All Kinds of Everything

It’s been three years since we last had a proper Eurovision Party. But this year, we were making up for lost time. We dug out the flags, from Eurovision, and Eurobeat (I found my Ireland badge, and wore it proudly), with my Royal Wedding bunting used as additional decoration.

The big challenge is how many different countries we can represent in the food. Germany, this year’s host, was relatively easy, with meats, cheeses, and a black forest gateau, and we were pleased to welcome back Italy this year (as it had never left our menu), along with Spain, Greece, Turkey (always the baklava), Norway, France, Ireland, Poland, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Malta (the Malteasers).

This time, we even had a YouTube Playlist of Eurovision classics, set up by Cat to watch whilst getting ready for the main event. Particular highlights were songs from Eurovision 2004; Ruslana and the winning, Wild Dances, the lovely Sakis Rouvas (‘still think he should have won’), and of course, Hold On To Our Love (awww, James).

Having decided that any ‘reveal’, i.e. the removal of an article of clothing, ideally ripped off in a dramatic fashion in the style of Bucks Fizz, would be awarded an additional bonus point, we were disappointed that none of the finalists took advantage of this vote winning tactic this year.

The first few songs were rather dull, gaining very low scores from us, but we are, admittedly, harsh markers. Our winners of the night were undoubtedly Jedward. Utterly bonkers, and well deserved of douze points from us, and from the UK. They came in 8th, three places higher than Blue, who still managed a creditable 100 points.

As for the winners, well, in our marking we had Ireland, followed by Russia and Spain, but the contest winners were Azerbaijan, with Italy in a rather surprising second place.

None of us has really rated the Azerbaijan song, and it did have us reaching for the Atlas a) to check out it was actually in Europe*, and b) to see where we’ll be going next year. Apparently their culinary specialty is soup, and fish, and caviar. Hmm, I can see next year being a bit of a challenge!

*Given it borders the Caspian Sea, and Iran, the answer to that one is ‘only just’.