Eurovision Song Contest 2008 - Live Voting!

Yes it's Eurovision night again. It has become, alas, a family tradition that we watch it. Oh well. So to keep me amused here, updated live as we go, are the votes of the Interred household jury. Each of us gives a score out of 10 so top mark would be 50. Fat chance of that, I think. But I wonder if there will be one we like as much as "We are the Winners" in 2006?

1. Romania 19 (Sounds a typical Eurovision song)
2. United Kingdom 24 (Nicely sung, shame about the song)
3. Albania 25 (Little W thought this was ace. Not sure why!)
4. Germany 18 (Ouch! The tuning!)
5. Armenia 27 (Nice dress)
6. Boznia-Herzogovena 22 (Amazing hair and skirt behind the washing line - well cool. Like a pantomime dame. A rubbish song but awesome performance)
7. Israel 33 (OMG we thought it was a woman's voice. Is there some gender bending going on here? Little W gave this a 9. He sees things a bit black & white)
8. Finland 34 (Predictably "Well awesome" from Big Miss the rock chick. "Can you drum like that?", "Not yet". Little Miss begged to differ from the rest of us on the score giving it only 3)
9. Croatia 32 ("OMG it's an old guy", says the Missus. Very ethnic. I like it. But what's it about? My favourite so far)
10. Poland 20 ("Her teeth are really creepily white", Big Miss. Why's the band in a jacuzzi? Unmemorable)
11. Iceland 25 ("Oh this had a good beat", the Missus. "Not as cool as Finland", Big Miss. Not my cup of tea at all. "She's well cool. Her shoes are bright pink", Big Miss)
12. Turkey 25 (Nice sparkly guitar. Couldn't sustain interest from me. 7 from the Missus, though)

So here we are half way through with the visit to the green room. "So often the high spot", says Terry W. "The main thing is to shout as loud as you can". Leader here so far is Finland. I can't see it getting beaten. "A welcome moment of fun and frolic", says our host.

13. Portugal 28 ("I give it 1" says Little W after 30 seconds. "Don't you like fat ladies?" asks Little Miss. 9 says the Missus. Not much consensus here!)
14. Latvia 36 ("Aaargh me maties". "Oh wow!" "I give it 10" says Little W, the wannabe pirate. "Time for some tactical voting - I give it 1", says the Missus. I was wrong. Finland has been overtaken, here at least.)
15. Sweden 26 ("I like her dress, 8" - little Miss. "I give it 1", Little W. No - the legs are worth more than that, surely? Very Swedish. Could be an Abba song)
16. Denmark 26 ("I can imagine him being a chimneysweep". Oh-oh. The Missus is now lying out on the settee. We could be down to votes out of 40 soon.)
17. Georgia 19 (She'd better watch she doesn't fall off those stilts. Look at those heels! "That's why she isn't moving much", say Big Miss. "You can't see her eyes behind those sunglasses - 2" says Little Miss)
18. Ukraine 35 ("Are they actually in a glass cage?". I think she wins the prize for the shortest dress. Maybe that's why Terry W thinks this might be a winner. 2nd for us, so far).
19. France 25 (Those boys sound like girls. They are girls! Why have they got beards and mustaches? What the ...? Complete rubbish! Good for comedy value though!)
20. Azerbaijan 23 (Way OTT. Shades of Barbarella, but without Jane Fonda to brighten it up)
21. Greece 32 (Doesn't sound very Greek to me. More Spice Girls than Demis Roussos apart from a brief interlude)
22. Spain 32 (It's spoof Ibiza nightclub. Bring on the birdie song. Top prize for irony from me!)
23. Serbia 32 (Sounds like a travel advert song to me. "It's alright. Not exactly the best song". What's going on with our voting here? 3 32s in a row? I suspect random scoring from the supine Missus.)
24. Russia 29 ("Isn't this the same guy as 2006?" "He looked better with his hair cut". "Wow ice-skating".)
25. Norway 30 (Last one. "Oh god she so looks like Hanne" - a mate of Big Miss. Well as she might look in 10 years or so's time. Yes I knew the Missus would like this one. "Zero", says Little W "10", says Little Miss)

Well that concludes the voting for the Interred jury. Time to phone in now!

