I remember when I set my foot in the British Isles for the first time ever. It was August 1992, a night time ferry over from Calais to Dover and we first stopped in a B&B in Canterbury – on our way to attend a week long karate course in Warwick (indeed, I had graded 1st dan black belt in Karate-Do-Shotokai at the time). My first culture shock in England was the wall-to-wall carpets and the separate cold and hot water taps which made me feel like I had stepped hundreds of years back in time…! Everything seemed… “so quaint”. But the whole energy of what little I did manage to see of the country during that week, and especially the energy of London, must have made an impression as one year on I moved to London permanently. Well, technically speaking it was to be for one year, but while waiting for my plane at Helsinki airport, I thought to myself: “I’m going now and I’m not coming back.” And that year indeed stretched into a dozen. Although I’ve since left the UK, London still always holds a special place in my creative core – I’ve not yet grown tired of it, it always seems to reinvent itself, it keeps me young and I don’t feel a foreigner there. So it’s still great to visit and it feels like coming home. And of course, it’s the place where I became a bookbinder. (Apr08)