It all started fine. The may day, had some great time and met new people and finished it off with old friends and sauna. 3 am and time to ride home. The smooth spring night is filled still with some late Turdus Pilaris searching for food and a lot of Lepus Europaeus just standing there and lazily jumping away as I approach. Giant shadows cast by a moth in a streetlight. And I join the Mätäjoki river from the west, it glittering behind the trees. The chain grease was washed out by a rain a couple of days ago so it’s a bit noisy when pedaling but the trip is short. No people around, only a few taxis on the roads in Mäkkylä. The rest of the way, silence.
And then I separate eastwards from the river and start to approach the neighbourhood where I’ve lived since fall, Kannelmäki. I see a yellowish light in the ground – a small fire. I get closer and I see some kind of burning thing on top of a wooden trestle that fences a car park. Drops of flaming goo fall down to the gravel. It’s clearly some kind of plastic, and it looks like a fabric. The fire doesn’t seem very intense but anyway I pick some stick and drop it to the ground and put it out. The wood is intact. Fire follows the laws of physics like almost everything else*. I’ve had my share of playing with it as a kid and know how to handle it.
Now, maybe someone just was polishing their car with a wrong kind of rag, and it autoignited when they left it there. I see nobody around, and I move on. Across a junction and under the railway bridge. There I see a jug of Lasol denatured alcohol used for windscreen washer and a rag. Perhaps not connected in any way. Perhaps nobody was trying to make Molotov cocktails. And I take a few corners, through the park and arrive home. See the night bus pulling out of the stop. Sometimes this part of the city does seem quite stupid, whether it’s trying or not, it seems somewhat irrelevant.
*:the human thought being an easy example…