"I want to vote for 2". "I want Finland and Portugal" "I vote for Pirate and Pirate", "Norway and Latvia", "Latvia and Finland". Spain and Latvia for me.... How much is this costing me? So have we predicted the winner? Or the UK vote? We'll see shortly!

Here we go...
UK votes. 12 points for Greece? No we didn't get that. But Latvia 2nd.
Macedonia votes. 12 points to Albania. Hmm.
Ukraine votes. 12 points to. I guess... Russia.... I was right!
Germany votes. 12 points to Greece. Oh. maybe it's going to win.
Estonia votes. Got to be 12 points to Latvia... No. It's Russia!
Bosnia-Herzegovina. 12 points to... Serbia. What a surprise (not).
Albania. 12 points to Greece. Next door neighbours.
Belgium. 12 points to Armenia?
UK has now got 6 points. Wow!
San Marino. 12 points to Greece. Oh I think they're going to win!
Latvia. 12 points to Russia. No surprise again!
Bulgaria. 12 points to Germany??????? They were rubbish!
Serbia. 12 Got to be Bosnia... Yes it was!
Israel. 12 to Russia. But it's still Greece leading by 2 points.
Cyprus. 12 for.... Yes got to be Greece.
Moldova. 12 for... Romania. Hmm. Thanks to Michael Palin's New Europe, I know where Moldova is in the map... next to Romania!
Iceland. 12 for Denmark! What a surprise. Well guessed Terry W!
France. Voting in French, naturellement. 12 for L'Armenie.
Romania. 12 for Greece again.
Portugal. 10 points to Spain! 12 to Ukraine.
Norway. 12 to... Denmark. Very Scandinavian!
So Greece or Russia? Who's it to be?
Hungary. 12 to Azerbaijan?
Andorra. How come their vote counts the same as eveyone elses? 12 to Spain. Terry W must be psychic in predicting that! I think not.
Poland. 12 to Armenia.
Slovenia. 12 to Serbia. No real surprise there.
Armenia. 12 to Russia. How did I guess?
Czech Republic. 12 to... mix-up here. Armenia.
Spain. 12 to Romania? Bizarre.
Netherlands. 12 to Armenia. Is it too little too late?
Turkey. 12 to Azerbaijan? That figures.
Malta. 12 to Sweden???? Obviously Abba fans.
Ireland. 8 to UK! and 12 to Latvia. Yey!
Switzerland. 12 to Serbia???
Azerbaijan. Russia, Ukraine. 12 to Turkey?
Greece. 12 to Armenia. "Well they weren't going to give it to Russia were they?" - Terry W.
Finland. 12 to Norway. Some coincidence, surely?
Croatia. 12 to Bosnia. Quelle surprise!
Belorussia. 12 to Russia. Whyever not?
Lithuania. 12 to.... Russia. Looks all over now. Russia 256 Ukraine 209. 12 for Armenia.
That's enough. 2 more to vote, but Russia is the clear winner already. So it's goodnight from me.

Our Own Coalport China

Well it has taken a while, but, as promised, here are the results of our china painting at the Coalport China Museum during the Easter holidays. The trinket boxes arrived through the post just yesterday. Little Miss did the one with the fish and Big Miss and Little W collaborated on the Chinese dragon and lettering. Lovely job.

By the way, there's plenty on at the Ironbridge Museums during this half-term holiday too, but we're not going to be there as we're staying in Suffolk this weekend.

Who's Neil Parsons?

As I look out my office window I see the less than wonderful view of Telford shopping centre and Asda car park. Of course it has been nice and sunny recently, but in the middle of winter, when it gets dark so early, I could to see in bright lights "DE ENHAMS" and have a little chuckle....

