Broken Doors

On the train to work this morning one of the doors is broken. If you push the button to open the door it just clicks and hisses at you like an irritated snake and refuses to budge.

How do I know this? Because at absolutely every bastard stop from King's Lynn to Cambridge some numpty, often several numpties, have pushed the door open button despite there being not one but two signs on the door with a pictogram depicting a train door with a big red line through it which even Slime Beasts of the Planet Zod could work out means "These doors are broken". Presumably it's this international wordless sign so we don't upset any uppity immigrants who would then sue for "distress and anxiety" because the train company didn't write "Out of Order" in their fucking language

OK so the brain dead trolls employed by National Distress East Anglia have stuck the signs on upside down but the meaning is still, I would posit, pretty clear.

Ah, another station, Whittlesford Parkway... Proper commuter belt now, maybe it was just the webbed fingered bog dwellers of the fens who are too dense to work out that when the sign says "Broken door" there is a fighting chance that said door won't open.

Click... Hisssssss... Click... Hisssssss....

Audley End maybe?

Click... Hisssssss... Click... Hisssssss....

Fucking hell I despair.

Do I have to get interested in football now?

It would appear that the town where I was fledged¹ appears to have won some sort of football competition and, apparently, gets to play with the big boys next year before presumably crashing ignominiously back into the Coca-Cola-Everest-Double-Glazing Conference League where I assume they have been since I upped sticks and buggered off to somewhere where I could (a) get an education and (b) a job. So congratulations I suppose to Burnley footy club but please don't for a microsecond think that anything on this earth could induce me to stand on the terraces (do they still have those) of Turf Moor again or, to be honest, express any interest in your success or failure at kicking a pigs' bladder around.

Look it's like this. I really could not give a flying fuck about football. The game bores me rigid. I was utterly crap at it at school and always ended up just arseing about in "defence" which meant you got to stand at the back and only had to run about when the other lot ran towards you as far as I could tell. On the rare occasions when some misguided sense of loyalty to my mates in the band I was in lead me to actually attend a match at the aforementioned Turf Moor I never really understood what was going on, didn't know the words to the songs and usually had gone to the bogs or in search of a Bovril when anyone actually scored a goal. So I'm not going to be going out and buying a claret and blue scarf and actually learning the names of the overpaid dicks who actually do the ball kicking stuff if that's OK with you.

Speaking of refreshments I happened to notice that the club sponsor was Hollands Pies who may be the makers of the finest steak puddings on the planet but I doubt lack the financial wherewithal to fund a premier league side.

Mind you finance being what it is you're lucky to have a sponsor and next year we might see you sponsored by the man who sells the pies at the ground.

Mine's a meat and potato, thanks. I'll pass on the Bovril.










¹ Do dragons fledge, not having any feathers and all that?

On y va... on y va... on y va...

Live(ish) blogging Eurovision


Lithuania:
You are not Freddy fucking Mercury. Go away.

Israel:
"There must be another way" goes the song sung by the palestinian and jewish woman. Well as your people have been trying to annailate each other for the past four thousand years maybe you should have fucking found it by now.

France:
Zzzzzz... oh have you finished? Christ that was crap. Fucking hell people in the hall liked that one.

Sweden:
Well I think her dress is stuck to the floor and she is moving around behing it. She looks for all the world like Ulrika Johnson's mum and alternates between spitting her lyrics and screeching in a semi-operatic manner. I think someone from a concrete fabrication company did her teeth. That's one that will sink without trace.

Croatia:
Are not sure if they want to be Greece or Turkey and instead have settled on the little island of Mediocre which sits in the Med between the two countries. A costume change is not going to save this song guys.


Portugal:
First accodion of the evening. She's a big girl, wonder if she has Madelene hidden under her dress. Pleasant enough in a folky sort of way.

Iceland:
Guess Bjork was busy. The staging is great with a big ship floating past in the background but the song is, well, it's just noise. Sure she's cute but so what?


Side note... Graham "Does this cock up my arse make me look gay" Norton who is hosting this year as Terry Wogan has gone home to sulk because we got all those nul points sounds like he is pissed. Word is he fell of a horse and bust a couple of ribs and is on the same painkillers I was on a couple of years ago whick would account for that. Will be interesting if he has a couple of drinks later

Greece: Performed a techno tune on a big stapler. Dull, predictable, will probably win.

Armenia: Just seem to have sent a mess. At least they remembered to put in a key change

Russia: Home field advantage so they get the best graphics with the singer aging on the monster LEDs as she does the song. Shame the singer decided to start sceaming at the end of the song.

Azerbaijan: Aha, we are finally into doubek territory. And like any doubek based song, it's cack.

