On Saturday, for the first time since the year of Sandy Shaw, I watched the Eurovision Song Contest. Times have indeed changed. Songs are not what songs used to be â things you could sing in the bath â and mostly it seemed to consist of people either oddly dressed or hardly dressed, gyrating inside a lot of flashing lights, while emitting noises which one presumed was singing.
The Ukrainian group won as was to be expected but our man came second which apparently makes up for decades of nul points. He seemed a genial chap and a future touring in Jesus Christ Superstar revivals as Judas probably beckons once his laurels start to wither, which they will. Otherwise, three persons compered it: the inevitable woman in tight gowns cut low, with a man on either side to chat to. Somewhere off screen, Graham Norton â wearing something colourful it seems from one of the pictures taken â told whoever could make out what he was saying above the racket how wonderful it all was. If you have to be told something is wonderful, it invariably is not.
If anything, the entire show simply confirmed that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently and that the present, as defined by Eurovision 2022, is one to which one does not belong.
On Sunday night, there was the Queen’s Jubilee concert which, after it got over a shameless plug for Tom Cruise’s latest Top Gun movie, proved to be rather splendid, especially as the Queen turned out. Well, there were lots of horses on show which were clearly far more to her taste than donkeys in parliament. The words were a bit smarmy but the servicemen, performers and horses were magnificent and the royal shrug when her absence from that state opening was mentioned was superb, as was the smile on her face as she left. Katherine Jenkins even sang Rule Brenda. Or at least I thought she did.
Bill Russell
Those of us in the autumn of our years are constantly reminded that we are not dying fast enough, soon enough, or cheaply enough. Especially that. ‘Auld nuisances’ puts it rather well: clogging up beds, A&E slots, waiting lists; care services by the barrowload; medication in cocktail mixes so exotic we don’t even remember what half of it is for.
Talking of remembering… did I go to the polling station on Thursday, or, if challenged, would I be minded/tempted to deny fulfilling my bounden duty? I mention this because there is a clear trend in the business of being somewhere then forgetting all about it and moving swiftly into denial having also questioned the why, as in: ‘I didn’t realise why we were all there meeting, greeting, eating cake. Or was that the curry?’ This from younger generations, still a good number of years away from the bus pass and state pension. (Mitigated, of course, by the prospect of generous workplace pensions.)
And talking of the workplace… before I forget. Watch any televised footage of a parliamentary session showing our elected representatives. Heads bowed, draped over a device, a folder, a notepad, thumbs tap tap tapping away like it was already lousing time or the weekend.
Here, lying down in a quiet dark corner of the wee swamp, conserving energy by unplugging the telly and the radio, reading (paper) books about the Great Game and learning how little has changed, watching the feline lodger stretching into a position of total relaxation, thinking…
I’m quite sure I was there on Thursday, not that it matters a damn.
Shelagh Gardiner
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