In the early 1980's when I lived in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, my younger sister was training to be a physiotherapist and living in Heaton. One evening, when I went round to her place and we headed out with her mates along Chillingham Road for the Metro to go into town, she suddenly exclaimed "Who is Neil Parsons?" I burst out laughing and her mates looked at each other like we were totally weird. The thing is, they were used to seeing it every day so didn't notice it any more; but there in great big red neon letters on the factory in front of us was the sign "NEI PARSONS". Alas, it doesn't seem to exist any more, but it used to be a subsidiary of Northern Engineering Industries. Working in the application of Artificial Intelligence at the time, I thought that matching her reaction to the sign would be a great version of the Turing Test for machine intelligence.

Landguard Point Felixstowe

It was a lovely sunny morning. "Dad, please Dad, please, can we go to the beach today?" asked Little W. The Missus was wanting to work on Assignment 3 for her course and it was well over a year since we had last been to Felixstowe Beach, so I decided to give her some peace and quiet. But rather than park at the sea-front in the town centre, we went instead to the car park at Landguard Point - here. From Bury St Edmunds, take the A14 all the way. Follow the brown viewpoint signs past the docks and turn right at the traffic lights just before you reach the sea-front. The car park is at the end of Viewpoint Road next to Landguard Fort.

We walked along from there towards the point. In the opposite direction you can see the towering cranes of Felixstowe port and the Harwich Harbour Foot Ferry, which runs between Felixstowe, Harwich and Shotley.

The point is at the mouth of the Orwell and Stour rivers, through which all the sea traffic to and from both Felixstowe and Harwich harbours passes.

"Are my ears red?" asked Little Miss. Yes they were; it was quite a stiff sea-breeze and her ears were cold. Here is the view from the point along the sea-front to the town. As you can see, we had it to ourselves.

The land around the point is a nature reserve and the shingle is being colonised by sea-kale.

I broke off a bit of one of the leaves. Very tasty. I offered it to the kids, but it got the thumbs down from them. Only a few minutes later, though, I got "I'm hungry, Dad. When will lunch be ready?" So after we had completed our circumnavigation of the fort (you can read all about its WWII history here), I bought them something from the Crows Nest Cafe in the car park to keep them going until we got home.

Well they were at the seaside! Oh by the way, if you are interested, you can get a live view of Felixstowe Port from this webcam and you can see more of my pictures here on Flickr

The Cherry Tree Garden

Telford Town Park is just a short walk for me from my office, across the road and through the shopping centre. When the family come and stay at The Barn, it's a great place to take the little ones while The Missus and Big Miss go shopping - the children's play areas are quite extensive and Little W loves The Rocket slide.

Here he is zooming out the bottom.

But on sunny spring days, like we had during the week, there's a little oasis I like to visit as a spot to eat my sandwiches at lunchtime. It is the Maxell Cherry Tree Garden. This is the view as you go through the gate.

This is the time of year to visit it; it is full of flowers. Bluebells, primulas, rhododendrons are all out - it is a riot of colour.

But best of all are the Sakura Cherry trees.

Now eating your sandwiches under this canopy certainly beats eating at a desk!

The Wrekin

In my second life in Shropshire it dominates the skyline for quite a distance and if I see a hill, I always get the urge to get to the top of it. The Wrekin is a well-known local landmark and just has to be climbed. So when the kids came to stay in "The Barn" for the first time, one of the first things I did was to take them to conquer it. We set out from the Forest Glen Car Park, (here on the map), where there are signs explaining both the geology of the hill (and it's companion The Ercall) and the legend of The Giant and the Cobbler.

Admittedly it was the end of a long day, and 3/4 of the way up the girls had had enough...

... so Little W and I left them and forged on to the top alone. Here he is at the top, 1335 ft above sea-level.

"But, Dad, where's the steam?" he asked. I'd told him that the hill was the remains of an old volcano, and everyone knows that volcanoes have steam coming out of them, if not ash and red-hot lava. I had to explain that it was only active volcanoes that did that. I think he was a bit disappointed, but he was proud of getting to the top when his older sisters didn't. And the view is excellent...

Well worth the climb!

