Dachshunds

Easter Day, and we're still in Thaxted, sitting in front of an open fire, putting the world to rights.

We've talked about the BBC, Eurovision, my career and now we've moved onto education. We're in complete agreement that Michael Gove is not just a complete tit, but a complete tit with a dangerous Hitler complex. It's time for teachers to put their collective foot down and stop him before he starts doing experiments on dwarves.

The best Eurovision song by far this year is the Dutch entry; a haunting, quirky little piece sung by a woman called Anouk, which is called Birds. It includes the intriguing lyric "birds falling down the roof tops, out of the sky like rain drops" which I find rather alluring for some reason. You can hear it here.

I have made my first ever actual bet on the contest this year. £20 on Russia (at 16:1) to win. Russia's song this year is all about coming together and supporting one another, which feels hugely ironic in the light of the way they treat gay people over there. I don't want the song to win in the slightest; I just think it will, and if it does, I want the proceeds to go straight to the Four Colours project. Homophobic twats.

We've been looking through my mother's dachshund calendar. She adores dachshunds but doesn't deal very well with photographs which make them look deformed (or more deformed than they already do.) She has, for some time, doctored pictures of ugly dachshunds on calenders to make them look more appealing. This month's animals had necks which she considered to be too long, so she's tried to make collars for them. The results are extraordinary!