A blessing in a holy place

Or how London's Finnish Church left its impression on me in deepest January

This is an extract from my work in progress, a book about sauna, mental health and a travelogue exploring the places and people that make this community so vital during difficult and frightening times

Canada Water is not somewhere I, or anyone for that matter, would think to come to find salvation. Stuck out on a limb on the Rotherhithe peninsula, this once teeming part of London, where ships were built and docks landed goods from across the British Empire and beyond, is a testament to the soullessness of the area’s around the river towards Canary Wharf. All glass towers, 90s apartment blocks and red routes.

At least, that was my belief as I clambered the seemingly endless steps and escalators out of the Tube station on a dank and grey afternoon in mid January. The low clouds and streak of headlamps leant the city a cliched edge, the kind of atmosphere which drove my Australian friends to give up on their dreams of a life on the other side of the world for something less moody, less miserable. The bus station at the Underground exit was choked with fumes, commuters and locals tucked deep inside scarves and parkas.

I did the same and followed my phone’s map towards the river, thanking a woman smoking outside a bookie’s for pointing out a pile of dog shit that was in my path, wandering through suddenly historic streets and past the lovingly restored Dock Office which, on further investigation, was brought into its modern incarnation by Conran and Partners. Luftwaffe bombs had done for much of the area in the 1940s, before the death of trade shipping had finally killed things off in the post-war years. Walking here I could see the seeds of regeneration, even if many of the new towers smacked of the worst aspects of gentrification: siloed off buildings, overpriced coffee spots and in-house gyms, with no space for the people who called this home.

My cynicism was soon put further into place as I walked past community halls and churches, dilapidated but clearly well used. This before turning onto Albion Street and catching sight of my destination: the modernist masterpiece that is the Finnish Church in London. Redolent of the churches in my hometown of Harlow, Essex, which was built to house those from areas just like this after the war, its separate brick tower loomed high through the gloaming as I opened the door to be greeted by a friendly Finnish woman with short hair wearing red glasses with small round frames, the kind which always distinguish Scandanavians.

‘You’re with the embassy, I take it?’

I wasn’t. But my friend Pirjo, who works at the Finnish embassy in Belgravia was and it was her who had made the booking for us to have a steam up in the church’s much-loved sauna, deep in the basement.

Pirjo and my friends James and Emma, whom I had met in Finland the previous summer, had yet to arrive, so I was shown into the cafe, which sits at the back of the nave of this simple, Lutheran place of worship. The windows drank in the last of the winter light as I took a seat and was offered some coffee and a cinnamon bun. Despite the late hour I greedily accepted both.

The church offers a home away from home for Finns across the UK and Ireland, with services in Finnish and even its own hostel for those in need of a place to stay when visiting London. Previously called the Finnish Seamen’s Mission, opening its doors to sailors in 1882, its present building was opened in 1958, designed by Finnish architect Cyrill Mardell Sjostrom, who had trained at North London Poly in the 1920s.

The same woman who had shown me in poured me a cup of black coffee and presented me with a cinnamon bun, tightly wound and coated in huge white sugar granules. I ate it greedily, swigging water so as to ensure the caffeine didn’t leave my system dehydrated when the heat cranked up.

As I did so Emma and James, followed by Pirjo, appeared at my table, along with Alfie, Emma’s son. Tall and rangy with long brown hair and a beard and in his early 20s, he gave my hand a firm shake as we headed down the narrow staircase in the lobby, into the basement where the sauna lay, warm and ready.

Alfie worked at South Bermondsey sauna, one of Hackney Wick’s spin offs and another place that put community wellbeing at its heart. He was following in the family business, his mum already a sauna celebrity thanks to her book on the history and culture of sauna across Scandinavia. Together with James we stripped down to our shorts and readied ourselves for the heat. The sessions here were split into men’s and women’s, and with space at a premium three people seemed like the smartest bet for squeezing into this bijou space.

After a brief shower, the temperature cranked down to ensure maximum shivering, Alfie opened the door and led us in. The space was tiny, with enough room for six people at an absolute push, the huge stove taking up most of the space in the middle. The heat, inevitably, was brutal, redolent of the time spent in the eves of Lonna all those months ago. Soon James was asking if we wouldn’t mind if he ladled a little water onto the coals. The loyly hissed and whirled around us as I closed my eyes and breathed it in, head sweaty, body dripping, breathing out the stress of the day.