St. Michaels Singers of Cambridge and Tudor Singers of London

My College Annual Gathering a few weeks ago reminded me of another reunion I had attended a little over 3 years ago - the two people I knew well at the college reunion were at it as well. It was a get together in York to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the St Michael's Singers of Cambridge, many of whom later joined the Tudor Singers of London, so the invite to the weekend's frivolities went to past members of both choirs. I resolved after my nostalgic visit to Cambridge, to get back in contact with my old singing pals and let them see my photos from our happy weekend of singing (which culminated in a gig in York Minster).

Well it took me a while, but I've uploaded the photos to Flickr and sent out an email to those I had addresses for. It has been lovely to get messages back and catch up with people's news. So if you are an SMS/TSL person visiting here, welcome. Here is a link to my pictures and feel free to leave a comment.

New Job - Stinks Wallah

No not me. The Missus. Apart from when we dragged her out to .Bradfield Woods yesterday, and a couple of forays to the washing line, she wasn't out of the house all weekend, busy swotting up for an interview and observed teaching today. Well it was all worth it; providing she finishes her Graduate Training Programme successfully, she will be a Chemistry teacher at Thurston Community College next term. Well done to her! She deserves her gin and tonic tonight. I think I might just join her (at a distance).

Bradfield Woods Spring Flowers

I know I've mentioned it as a great place for a shady walk before, but now is the time of year to go to Bradfield Woods. So yesterday we made another visit. The spring flowers are out in abundance and the trees are alive with the sound of birdsong (yes we heard the chiff-chaffs). There are Early Purple Orchids...

...and whole swathes of Ramsons.

The sunshine drew out a lovely fresh-wood fragrance from the piles of timber...

and there were masses of bluebells too...

But be sure to follow the blue trail or you will miss most of these delights.

Abbey Gardens Street Theatre

It was indeed a lovely day for it, and the Abbey Gardens looked a picture, as usual. The entertainment started at 11:30 with the Van Dunk Brothers Dutch Synchronised Swimming team.

How on earth do you do synchronised swimming in the Abbey Gardens, you may wonder. Well it requires a bit of audience participation. Little Miss and Little W helped hold up the pool, while they performed. And the Dad of one of Little W's classmates was picked from the audience to join them.

The Dutch accents turned out to be no more authentic than the swimming - allegedly from Rotterdam, they are really from somewhere closer to Rotherham; but no matter - it all adds to the fun.

More audience participation followed with ladies picked to hold the tapes up to turn the swimming pool into first a boxing ring and then the winning tape for for a slow-motion race. But I have no photos of the finale as they picked on me to dance with them! Yes I had to wear one of their swimming caps with a duck on top. Little Miss looked really embarrassed to be seen with me afterwards.

But there was one unexpected side-effect of my impromptu performance - local blogger 21st Century Mummy, famous for her Rubbish Diet blog and appearance on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, recognised me and came and said hello!

Next up were the Street Pirates with their show of juggling and acrobalance. I'd never seen acrobalance before (acrobatics + balancing), but they were very good. After building a human pyramid using a girl from the audience, they performed a routine with a number of great balancing poses, like this one...

The finished the act with a 'slackrope' routine. 8 men from the audience had to pull the slack rope tight enough for our Pirate to balance on while he juggles 3 machetes.

We were hungry by then so went off to find the Barwells hot-dog stand for some of those lovely St Edmundsbury Gold sausage hot-dogs. Then it was back to the gardens to watch Bruce Airhead. The highlight of his act is his spectacular metamorphosis of himself and a giant balloon. Here he is about to climb in...

He ends up completely inside it. Here he is with just one foot left outside...

I wont spoil it for you by saying what happens when he eventually pops the balloon, but if you really want to see, you can find my pictures of all of these acts here on Flickr - watch the slideshow and see the man and balloon transform.

Bury St Edmunds Festival

The 2008 Bury St. Edmunds Festival has started. The programme is more impressive than ever. And of course I'm not going to be here during the week so will not be able to go to the 3 gigs I most want to - The Tallis Scholars, Jacques Loussier and, a group that has featured in blog before, Red Priest. Aaargh!Well we'll have to get into town later to at least see the street entertainers in the Abbey Gardens.

