It’s Sunday evening, the weather forecast promises a skyful of sleet for tomorrow, the irritatingly useless new acoustic Marillion cd is playing in the soundsystem, there’s ten apple pastries cooking in the oven for me to exclusively gorge on in a moment,  and The Loved One lives in another city now. So nothing much to rejoice about, not right now and not in the near future either, with the possible exception of the pastries.

Here’s the breakdown:

1) Sunday evening
Sunday evenings are, at the best of times, the most favoured visiting hours of Lady Melancholia, what with the week all wrapped up and a new one looming shapelessly in the horizon, sometimes in an unseemly manner. Given the current circumstances of 50% of the population of our household now having relocated elsewhere it looks like Melancholia’s visiting hours will be extended indefinitely.

2) Skyful of sleet
Not among the Top 100 of my Favourite Weather Conditions by any means. And as the first cut naturally is the deepest, every year the most shocking time is the first time an icy white and sloshy substance spews down from the clouds in an unnecessarily solid reminder of upcoming wintery unpleasantness. As an added bonus it seems to take place on an Monday this year. Wahey.

3) An acoustic Marillion cd
I’ve always instinctively hated the idea of doing acoustic versions of previously written songs. I don’t know where the feeling stems from but it’s been with me as long as I can remember and doesn’t look like going away without radical alterations of attitude on my part. Last years’ “Hindsight” by Anathema didn’t change that and “Less Is More” by Marillion won’t change that either. The album is horribly long-winded, boring and doesn’t contain a single song I’d rather prefer to hear in an acoustic version than in an original more electric form. This hasn’t stopped me from buying a ticket to their acoustic show in Helsinki next month though. It’s still MARILLION, no matter what they choose to do this year. But there really should be some kind of penalty to keep bands from doing albums like this.

4) Apple pastries
Consumed by now and very tasty they were thank you very much. My mood was temporarily improved a fraction because of them but now the plate is empty again.

5) The Loved One living in another city
She moved a week ago to Turku because of her studies at the local university. It’s a 2 hour journey on a train or a bus and she returns to Helsinki for the weekends so it’s not the end of the world but it’s not the most delightful thing ever either, especially on a Sunday evening like this when she’s just left and we both face a new week spent in a much more solitary manner than what we’ve been accustomed to lately. We spent a lovely weekend at Turku, moving her stuff in and exploring the new surroundings a week ago and on Sunday I boarded the train to Helsinki, eyes a-moist and not sure what lies ahead. Miraculously we both survived the first week and the reunion was joyous so this arrangement doesn’t look  like being an entirely awful one, as we both get more time to ourselves, for her to study useful things at the university and for me to study useless ones on the internet,  and the time together will probably be even sweeter now when it’s limited to weekends. Still, I’m subject to regular bouts of melancholy now, a lot more than I’ve been in years.

I also have more time to examine things of interest, like a Wheel of Emotions, or how the Latin word “malum” translated stands for both “evil” and “apple”,among other meanings (like “fuck”), adding curious and thought-provoking new viewpoints on the subject of Original Sin and the possibilities borne of simple mistranslations of The Bible.