Eurovision

This is one of my least favourite times of the year. It is the longest I will have to go without watching the kitsch celebration of all things European in the form of song and interpretive dance. I was a little bit disappointed with this year's outings though, none of the songs really stuck out for me. Alexander Rybak was a worthy winner though for Norway, because his 'Fairytale' song was actually quite sweet...and he is a good piece of eye candy ;o) .

I have to admit, I do take the Eurovision contest *somewhat* semi-seriously. Perhaps it is due to the small, still-surviving European part in me. I can't remember missing any of the contests in my living memory, I even remember watching one while I was still in Croatia, and it has got to the stage now where I can quite accurately predict how a country will distribute its top 3 points. That does look set to become slightly more challenging now, what with having a jury deciding 50% of the voting. Nevertheless, the good old Balkan countries still mainly stuck together. "We may have fought a bloody and useless war, but here's 12 points! Zivjeli!"

Denmark's entry, performed by Brinck, sounded like the poor-man's Danish version of Ronan Keating (though I guess that is hardly surprising given that Ronan wrote the song). That cracked me up good and proper! It was nice to see Britain finish at the top for a change though. I was looking through past performances, and it is only really since 1999 that the UK has been consistenly bad, with the exception of Jessica Garlick in 2002 - she got to 3rd place. But before that they have pretty much always been in the top 10 since 1957, bar the performances of1978 and 1987. So it can't be the case that the UK has always been 'hated by Europe'. Either they have been coming out with crap songs for a decade, or Tony Blair was good at losing allies. Incidentally, it was in 2003 that Britain got 'null points', the year that the war was declared on Iraq. Though that was the year that the female twin from Jemini sang the whole first verse out of tune... I'm sure that had more to do with it!

Anyway, I am going to cry myself to sleep now that I have 364 days to wait 'til Croatia, or any one of my other adoptive countries, have another shot at the Eurovision crown.