Eurovision delivers entertainment value in spades - again!

Well, so what if the U.K. could do no better than finish in 25th place? - out of 25! It's hardly the end of the world, even though it is happening with alarmingly increasing regularity - it's the 3rd time in the last 8 years. Whilst conceding our song may not have deserved to have been a clear winner (part-penned by composers of all those international disco hits of the 1980s, including Kylie, which had then got so many of us sweaty on the dance floor) I thought it at least should have finished in the top 10, but it didn't help being delivered by an inexperienced and uncharismatic 19 year old youth.
Winner was Germany, only their second-ever win - their previous win being Nicole's dreadfully twee 'A Little Peace' in 1982. Still can't see why yesterday's entry won (sung by one 'Lela', also 19), though I believe it has already been a huge hit throughout large parts of Europe. I can't recall now the 'tune' to 'Satellite'. Maybe there wasn't one.

But, above all, it was the OTT campery which always makes this event so watchable - surely the gayest thing on TV which is not explicitly defined as 'gay'.
The event of the night just had to be the 5-man (repeat, 'man'!) Greek entry, 'Hopa!', delvered by this clutch of foot-stomping, testosterone-bursting, all-white-clad HE-MEN. They must all have been surely rugger-buggers, heavyweight boxers or knitting champions - possibly all three! What with their grunts and orgasmic-sounding, deep-throated repeated cries of "UGH" they were just too TOO! And the hunky lead singer with his glorious facial fuzz - OMG! I just wanted to shout out to them "HERE I AM! TAKE ME!" As a song it would have been my runner-up.
I actually voted for Serbia, with its epicene, blond boy (I think) lead singer - and four dancers including an hilarious constant smiler of a cloney-bearded type whom I could just have eaten up raw. In the event they finished about half-way.
The other eye-opener was the male half (natch!) of Romania's double act, sitting at each end of a double-keyboard, see-through, grand piano. Boy, he was good looking! A bit more mature than 'Smiley of Serbia' but with similar-style short beard. Every time he opened his fur-rimmed mouth I just wanted to fill it! Nice song, which actually finished 3rd.
As for the women - Iceland's entry takes the honours for me - a lady at least well into her 30s, maybe older, and carrying more 'embonpoint' than Mama Cass, Sophie Tucker and Montserrat Caballe combined - with Susan Boyle thrown in! To see her daintily side-stepping and gently swaying to her song amid her sylph-like supporting dancers held me in awe.
All in all, then, a memorable evening. Pity it's only once a year, but I suppose that's what makes it even more anticipated. Great fun!

See-saw newsday

There haven't been many up-and-down news days like today before.

First thing this morning - and it's still the main news item this evening - is the revelation that the biggest rising 'star' and most popular politician of this barely fortnight-old coalition government has been claiming accommodation expenses to pay to his male lover of the past 9 years, whose rooms he had been renting. He says he didn't say anything about it because he wanted to protect his privacy and didn't wish to reveal his sexuality - though I'd never heard anyone question it, and if they had, so what? He hadn't been married to a woman, and he doesn't even now consider his partner to be a 'spouse'. But it's a fact that though he may not strictly have broken the law, it does contravene the spirit of it, as the practice is explicitly prohibited. David Laws is in his 40s, highly intelligent and competent, and widely respected, even outside his own Lib-Dem party - but it doesn't help for him to have been the very Minister slated to warn the country of the stringent times ahead and to publicly announce cuts in government expenditure. Oh dear. At the moment he is still in post but I don't see how he can stay there for long before David Cameron, our new Prime Minister, tells him he has to go. Great pity. I still quite like him - but if he does go, as he should, I suppose there is still time for him to bounce back. (By the way, I've heard no talk at all that he ought to go just because he's gay - something that probably would have been argued prominently until a little more than a decade ago.).

Then this afternoon there was the very happy news that the gay Malawian couple have been released from their 14-year prison sentences - pretty well certainly because of international pressure. Truly wonderful news! I only hope they can find somewhere to live safely and peacefully - though that's unlikely to be in their own country as there'd be far too many people, even the majority, who would wish them harm.

Then just an hour ago I heard the sad but not entirely unexpected news of the death of that marvellous maverick, Dennis Hopper. A legend in his own lifetime who managed to lift any film he featured in - including the ghastly 'Waterworld'. He'll never be forgotten by me and many others.

And now, in just over an hour, we have the glorious annual campery of the Eurovision Song Contest, live from Oslo. It's always guaranteed to be outrageous, - and that's only the men in the audience! I've been watching this since 1958 when it was taken far more seriously than it is now. It's not so important which country wins, but it's now 13 years since the U.K. triumphed. Last year we came 5th, with a specially-penned Andrew Lloyd Webber song. The actual winner was a cheekily good-looking and boyish singer, for Norway, but he did have a good lively song too. In this year's semi-finals my two choices of Netherlands and Slovakia both sadly failed to get enough votes to make tonight's final. The favourites to win are Azerbaijan and Germany - though the U.K. isn't such a bad entry either, unlike in some years. So, should be fun - and there are always some surprises.

