Sunday, May 19, 2013

Eurovision 2013 - The Finals




Congratulations Denmark! Emmelie de Forest is the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest winner with her song "Only Teardrops". It was a relatively closely-fought contest this year, with Azerbaijan coming second.

I’m now officially a Eurovision obsessive. Two friends took me out to dinner in Shoreditch last night in an effort to stem the tide of tweets, all to no avail: all three of us ended up late in the evening on our phones following the fun on twitter, and went back to Paul’s flat afterwards to watch the voting.

My London overground train homewards stranded me at Surrey Keys, and I had to catch two night [Clapham] omnibuses meandering lazily across south London to get back to home base, arriving around 2:30am. I immediately hit iPlayer to catch up on the bits I’d missed.

Of course I was disappointed my favourite Norway didn’t win. I thought Margaret Berger’s final-night nerves showed a little, and sadly “I Feed You My Love” proved to be slightly in advance of current Euro taste, but nevertheless still came a creditable fourth.

Bonnie Tyler gave a heart-warming, engaging performance for the UK but her voice was fragile (too many pre-event interviews?) and the song “Believe in Me” sadly not good enough to do well, although we bettered last year’s dismal second-from-last.



Sweden was never going to win twice running, and Spain’s wasn’t a strong song. I tend to admire France's always sophisticated entries, and Amandine Bourgeois's "L'enfer Et Moi" was no exception - sadly Europe disagreed. Cascada gave a good performance for Germany, but their song “Glorious”  frankly shouldn't have been allowed - it was a virtual aural photocopy of Sweden’s “Euphoria’, even if  officially cleared of plagiarism allegations. A pretty shameful entry from Germany.

Of the big six, Italy did the best (and far better than I anticipated) with a seventh place for Marco Mengoni,  gigolo sharp in a super stylish suit with a massive deconstructed quiff.



But what can one say of the catastrophic results for Finland and Ireland?



Finland’s entry, although cutely and unapologetically bubbly Euro-pop (Krista Siegfrids: “Marry Me”), was nevertheless overtly and politically gay, ending in a lesbian brides’ kiss. Ireland played it straight (Ryan Dolan: “Only Love Survives”) but with backing drummers and dancers who came right out of a gay club night, all oiled muscular torsos and tattoos. Both songs were much much better, with much better performances, than many others that ended far higher up the leader board. Both Finland and Ireland usually do far better in the competition too. So why? Too Queer for Europe?



If so, how ironic for the premier European gay event. Petra Mede, the brilliant Swedish hostess for the night, made knowing, ironic remarks to the ‘Dancing Queens” in the audience who “just haven’t met the right girl yet” - and Sweden’s interval act matched the Finnish Lesbian wedding with a gay male one. As Graham Norton noted, that will give the Azerbaijanis and Georgians something to scratch their heads over.

All-in-all, a triumph for Sweden - terrifically staged. Next year, over the Øresund Bridge to Denmark.

[All photos courtesy EUROVISION]
Posted by Hedgie at 6:12 pm 1 comments

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Eurovision 2013 - 2nd Semifinal




We have a winner!

I think Norway effortlessly outclasses everything in this competition and should win by a mile. Margaret Berger is an epic Nordic electro ice queen with an anthem that just blows you away. Her song - "I Feed You My Love" - was wonderfully staged and choreographed - minimal, stylish, classy. Gorgeous art deco / Metropolis references. I have a sense that Eastern European audiences are aesthetically in advance of the authorities who choose their countries' entries - so hopefully this very contemporary arrangement will chime with the voters and carry the wonderful Ms Berger to the winner's enclosure.













Norway was also rocking those 2013 essentials, drums on stage - but again, in a masterfully understated way. Drums were very evident once again in Semis 2, but another trend also emerged: geeks are in. Several countries, notably Malta and Hungary, featured geeky boys - here is Hungary's ByeAlex with his entry "Kedvesem":






Finland caused a mini storm in a euro teacup with the lesbian kiss at the end of their cute song. Well done Krista Siegrids and the team behind "Marry Me":




















Finland was actually the tamest of the off-beat entries - there were a few classics, not least Romania's Cezar with "It's My Life":







wardobe






Overall, I was pleased Norway and Finland got through, but sad Israel and Macedonia didn't. But that's the semi's done and it's now full speed for the grand final on Saturday night.









