OK, so to be honest, I actually have another three days off after today, but that means three quarters of my holiday have already gone.

However, I have been doing many things lately.

First of all, I did survive the Eurovision, not too shell-shocked, either. I just have to comment upon something. Let's not be sore losers, people! We (as in "the Western European countries") have dominated the competition for almost fifty years. Now that the up-and-coming Eastern European countries take a hold, stop talking about "political voting". The reason for neighbouring countries voting for each other is more likely because we tend to have the same tastes in music. And the UK, of all countries, should not even mention political voting. The only reason they didn't end up in last place, was that Malta gave them their 12 points...and that was apparently a deliberate protest against "political voting". Some changes should be put in place, though, now that we have doubled the number of countries in such a short time. For instance, even though this will unfortunately leave Norway as the country with the most "nil points" forever, we should give points to every country. This will probably give a more nuanced picture. We should also have the EBU physically control every aspect of the phone vote. Thirdly, we could bring back professional juries. Do what they do in a lot of talent shows these days; 50% of each country's vote comes from phone voting, the rest from a jury.

Just my opinion, of course, which no one usually listens to.

What else have I been doing with my time lately? Well, we did celebrate Norway's constitutional day on the 17th of May. I took the whole day (week) off to celebrate this year. I really, really wanted to go to the Steven Pimlott celebration at the National, but made sure that would not be an option on the day by making plans with friends all day. So we went to Southwark Park, where we were quite surprised by the large number of people having turned up.
There were speeches, food (why they hadn't taken into account the sheer need for lomper I will never know, but they were completely sold out before we got there, which meant I couldn't care less about the hot dogs), music (Sondre Lerche was there, in extremely good spirits), "walking corpses" (or "a marching band" as the more linguistically aligned among us would say), lots of children and lots of flags. And then we took part in the (almost compulsory) parade. Which was kind of fun.

When we had stayed for about two hours and they announced the games for the children, we decided it was high time for us to get something to eat. Well, leave the park, at least. So we did just that, and went to a pub a colleague of mine had suggested because of their nice garden and beer.
So we got a small sheep. I bet the beer was nice, only I don't like beer, so I didn't drink more than about one fifth of it. The food was good, though, and not too expensive.

Then we went back to the neighbourhood of the park, to the Norwegian church there, in order to take part in the rest of the celebration there...which started with us throwing ourselves at the local (week-old) Norwegian newspapers they had there and buying their shop. Well, almost. I bought four chocolates and the others just about the same. The point was that these were Norwegian chocolates and food which you can't get anywhere else.

The entertainment for the evening was much better than last year's; varied and quite impressive, some of it. Unfortunately, we were sitting next to The Parents From Hell(TM), whose kids were running all over the place and causing a lot of noise. When people asked very politely, after about 90 minutes of this, if they would be so kind as to try to keep the noise down, they were ignored completely. These people even turned out to be members of the congregation! So much for your Christian goodwill and compassion.

We spent the rest of the evening at our local pub and the next day we sort of relaxed at home before going to a local Indian restaurant. I had what I thought would be a different dish to what I had on my previous visit, but it turned out to be the same "mystery sauce" with just slightly different ingredients. My dessert was an Irish Coffee. Perhaps I'm turning into an alcoholic.

For some very strange reason, I watched the FA Cup Final between Chelsea and Manchester United. It was extremely boring, even though it did become marginally more interesting during the second half, only I think that could have been because I had put a bet on the outcome. I lost, as they just couldn't be arsed to score until way into extra time, at which point we were much more interested in the fire which had started nearby (it was quenched just about the same time the match ended).

Speaking of fires, who's the moron who set the Cutty Sark on fire? Spookily enough, the suggestion of DNA testing all new-borns for illnesses and criminal tendencies suddenly seems very attractive.

Oh, and last Monday we went to see Spider-Man 3 (which was nice) and 28 Weeks Later... (which was nicer and yet darker).

This week sees the end of the wonderful Evita run, which is sad, but also makes my wallet a little happier. And speaking of Lord Lloyd-Webber (indirectly, at least); what happened last Saturday when he let Daniel go instead of Lewis in the Joseph compo? I was sure Daniel would stay until the final, when Lee naturally wins the whole thing. Lee has a very annoying speech impediment, though, which has led me to not voting for him these past few weeks, but last time he was back on my list as he simply is at least one level above everyone else in that competition. Due to his drama education? Quite possibly, just like with Connie Fisher and the Maria bunch last year.

Labels: current affairs, evita, film, Lloyd-Webber, music, musicals, Norway, personal, philip quast, sport, theatre, TV