Bears and Belgrade

What a fun and surreal day I’ve just had… thankfully no small part of it has spent reading, so perhaps The Block has disappeared. Nearly finished an excellent book I was sent to review by Flame Books, who published Neil Grimmett’s The Bestowing Sun, about which I raved a while ago, and which I heard recently will become part of a trilogy. The other book which has brought me back to readerdom is Pride and Prejudice – I forget how wonderful Jane Austen is until I read her. For a hopeful author, it is almost discouraging to see how brilliant a writer can be (especially with dialogue) that it’s almost not worth putting pen to paper anymore. I don’t think I quite trust anyone who’s read Austen and doesn’t admire her.

The most fun and unusual activity I took part in today was… actually, both activities qualify for those adjectives, so I’ll just list them in chronological order. My friend Charley celebrated her 24th birthday, and as she is known as Bear (not sure why) she had a Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Bring food and teddy bear. So, I made some coconut rock cakes (since Our Vicar and The Carbon Copy hate coconut, I put it in everything I make that they’re unlikely to eat) – tip: sprinkle muscovado sugar on top before baking – and took David with me to the picnic. We went on the bus, but he snuck into my bag, and didn’t pay for a seat. He even brought his own marmalade with him – seen in the picture – and made some new friends. Patch and Fido had their own Teddy Dogs’ Picnic at home…

Later on, I attended a Eurovision Song Contest party… perhaps that means nothing to my non-European visitors, but everyone else will have smiled and rolled their eyes. An annual competition, European countries submit a song as daft and tuneless as possible, and then vote based entirely on which countries share borders with them, eventually crowning someone the winner. Costume changes are encouraged, as are cross-dressing and pirate outfits. Bizarre rock, cheesy pop and overly-ambitious operatics are all welcomed. The UK – especially since the invasion of Afghanistan – perform spectacularly badly. This year we triumphed with joint-last place, and Russia took the crown – with an admittedly acceptable entry. Terry Wogan provides hilarious commentary, especially during the announcement of the votes, wherein he gets increasingly indignant/inebriated. A fun evening with some friends, all wielding scorecards with the categories ‘Song, Performance, Dance Routine, Outfits’ – we declared Armenia the winners, and they managed a respectable second or fourth or similar. Spain were unquestionably the worst, but did quite well nonetheless. Roll on next year; I can’t wait.