My Favourite Holiday: Rosa Garland
Bold comic Rosa Garland invites you to enter the bog in her latest show about sexuality, desire and slime. Here she recalls a memorable bromantic sauna experience in Finland
Picture the scene: you’re walking through an industrial car park late at night. You think you might be murdered, but just before you decide to turn back, you see some twinkling fairy lights in the distance by the water. You found it! Helsinki’s free community sauna. An hour later you’re a couple of tinnies in, sitting in a scorching wooden hut, your butt sliding around in everyone’s sweat. You head outside, bare feet in the snow, to dunk in the harbour where a hole has been hacked in the ice that covers the water. You manage to stay in for about two seconds without departing this mortal plane. You head over to a bench and sit naked under the stars with your friends, while one of them plays a guitar on a chain. A Finnish man shows you some of his handmade axes. Life is good.
That’s my main beautiful memory from a bromantic holiday a few years ago with my friend Henry. I’m psyched to be heading back to Helsinki this year with my show, Primal Bog, for a women and non-binary focused clown festival, and you bet I’ll be straight back to the Sompasauna. Finland rules!
Rosa Garland: Primal Bog tours until Thursday 21 May; main picture: Corinne Cumming.