11 may 2014, the morning after

Occasionally the eurovision song contest is a big event in our house; and 2014 was one. All the ducks lined up: everyone in, a slow saturday night, no plans, a late dinner, the kids lobbying for a late night, and the family increasingly struggling to find things that we can watch together. Being of course a most european family, there is some natural affinity too, and we don't start with the default cynicism its always had in the uk, even when I remember watching terry wogan as a child. My other half remembers saw it in hungary when abba won, and we watched it together in germany, where the politics of who votes for whom, and the "big 5" coming right at the bottom one year a much-discussed phenomena, at work too. The kids took all it very seriously, scoring each song, as we flitted in and out doing washing and dinner, and they called us together for the critical ones, though there was no israel this year. Despite our biggest sympathies, we were all hugely underwhelmed by hungary, though funnily enough when the voting started it was soon top and stayed there or thereabouts until a good half way through. By contrast the ones we quite liked: iceland, ukraine (who I thought might get a sympathy vote, as much as russia was booed) and germany, went absolutely nowhere. Our favourite (and it's still getting airplay on you tube in the kitchen this morning) was france, which came plum bottom with two points, and one of them was ours. Moustache: worth a watch. Three and a half a hours, fun and eurovision almost ended up in the same sentence.