Is it any wonder?

Well our daughter Becksy is staying a few days with us, which is lovely. She’s a big music fan and she was delighted that our daughter Ems set up Spotify on her mobile phone/Bose speaker yesterday after our belated Xmas dinner. We’ve heard quite a lot of Westlife booming out from her bedroom since. But we don’t mind. It takes us back to when the girls were all young and blasting out 3 different lots of music from their rooms. Happy days eh.

But it wasn’t all Westlife. I did get a couple of hours off to watch the Eurovision Song contest last night with her (Carol smartly took herself off to bed. I usually can’t abide it but I have to admit it was quite enjoyable. I rather liked the rather powerful ballad from the pretty French chanteuse who ended up coming 2nd I think to the Italian band who scored well over 500 points in winning the competition. How did we do? Well I’m pretty sure you must know by now but if not, don’t be surprised when I tell you we got nul points, yet again. Not one country nor any of the voting public across Europe, near Asia and Australia recorded a single vote for our Song for Europe, performed by James Newman. He sang ok I guess though he chose to wear a weird leather jacket which couldn’t have helped his cause much. Nor did the party dress sported by our spokeswoman, Amanda bloody Holden, who was a vision in bird of paradise feathers for some inexplicable  reason….

Plus you couldn’t help wondering if her rather condescending joke about her (and by inference our) inability to understand the simplest phrases in French or Dutch didn’t help cement European views that we’re either an arrogant nation with a grossly overrated sense of our own importance, or just completely fucking stupid. Possibly both in her case. This is what she said

“Bon soir. Goedenavond. That is good evening in French and Dutch although I’ve got absolutely no idea which is which. This is London calling. What a fantastic show this evening. I am Amanda Holden – I love Eurovision.” Sigh.

And then I saw a report in one of today’s papers quoting Z list celebrity Scarlett Moffatt, the Geordie lass who made her name on Gogglebox and subsequently won I’m a Celeb. Now she’s a pleasant young woman and whilst sassy enough and not short on opinion, you do suspect she’s not the sharpest tool in wor Jackie’s tool box. So what was it she had to say? Well she strongly believes that Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in the secret subterranean tunnel system that exists beneath the Blackpool Tower and the Winter Gardens, presumably looking something like this…

This is based on her logic that a) following extensive research she has discovered there are 7 registered Elvis’s on the electoral roll in the Blackpool area and surely one of them has to be the Suspicious Minds one b) he loved performing in Las Vegas and Blackpool is the Vegas of the north so it’s obvious really c) he liked rhinestone jumpsuits so he’d naturally be attracted by the shiny illuminations d) these tunnels must exist as no one at Blackpool Town Council has denied it.

Well when you put together that sort of logic it’s hard to refute. So I guess Europeans must read this sort of stuff too and, true or false, draw their own conclusion about we Brits. Brexit can’t have added to the fondness they feel for us all either. But don’t you get saddened by their dislike for our nation, 75 years after we liberated them from Nazi tyranny? I know I do after especially after we lived on the continent and loved it and them. Sigh

That’s the wonder of us.

pp

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