If you've been living in temporary accommodation for two years with no proper furniture, you won't appreciate what a luxury it is to sit on a sofa and watch TV. This weekend I slouched on the sofa and indulged myself in front of the TV. Not that I had planned it in anyway, but it tuned out both evenings had special programmes on that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Saturday - Eurovision Song Contest
If you're not from Europe, then you probably don't know about this contest. The Eurovsion is an annual singing contest in Europe that started back in 1957. UK has entered 63 times, pretty much every year since it started. Along with Germany, Italy, Spain and France, we get automatic entry to the final every year as these 5 countries contribute financially the most. Other countries have to go through a sing off to get to the final 25. Over the years, UK have won 5 times, but we also came last 5 times, 2 of which we scored 0 points. Ouch! Seems like no one loves us, despite us being one of Big Five countries, and the contest being hosted in English ☹️
This year, news was that we had a very strong entry and was tipped as one of the hot favourite to win. The UK media always hype around this time of the year so I wasn't paying much attention to it. I hadn't even heard the song before the contest. If you're interested, here it is, and to be honest, it actually ain't bad!!
Source : Eurovision Song Contest
Another hot favourite tipped to win was Ukraine. Each country has a panel of professional jurys who scores all the entries. They make up 50% of the points. The other 50% comes from public votes. Notwithstanding how good the entry was, it was felt that Ukraine would gain a lot of sentiment votes from the public.
After all the countries had performed, the professional jury votes were announced first. And guess what, UK came first!! That was a far cry from last year when we scored zero points. It truly looked like we had a very good chance of winning. Then the public votes were added for each country, starting from the bottom of the table. That meant UK were the last to know our total score. We kept our top place for a while till Serbia got a massive public vote and took over. Then came Ukraine's score and they got an even bigger public vote taking them way over UK and even Serbia. At that stage, Ukrine had a total of 631, and UK 283 without any public votes. We needed 349 points to win. A mammoth task. Our scores came in .... 183. Not enough to win but we still came second which was miles better than our achievement in the past two decades. Not winning was a bitter disappointment, so near yet so far, but losing to Ukraine? I'm not going to complain at all.
And if you think Ukraine won on sympathy votes rather than by merit, then you're wrong. I think the successfulness of a song of course depends on the lyrics, the melody, the vocals and artist performance. But it also has to evoke emotions, and take listeners through a journey. Ukraine's entry by Kalush Orchestra did just this. I will leave you with the video if you haven't heard the song yet.
Source Kalush Orchestra
Sunday - Platinum Jubilee Celebrations
This is another program that I stumbled upon. This year, our Queen will celebrate 70 years on the throne, the first for a Brtish monarch. The only other Kings that has reigned longer than her is Louis XI from France from the 18th century who was King for 72 years, and the Thai King Rama IX who was on the throne for 70 years and 126 days till he died. Queen Elizabeth will over take that record very soon (according to Wiki, as of today she is 28 days short)
Source https://platinumjubilee.gov.uk
The program on TV was hosted by many UK Dames and OBE (most of them get an honour if they've been around for long enough and made significant contributions to the industry) as well as Tom Cruise - great opportunity for him to promote Top Gun II. The theme of the program was very horse based as the Queen loves horses. There were many equestrian and military performances, not only from our own, but also from France, Norway, Oman, Canada, Azerbaijan, Swtizerland and India. I thought my favourite was Azerbaijan, the performance on and off horseback was just breathtaking, until I saw the percussion performance by The Top Secret Drummers from Switzerland who did a cross over drum performance with our very own Household Cavalry.
Here's more information about the show if you're interested.
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-05-15/queen-receives-standing-ovation-at-jubilee-equestrian-show
Sometimes weekend doesn't have to be jammed packed with activities, the occasional potato couch is just as enjoyable especially when you can indulge in some guilty pleasures.
Time to get ready for a new week.
