Having commented that now is not the time of year to be sitting in a tent on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, guess what!

It looks worse than it is, although when the wind gets up, it's worse than it looks. We Magneteers are here to magnetise a cable as it's loaded aboard the 'Cable Installer', a ship operated by the Italian company, Prysmian.

We’re back in the same retro style hotel and what I didn’t notice the last time I was here were these ceiling lights – classic Thunderbirds! Also I completely forgot about the instruments of torture which pass for pillows in this neck of the woods – nasty foam filled things which turn to concrete when you lie on them! Two glasses of wine at the hotel - £26! Supermarkets are awash with cider, lager and funny coloured fizzy drinks but a bottle of wine? The nearest 'Alko' (the state-owned outlet for anything over 4.7%) is 24km away.

Every year, I say that I won’t be going to the Classic Car Show for at least the next three years and every year I end up going. But with the entry price at around £30, I’m determined to readdress my resolve to not go.

The cars that caught my eye were a very pretty Fiat 1500 Cabriolet, a brace of Triumph Italia’s (I’d never heard of this hook-up between the TR3 and a Turin body shop before, let alone seen one) and a Maserati. The Italians have always been at the top of the styling game.

Which started me thinking about sports cars and how nice it would be to build one of my own. A couple of initial sketches indicated how difficult it is to depart from received ideas about what constitutes a sports body. Some radical thought outside the box is required! Recently, I was leafing through a book about special bodied Jowett Jupiters by Edmund Nankivell and noticed a coupe with particularly attractive lines. A Jupiter chassis....

... would be a good starting point and there are a few dotted about (if you can find them) that would be perfect for such a project. I’d have to do a bit of juggling with the radiator – perhaps make a couple of side-mounted assemblies to lower the bonnet and maybe move the engine back a bit…. it’s just a thought at the moment of course.

This week, I'm working the midday to midnight shift so I have a couple of hours to explore the area around Siuntio. In the sunshine and snow I imagine the forests are a real treat; fungi, elk, bears and whatnot, but in the cold, wet and overcast skies we have at the moment, nothing could be less inviting.

The nearest town, Lohja, threw up this charming station building. It didn't appear to function as a station anymore although the lines were definitely in use.

I saw a sign to a museum but it was time to go back to work; maybe the museum (and finding Alko) is tomorrow's adventure.