (Taya). We ate some traditional Finnish food and I enjoyed the best shower I have experienced since I left home. Jess, who will be here for a year and fits the requirements of Finnish folk by being blonde, blue eyed and fair skinned, has a remakable grasp of Finnish already and Tea was quick to praise her efforts as Finnish is exceptionally hard to learn.

My birthday present from Jess was a musical performed in a fantastic theatre where they used every theatrical device that could be brought to the modern stage. Things fell from the heavens and rose from the floor but what left Jess and I agog was the gelding of a full sized but thankfully not live, stallion. What the main female lead did to the appendage is really not describable but believe you me memorable.

While Jessica went to school and fed her English class vegemite (she realised she should have thought about the equivalent of airline sick bags), Tea invited to take me for a walk in a national park and to a well known town called Nääntäli. The National Park was another icey challenge as the paths were compacted snow that had frozen into ice. I kept humming slip sliding away...but I managed to stay upright and enjoy the forest and white frozen marshlands. We didn't see any bears (they are in hibernation) and also managed to avoid the wolves but honestly unless they came right up and stood on my boots I wasn't going to see them as I was mostly watching my careful placement of every step.

Tea and I had a picnic lunch at the edge of a frozen lake where I ventured out on ice for the first time to have a look at one of the holes where people go swimming during winter - I was not tempted. At Nääntäli I also walked across ice (this time it was part of the open sea) to talk to some ice fishermen. They had caught food for their cat and themselves meaning they had brought up from the depths about five fish a little bigger than white bait and about three the size of biggish goldfish - I didn't have the heart to start a conversation about bag limits.

Löve Cathy