The previous 24 hours had been a whirlwind of children’s sickness and a lack of sleep. Cleaning sheets at 3am, stroking hair over the toilet, broken hours trying to get some rest on the edge of the mattress. Having been a parent for years, this kind of exhaustion was largely in the rear view mirror. However, I still battled with a deep fatigue, one which I could trace to the time when I started taking antidepressants. The initial, all encompassing tiredness was unlike the utterly broken, inability-to-function feeling that comes with tending to babies that think the early hours are playtime. It was deeper than that. I was getting eight solid hours, but still found that I felt I needed more. I power napped and, while it did help, it didn’t do nearly enough. Every evening I was ready for bed by 9pm.

This feeling slowly dissipated, but there were still a couple of days every week where I would find myself flagging. The GP sent me for diabetes and anaemia tests, all of which came back negative. As the months passed and my depression eased and my anxiety dropped to a never before felt low, I came to regard this side effect as one I was willing to take. Yet at this moment, as the heat grew and grew and I went deeper within myself, I really wondered if it was worth it. Had these pills given me the boost I needed and was it time to say goodbye to them?

I pondered this as my body acclimatised. My heart rate was a touch higher than usual, the stress of the heat putting it to work. All I could do was focus on my breathing, counting them in and out, before we struck up a conversation about Alfie’s work in South Bermondsey.

The sauna there, he explained, was in an industrial part of London most famous for a huge waste incinerator close to the train line in London Bridge and its proximity to The Den, home of Millwall Football Club. Yet thanks to some judicious planting and placement of horse box saunas and a firepit, he and the team had helped create a welcoming and positive space, he said. Somewhere that was affordable and drew in people from all parts of the local community.

‘It’s my local,’ James boasted proudly, dripping beneath his own personal sauna hat.

My proximity to the door meant that I was the first to make a break for cooler air and the skin singing tingle of icy water. I stood beneath the shower for what felt like an eternity, but was probably all of 90 seconds, hands leaning on the tiled walls, water dripping from my hair, down my forehead and onto the floor. I reentered to an even more powerful blast of hot air, which I could stand for no more than five minutes before getting out again, while James and Alfie chatted as if everything was normal. I loved the heat, but, as with cold water swimming, I knew my appropriate edge and when it had been met. I found that I liked short, sharp sessions, all the better for mixing up the hot and cold.

After almost an hour, our time was up. I yanked on trousers and T shirt over still damp, clammy limbs, my coat, scarf and hat seeming like unnecessary accessories. The three of us clambered the steps into the heart of the church and I said quick goodbyes, heading towards the station and my train back to the coast.

Outside, the January afternoon was now dark as I retraced my steps back to Canada Water. My coat was open to the elements, scarf and other woolies stuffed into my backpack. I glided as if I was high, blissfully unaware of the world around me being urban and industrial. The bare branches of the trees in King George’s Field appeared to glow as if moonlit beneath the bright white streetlights. I kept my earphones out, all the better to have a full sense of the city around me. I was at once in the scene and looking at the scene. My weariness, my deep fatigue, had gone, replaced by a sense of being unable, unwilling to move faster than my current stately pace.

Even at London Bridge, where commuters were disgorged from the Tube and onto rammed platforms heading north and south, I couldn’t muster the energy to worry or go faster. I made my train with time to spare and even found a seat. For the next hour, I read my book without looking up, in a state of complete and total grace. It seemed to be no coincidence that this had happened in the minutes and hours after my sauna experience. Maybe, too, it was the spiritual aspect of its location. But I had a deep feeling that this was just how I had been during my time in Finland and after seeing Bella too. I wanted this to be a wave I could ride regularly. Not an overriding obsession, rather part of my day to day life, an ongoing journey towards balance, health and wellbeing.

In the days that followed I slept like a stone and found new reserves of energy, my anxiety quelled to a whisper, enough to make me human but not so much that I couldn’t function. I was less quick to anger than usual, more aware of my surroundings - the herring gulls that hung on the wind along the shoreline, the sparrows that squabbled in the box hedges on the way to collect the kids from school, the unexpected sight of a fox taking a shit in daylight hours as I walked home. Everything felt heightened, more tangible in its beauty and essence.

The fatigue from the SSRIs seemed to have dissipated, at least initially. After a week though, the tiredness was creeping back in, but the balance afforded by my time in the stayed with me. I needed to get back into the dance between hot and cold to see what other benefits it could bring me.