How can you hate Eurovision?

The Eurovision Party last night was one of the best ever. We got back to Highgate from Hampshire with just enough time to stick a load of roast potatoes in the oven and print off a load of score cards.

I was extremely touched to return to find Fiona had made a table’s worth of salads. She’d bought cheeses, wine, Crabbies for Nathan and laid everything out beautifully. She even managed to feed and water the rat!

We must have had about 25 people in the house; mostly women, with a smattering of gay men and one straight bloke; good old James Fortune, who came with his radiantly pregnant girlfriend, Vic. She doesn’t know the gender of her child, but if it’s not a boy, I’ll be very surprised.

I’m always amused when my straight male friends routinely refuse to turn up to Eurovision parties because they “hate Eurovision.” There’s a room full of gorgeous, glamorous women, what isn’t there to like? You don’t have to watch the telly, do you?!

Actually, what I loved about the company last night was that everyone who came seemed somehow at peace with themselves. Everyone got along. No one hogged the limelight. No one was crying in a corner. No one looked bored or felt too cool for school. The slow march towards 40 is riddled with questions which don’t have ideal answers and so many of my friends right now are in degrees of turmoil; some are desperate for children, others are desperate for the world to love the children they’ve spent an eternity trying to create, many more are simply wondering if they’ll ever learn to love themselves. Conversation can become stilted and repetitive. Dramas can erupt. Someone takes offense because someone who’s not in their specific situation is reminding them that they have choices in life and that bad things sometimes happen because you open the door to them. But last night was fun because everyone arrived wanting to have fun, and eat good food, and sing stupid songs, and engage in healthy banter and silly dancing and tonnes and tonnes of laughter late into the night...

The highlight was definitely Sweden winning... and I think, if you go back to my blog entry from March 22^nd, you’ll see that I predicted the top three. Sweden, Russia, Serbia. Graham Norton kept questioning why Serbia was doing so well. He should have read my blog.

Nathan went down with a migraine at the end of the evening, which lasted through the night with bouts of vomiting and all the way through today. The poor chap has spent most of the day lying in a darkened room.

Tuesday May 27^th, 1662, and Pepys’ father was in town. He told Pepys about the alterations they were having done to the family pile in Brampton and Pepys seemed very pleased. He worked in his office all afternoon, and spent the evening holed up in his chamber playing music all alone. Chamber music, one assumes...