Lonely Symphony

Watched the Eurovision alone for the first time since 1997, with a bag of Krisprolls and a couple of Kopparbergs to at least have some semblance of a Swedish theme, feeling really rough with the beginnings of a cold :( I went for the Ken Bruce commentary option this year, having never heard him do it before; he was very good but selecting him put a little time delay between the audio and the visuals, making the singers look like they were miming out of sync. On the positive side, picking Ken meant you got the lyrics on screen with translations. I now agree with izzles - once you've seen the Eurovision with them on, you'll never enjoy it as much without them again.

My favourite was Finland, Krista was having the time of her life on that stage and her full-on performance, filled with spectacle, was what Eurovision should be all about. I loved Margaret from Norway too, and thought Bonnie Tyler gave a very strong performance of a good song. Ann texted me after sixteen or so songs with her thoughts so far; she said Romania was scary. We were thinking alike as I'd written on my homemade scoresheet "Is he from Transylvania?"

I cast the maximum 20 votes from my landline for Finland plus a couple from my mobile, then phoned Ann during the interval to exchange thoughts. Ann's favourite was Russia, my pre-contest prediction to win (a peace anthem from a pretty girl). She also really liked Ireland, which hadn't done anything for me, but then maybe their handsome male singer did something for her :) She quite liked the Greeks, who I just thought were totally mad, but added "I don't think they want to win though, they couldn't afford to stage it."

For a brief while, it looked like Greece might actually be in with a shout, but it soon became clear that the hotly tipped Danish entry was going to win. With the top of the table a one horse race, I paid more attention to the fortunes of Finland, Norway and the UK. While Norway did well throughout and ended up a well deserved fourth, it was obvious early doors that Krista and Bonnie were going nowhere. I was especially gutted for Krista, her joyful performance deserved far better than a poxy 13 points and third from bottom. Not quite as gutted as I was for Kathy Leander in 1996, but pretty close.

Listened to Sara Cox's after-party on Radio 2, idly surfing through Twitter for post-contest reactions. No surprise to see several Brits making the "everyone hates us" excuse, but very surprised to see so many posts about Ireland being robbed, an entry I'd thought was decidedly ordinary. Plenty of others joined me in mourning for Finland, and I had to smile when one person retweeted my call for the Honeyz to represent us at Copenhagen 2014.

That's that over for another year then...