Being a 'loner' v being 'lonely'.

I've always found difficulty in living in the presence of others - and, I admit, a significant part of that is the ever-present fear of being hurt by them. Consequently as long as I can recall I feel more comfortable in being alone, or in the company of animals, neither of whom have the power to hurt. At the same time I'm aware that an extensive range of life has been missed out on, foremost being the capacity and satisfaction of sharing experiences, and that definitely is to be regretted. However I'm getting increasingly apprehensive that it may not be very long now before I become physically less able to see do everything for myself - shopping, washing, cleaning etc. It may be that the time I fear is yet some years away, but come it will. It would now be so nice to have someone emotionally close who is at a similar stage in life and whose support would be mutually reassuring, not necessarily physically here all the time but available when needed.
The word 'loner' these days carries such negative connotations. It has come to be seen as, at best, unhealthy and suspicious, or at worst, just plain creepy. (Only today in the news, a suspected serial killer of prostitutes is described as being a 'loner'. Similarly, so many of those convicted of downloading under-age porn, or even actually carrying out sexual assaults on children, are given the same epithet.) Yet I can only be truly happy and relaxed when alone. I hardly ever feel 'lonely' in the sense of desiring company, which I know would only give rise to stresses and anxieties about what that person is thinking and may say to me. Simultaneously (and ridiculously?) before I say anything to that person I will be trying to weigh up the effect of my own words in advance, in order to avoid offending them - the curious result of this 'tightrope act' being that my words will sometimes come out gauchely and give rise to the very effect that I'd been trying so assiduously to avoid - which in turn would cause yet further anguish to myself. I'd then think "What's the point? Better to retreat back into my shell where I can't hurt others and they can't hurt me."
I so much envy those I know, particularly in these blogs, who are managing to live with others. Not so much because of their partners per se, but more in that they have been able to make adjustments to and compromises in their own lives in order to achieve a fulfilment far superior to what it would have been had they remained single. Makes me realise with some sharpness that the defect is in my own psyche - but I suspected that all along.

Grizzly pic, grisly news - but maybe not entirely.

Yours truly - taken yesterday shortly after hearing the appalling news from Malawi, which still weighs heavily inside me. You'd think that even Christian leaders would be dismayed and be speaking out against the obscene sentences. Perhaps they are - but I think that the local ones at least would be too afraid of bringing down the wrath of their own congregations. Just hearing the viciously hateful comments made by people outside the courts, as well as the judge, fills me with despair.
But on the other hand, and to raise the spirits, wasn't it great to hear what Laura Bush had been really thinking on LGBT issues during those eight dark years when she was First Lady? I'd always seen her as a robotically obedient 'Stepford Wife' but now it seems she just might have been instrumental in restraining the worst excesses that 'Dubya' could have been influenced to enact. Or am I being naive - and should we withhold any gratefulness to her because she didn't do still more?

Sorry, I don't find it funny!

Why is it when a film depicts a character going into a shop or supermarket, that person inevitably does a bit of shoplifting? Moreover, in every case the deed is portrayed as something we should chuckle or laugh out loud at, or even applaud when the thief manages to leave without being detected or escapes a following pursuit. I grimace when I hear the audience give the 'desired' reaction, equivalent to "Ha ha, what a lark! How cool!" Don't they and the film-makers ever entertain the thought that thieving is wrong? I'm prepared to accept that there may be life-and-death situations where robbery is the only means to prevent starvation, but this is hardly ever or never the case in films. At the risk of sounding really goody-goody, I've never in my life stolen any article, certainly not from shops, not even in the days of fooling around as a kid. Could this be one of the positive results of having had a rigid Catholic education? Maybe, but I doubt it - in the U.K. Roman Catholics represent a disproportionately high percentage of the prison population, and have done so for decades.
I raise the subject because I've just seen an otherwise rather good new Australian film, 'Samson & Delilah', which includes such a scene. In fact the only single film I can recall off the top of my head where shoplifting was depicted as undesirable, was in another Aussie film, 'Muriel's Wedding', when Muriel's mother, beset with mental health problems, absent-mindedly takes an item from a shelf without paying for it. She is nabbed but returned to her home by the police, excused on this occasion when her mental problems become evident. But she is portrayed as a rather pathetic and tragic figure, a far cry from the 'bravado' of a gutsy 'true heroically successful thief.
Maybe I'm just a reactionary fuddy-duddy, and stealing is nowadays regarded as a bit of harmless fun. But nevertheless it does disturb me that others think the whole subject is so light-hearted it can be simply laughed off. Or is it a case of me not 'changing with the times'?

