T h e E u r o v i s i o n a r y

Well, the city is certainly getting into the spirit of things as we saw when we arrived in Ukraine's capital yesterday lunchtime. After all the scaremongering about apartments in Kyiv, I was delighted to find that my place was exactly as described on AirBnB, and there was even a little bowl of sweeties on the table in the kitchen.  Look at their name... IT'S AN OMEN!!! This church is right next to my place, and there is an Easter egg display outside.   Picking up our accreditation cards yesterday was hilarious.  We arrived at the security gates and could see the accreditation centre just inside.  When we asked to go in the very stern Ukrainian security guard said, "No - not without accreditation card". "Yes, but we need to go in there to get it.  Can we go in please?" "No.  You must have accreditation" "Yes, but how do we get it if we can't go into the accreditation centre?" "You cannot come in here without

Ok, so my last post of the 2016 season wasn't exactly a high point for me...  In fact, Eurovision-wise it was probably an all-time low for me.  I seriously felt that I wanted to give the whole thing up.  Having spend the best part of twenty years telling everyone that, whilst politics did have a slight influence on the voting, by and large one of the best songs always wins... and then that happened!  A result that was more about politics than music - and I was sick. However, I cast my demons out and made peace with Jammie (as Jamala is know known, by me at least) and 2017 is good to go... The UK selected our song very early this year, and in January I popped down to London's Eventim Apollo to see the fabulous Lucie Jones be passed the poison challis. Mel was on good form as host, and Bruno provided camp constructive comments to the pack of X Factor singers who made up our shortlist.  To be fair, Lucie did stand out as a very credible and powerful performer, so it was n