Yesterday was unusual. It was almost the first dry, sunny day in London this year. It was the second time I have used real money this year.
I never spent any paper euros in Italy or Estonia and increasingly in London places are cashless. In fact the only time I need money is to tip the barber. But yesterday, at the BP filling station in Gunnersbury, the internet connection wasn’t working and I had to pay in cash.
Since Covid I have subscribed to The Times and The Sunday Times digitally but I still get WeekendFT, The Spectator and The Oldie in print; also Wooster Sauce and Slightly Foxed. I did try The Critic but found it heavy going. Now I have started subscribing to The TLS in print although it may cover ground already covered in the FT and the Speccie. There are times when I want paper in my hands and real pages to scan. It makes a welcome change from looking at a screen.
I severed my interest in The Eurovision Song Contest about sixty years ago. This year I have reconnected. Last night I watched the selection process for the Estonian entry Otse (that’s Live in Estonian) on TV. There were twelve acts, maximum three minutes each under Euro rules, but still it took three and a half hours. (There was a thirty minute intermission for the 9 o’clock news so really three hours.) The voting process combined votes from an international jury with votes made by ‘phone by members of the public in an arcane system I could not understand. Suffice to say the jury chose a singer called Ollie who had twice been second choice for Estonia’s entry, so perhaps deserved his place in the sun. However, he was relegated to third place when the public votes were counted. It was smugly pointed out that the UK public no longer get a vote to choose the UK entry.
And the winner is . . . Vanilla Ninja “an Estonian all-female rock band which enjoyed chart success in a number of countries across Europe, especially in Estonia, Germany and Austria” (Wikipedia). They have twice tried to represent Estonia and in 2005 did represent Switzerland, coming 8th. Most surprisingly Ollie and Vanilla Ninja were my top two picks and why does spell check correct “vanilla” to “Camilla”?