We have a new Prime Minister - for now.

Well, I would have preferred the Conservatives to have attempted to run the country with a minority government (and possibly sunk themselves quite quickly), but I suppose a deal with the Lib-Dems was the second-best option, the latter maybe helping to temper the more outrageous elements of Conservative policy. But I think that come the next General Election the Lib-Dems could well be near decimated and back to their pre-1997 position of having a mere dozen seats or even less. Those voters feeling that the Conservatives should be given a proper chance to rule in their own right will side more emphatically with that party and those Lib-Dems who feel betrayed by the new Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition (the majority, I imagine) will transfer to Labour, which could well revive that party, especially if Labour's likely new leader is the young and charismatic David Milliband. But let's not count our chickens. It may work out better than I reckon.

General Election - We're still waiting!

Well, though the aftermath is not yet over, a bit of relief to temper the disappointment. The big 'downer' being that the result confounded just about everybody's expectation that the Lib Dems would not only do well but spectacularly so. In the event they actually ended up with five fewer seats than before, thanks to the vagaries of our silly voting system. They now have 57 seats out of the 650 whereas if there was a seats/votes proportionality it ought to have been nearer 160. (Among the Lib Dem casualties was the tragic loss of one of Parliament's leading atheists and its most vocal secularist, who very narrowly lost his seat to a Conservative.) The best part, though, is that the Conservatives failed to get enough seats to govern in their own right, even though it was their biggest numerical seat-gain since 1931. As at now there are talks between the leaders of the Conservatives and Lib Dems to try to form some sort of coalition, though I cannot imagine there being enough common ground between their parties to work - a Labour/Lib Dem partnership would have seemed much more likely to survive, though the Lib Dems propping up a party which certainly did NOT win carries the danger of being tainted by association. Another hopeful sign among the results was that the small number of out-gay MPs has increased yet again, including even among the Conservatives - and none of the high-profile former out-gay MPs on both sides was ousted. Also much relief that that awful woman, who ran a Church claiming to 'cure' gays through prayer, failed to win. Another noteworthy 'happy' is to see this country's first-ever Green Party member elected. Okay, she's only one out of 650, but nevertheless she is a key beacon of hope for the future. (She would have been my own representative had I still lived at my previous address.) Also reassuring to have found that not a single one of the several hundred far-right candidates, including those of the newish 'Christian Party', came anywhere near sniffing distance of winning a seat. All pathetic, 'worthy' losers!
So it's still a case of 'wait and see'. Verdict so far? - Nowhere near as good as I'd hoped but could have been so very much worse.

Election - starting to get scary

With only four days to go it seems a predicted Conservative victory is the increasingly likely result, though the party would probably not have a majority against all other parties combined. In our crazy voting system it would mean that if they are only a handful of votes short of that critical majority, they could well be looking for support among the odd-bods and extremists of the right, and making compromises with them in order to achieve the passing of the bulk of the Conservative programme. (If they turn out to be dozens of seats short then they'd have to compromise with the Liberal-Democrats - whom I'll be voting for - in order to get the numbers that they'd need to form a short-term coalition.)
For me, there's quite a list of objectionable items on the Conservative agenda - tax breaks for the richest, repeal of the fox-hunting ban, being pro-nuclear weapons, but paramount has been their leaving the mainstream Conservative group in the European Parliament and their joining instead the nationalist, homophobic, anti-semitic group of Eastern European states, ostensibly because the latter are, like them, against a federal Europe. But, having said that, there is at least one of their policies I will applaud, viz their commitment to ditch the Labour government's insane, hell-bent determination to press ahead with a national, all-inclusive (and hideously costly) ID card and DNA register. It almost makes supporting the Conservatives worthwhile - almost, but not quite. (The Lib-Dems are also unsurprisingly opposed to this '1984'-style register.)
But what is increasingly frightening now is the growing influence of American-inspired, Evangelical-movement involvement in financial support for the Conservatives. Today I read of one of the latter party's female candidates in this election who has just been revealed as having worked in an institution that attempts to 'cure' gays through prayer. There's a good chance she'll win the seat as the current member was involved in the M.P.s' expenses scandal. Dear oh dear! What might we be in for? It's true that the Conservative Party has reformed significantly since the homophobic days of Thatcher's premiership (though she herself rarely talked directly on the subject, she did allow her Ministers full rein to expound their prejudices.) But David Cameron has now publicly apologised for those times and claims to have 'de-toxified' his party. But we do hear occasional prejudiced murmurs from certain members of his team, showing that there is some of the old ugliness under the surface. However, I do think that he has largely succeeded in moving the party on. But with these newer religious influences and pressures from his bigoted 'pals' in Europe I don't think it'll take too much to undo the progress that's been made over the last 10 years or so. So, now you may understand why I, among many, I think, am apprehensive about the likely result.