Euroriot

Eurovision was an absolute riot. About 30 people managed to cram into our tiny living room and each and every one of them seemed incredibly happy to be there. Jim made the most astonishing scoreboard for the wall. I've never seen the like. Everyone registered their votes with pieces of coloured card of varying lengths. The song you liked the best was awarded the longest piece of card and so on down to your tenth favourite, which was given the smallest. The countries were written in a line at the bottom of the wall, and as people stuck their different pieces of card, end to end, on the scoreboard, the columns representing our favourite songs grew and grew. The winner ended up with a column that went from the floor to the ceiling. It was very incredibly exciting to see the votes piling in. It retrospect it was probably more exciting than what was happening in the official competition on the television at the same time!


We ended up choosing France as our winning song. It certainly wasn’t my first choice, but as soon as it started, someone in the room began to dance and before you could say; “oi, this song’s crap”, about 8 people were on their feet, jumping exctiedly in the middle of the sitting room. I think the large majority of people at the party decided that if a song had the power to make 8 people spontaneously dance, it had to win! Denmark, which was my choice, came a close second.

Bizarrely, the winner of the proper competition was Germany, which came a miserable 16th in our vote, and barely made an impression on any of us. The good news is that the Germans love Eurovision, so they’ll host the mother of all contests next year. Brother Edward, no doubt, has already booked his ticket.

The UK actually came last, which made me incredibly happy. Having predicted we’d get between 20 and 30 points, we actually got fewer than 10, which is almost a record. I’d love to have seen Pete Waterman’s arrogant, crabby face afterwards! If you don’t respect the contest, Pete, it certainly won’t respect you!

The scoreboard committee make preparations

The start of the night. Is it just me, or does my god-daughter look like Resusci-annie on this picture?

Spontaneous dancing to France

End of the evening; note the spotlight illuminating the winning column of votes

May 30th 1660 was an uncomfortable day for Pepys. He was besieged by all manner of aches and pains and was terrified, but decided it was simply a cold and got on with eating a lovely breakfast of freshly caught mackerel instead.

A day of accounting followed, which also saw him calculating his personal fortune, finding himself to be worth 80L; “at which my heart was glad and blessed God”. Pepys’ gratitude to The Almighty in the realm of finances seemed to know no bounds, and as he became wealthier and wealthier the thank yous seemed to become more and more elaborate!