Girls v Boys

While I was busy exploring Twine, the Missus was working on writing up a survey she had done of pupils at Thurston Community College as part of her teacher Graduate Training Programme.

They had done a test on knowledge of the Periodic Table and the girls had done better than the boys. In answer to the question "I was not surprised at the difference between the boys and girls results. Comment" there were a number of interesting answers...

After all girls are smarter than boys.

Because girls are better and smart and don't mess about.

Girls tend to revise - boys don't.

Not all the boys in the class try hard.

But I am smarter than a girl.

The boys in the class don't try... what do you expect?

Boys get bored easier.

Girls rule. Boys don't try but girls do.

Boys are like toddlers and don't have much of a brain.

Spot the comment that wasn't from a girl! Wow. Get your act together chaps or we will be back to the rule of Queen Boudicca*!

*OK. I know the Iceni weren't a matriarchal society, but when I tried to find one to refer to I couldn't. Anyone got a better suggestion?

The Story of Stuff

A little spillover from work into home life here...
I've just been invited to join the beta membership of
Twine...

Twine is a new service that helps you organize, share and discover information around your interests, with networks of like-minded people. You can use Twine individually, with friends, or with groups, teams and communities.

Powered by semantic understanding, Twine automatically organizes information, learns about interests and makes recommendations. The more you use Twine, the better it gets to know you and the more useful it becomes.

I'm still trying to work out how to use it, but exploring what is there I found a link to this excellent video The Story of Stuff. A wonderful explanation of the supply chain and how it connects to a number of environmental and social issues. The main message is "Use less disposable stuff and save the planet"; let's do things Another Way. Although it is American, the issues are just the same here and some of the statistics are truly horrifying - very educational!

A Suffolk Wedding

We've been to a wedding! The Missus' brother Jonathan got married this weekend at the lovely setting of Stoke by Nayland Club off the A134, just south of Sudbury.

All of the groom's family (apart from us) live in NW England so most travelled down on the Saturday and we joined them. The wedding itself was on Sunday afternoon. Here is Jonathan kissing his lovely bride Natalie after signing the register.

We all trooped down from the terrace for the group photo and throwing of the confetti, although not all of us should have been there, if you read the sign...

The official photographer was the charming and tireless Sarah McKean of Lavenham Photographic. Here she is in action.

Her photographs should be on their site on Wednesday. Here's my shot of her line-up of the bride and groom, best man and his henchmen, bridesmaids and pageboys. If you are a regular reader of my blog you might recognise 3 familiar faces - yes we supplied 2 of the bridesmaids and 1 of the page boys. Didn't they scrub up well?

After the photos were done is was time to kick off the shoes and party...

Well I wont show any more here - you can find the rest of my (amateur!) photos here on Flickr. But suffice it to say a good time was had by all, well into the night. It's a good job it was a holiday today!

Update: Weds 7/5. The official photos are available now here. They are fantastic.

Drum Kit

OMG. I'm not sure how she did it, but Big Miss managed to persuade me that it would be a good idea to get her a drum kit for her 13th birthday. Something to do with having lessons on it at school. I was directed to Gear4Music to buy one - £145 for a full size starter kit didn't look bad. At 9:30 am this morning a van arrived and a man staggered up the drive with a huge box. It had arrived!

Big Miss arrived home from school in a state of excitement. "Has it come?" she asked as I let her in. "Has what come?" I asked innocently, but she wasn't fooled. 5 minutes later her 2 mates (and fellow members of the maybe-to-be-famous-one-day Longsockz all-girl band) arrived. "Can we open it, please?". Off she went...

By the time the little ones came home from After-School Club the girls had almost got it complete. A few minutes later, Big Miss was ready to give a demonstration...

And look who else is joining in. Hang on a minute, we've put it together in the Living Room. It's supposed to go in her bedroom...

That's better. But, I think we need a bigger house; with more distance between us and the neighbours. Meanwhile, I think I'd better go and order some of those Silencing Pads!