Bosnia and the other place: Have decided to go for a Napoleonic theme or have heard Andrew Lloyd Uglysod has written our tune and gone for a rip-off Les Misrables. Either way it was pants.

Moldova: First serious folky tune of the night. Bit whacky, silly trumpets, guys in crazy trousers... this is why we watch this competition! There also appears to be a man with a pole.

Malta: Lardarse

Estona: Now this is a good song. The title means "Pikey" but what the hell. The fiddle player can (a) sing and (b) is cute and the song is cleverly structured around what sounds to me like a decending major seventh pattern (proper musicians please feel free to correct me). As my mrs just said "At last, a song". Nice, deserves to win. Won't.

Denmark: Have sent Ronan Keating, kind of. Well at least he wrote the tune and the singer is doing his best to sound Irish. Guys the paddies have failed to fucking qualify for the last two years so maybe you might be better getting someone from somewere ending on "oldova" to write your tune as this is instantly unforgettable radio pap.

Germany: Good job you got a bye to the final song as a D-class Ricky Martin in Bacofoil pants really does not pass muster. Even up-market stripper Dita Von Teese cracking a horsewhip is not going to save you. Quite the opposite in fact.

Turkey: You know how this song is going to sound before they even hit the first note don't you. And Turkey, true to form do not dissapoint with the same doubek and ney flute heavy belly dance tune they have sent to this competition since the fall of the Ottoman empire.

Albania: Hang on didn't Turkey just play this song? Accompanied by a thing that looks like a lump of green putty for some reason known only to the Albanians, presumably.

Norway: Yelly pseudo-folk tune performed by a squirrel on crack playing a fiddle. Why the fuck is this the favourite to win? Did I fall into a parallel universe of shite or something? Oh and fraying a bit of your bow does not make you look more homely, it makes you look like someone who can't maintain his instrument you knob end.


Ukraine: Trojans in bacofoil. Nuff said.

Romania: This one isn't too awful. Gone for a wood nymph theme but if you cast your eyes stage right there is the woman in the six piece (you can only have six people on stage according to the rules) who is just stood there not being filmed. She's the one actually doing the fucking singing. That said by the end of this one there was a little bit of claw tapping happening.

UK: Well here we go. You know I have heard this a few times now and given the standard of entries we might just do well. Just so long as uglysod stays out of shot. Well she impacted the fiddle player, that was sloppy but her voice is holding up. For fucks sake sing the rest don't scream it... Hell she did it! Slight flat note as she wandered away from mr uglysod, and she... cacked up the ending. Oh well. Maybe a top 5.

Finland: Booo... bring back Lordi.

Spain: Appears to have moved a thousand or so miles east and done about the ninth Turkish sounding song of the night. Go away.



Well that has got to be the weakest like up for ages. I think I can say there was not a single song that made my tail wobble tonight. Estonia was to be honest the only one I would give room on the Ipod to and then it wouldn't get onto a playlist. We might just win by default. Mrs D says that as this cost the russkies umpty odd million maybe everyone is trying to lose by default.



Now that is cool... they have got two Cosmonauts on the ISS to start the voting. Nice touch.

So, are we going to try and upstage Riverdance or are we just going to stuff a folk band on?


...no, just some people in paddling pools suspended from the celing.


And the chipmunk on crack won. Why?

Maybe a vodka or two will help me understand...

... no, that didn't work. Night all.

It's that time again

I know I'm not blogging as much as I used to but even I can't let Eurovision pass without a bit of comment.

As you probably know if you're remotely interested in the pan-continental warble-fest that is the ESC this year the UK has decided to, well, try and not come last to be fair. So we have Mr Ugly himself Lloyd Webber knock together a tune and some yank who penned the words to and Aerosmith tune do the lyrics and we ended up with something that sounded like it's a filler song from Les Miserables. Of course we had to have a sort of mini talent contest to pick a singer and ideally this time someone who could (a) sing and (b) wasn't black (as the Eastern Europeans are rumoured to be just a teensy little bit racist). Regrettably (b) excluded the best act in the contest who were a soul vocal outfit who were easily the best so we've ended up with someone who's a bit coffee coloured and can yell but yells in tune.

To be honest the moment I heard the song I thought "Well there's a null pointer and no mistake" but I've managed to catch most of the semis and you know it might just not be. All the "silly" songs have gone apart from one that features some dancers in bacofoil trojan helmets and most folk have gone for ballads or the occasional folk song / predictable belly dance tune (guess what Turkey have sent). Tunewise I'm going for Estonia, a string quintet with a song sung entirely in Estonian.

Apparently the favourite is Norway though fuck knows why as it sounds crap and the singer looks like a gerbil on crack.

I'll be liveblogging it, probably. Depends how drunk I get.