Posted by Hedgie at 12:52 am 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Eurovision begins! - 2013 Semifinals 1

Malmö is a gorgeous city, and must be basking in the honour of hosting Eurovision 2013, which kicked off last night with the first semi-finals. Twitter, as usual, erupted.



The above tweets were in response to this classic Eurovision effort from Serbia:
However, even this was surpassed by the frankly bonkers entry from Montenegro, a must see foregrounding rapping Montenegrin astronauts:
A final costume shout-out must go to Moldova, whose highly imaginative designers dressed their singer in a stunning volcano dress:

 

In terms of trends, male performers seem to be out of favour this year. Violins on stage have completely vanished. Denmark was rocking the Scandinavian waif look, which has cropped up a few times in the recent past from the Baltics - have to say, though, Denmark has totally nailed it this year. This is my favourite. Big congratulations to Emmelie de Forest with her song "Only Teardrops":



 Denmark also introduces a key new trend this year: drums on stage are the new violins. Another notable exponent was Ireland, interpreting the theme perhaps a little too enthusiastically:



 Lead singer pickled in fake tan and tooth bleach, back up crew in tight black leather, dancing topless tattooed drummers, and a storming dance anthem - is Ireland trying to become Greece? Overall, Ryan Dolan and his song "Only Love Survives" met with a favourable response - another possible contender.
Sadly I will be missing the Eurovision finals this year. However, I will watch tomorrow's semi-final with great interest.
Posted by Hedgie at 9:48 pm 0 comments
Labels:

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

"Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope." - Margaret Thatcher, on first entering 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister (paraphrasing the prayer of St Francis)
“To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.” - Margaret Thatcher
“Yes I do believe in consensus, there should be a consensus behind my convictions.” - Margaret Thatcher
Today her nation buries Margaret Thatcher, and I hope no one gets hurt or does anything stupid. Britain has in the past been adept at buying its departed politicians quietly, decently and without partisan rancour. Ceremonial is strictly for the Royals and national heroes like Winston, Horatio and Wellington. Not this time, unfortunately.

Margaret Thatcher is undoubtedly one of the greats - the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain, and an ideological warrior and a game-changer. She’s been out of office for almost a quarter of a century, and retired from public view for almost a decade, but still the -ism that bears her name rules this country, with all three main political parties signed up to its basic tenets (and the insurgent party, UKIP, loudly proclaiming itself to be her true heir).

She revelled in partisanship while in office and lived for arguing her point of view. Ultimately her own cabinet, exhausted and terrified of where she was leading them, threw her out. Her opponents never got the chance to vote her out, and the treacherous Tories subsequently tore themselves apart in guilt and revenge.

Hence the ugly atmosphere and our heavy collective mood. Our Tory Prime Minister, who ironically was bequeathed these bombastic funeral plans by his New Labour predecessors, has equally ironically achieved no poll bounce off the back of a full week’s media Thatcher fest. Both right and left wing editorialists have decried the grandeur of the funeral, and it seems all those Thatcher TV shows actually achieved poor ratings. Some left wingers have shocked the world with their “Thatcher Death parties” and campaigns to get “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” into the pop charts; equally, elements on the right wing have invited scorn by whinging Obama isn’t showing enough respect and drooling over the decidedly dicey D-list ragtag assortment of celebs, ex-cons and has-beens invited. The Tory chairman Grant Schapps wrote a letter out to all the constituency faithful to come and line the route this morning: are they frightened that no-one in London apart from the protesters will actually be brave enough to face the hyped-up police and security?

I’ve been immersed in it all, trying to make some kind of sense of what Maggie means to me. I don’t think we are quite there yet. She was a massive force, and did some things very right and some things very wrong. Her legacy is still unwinding and we are in its wake - it may take another thirty years before we can start to sum up. I think she is a transformative figure, up there with William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, and Oliver Cromwell. Massive winners and massive losers, always destined to be radically reinterpreted for every generation.

But I do think that her political analysis of the 70s wasn’t that remarkable - in fact, it was pretty close to being the consensus view. It is clear successive moderate Conservative and Labour governments could see exactly what they needed to do (and some of Thatcher’s most eye-catching policy innovations were in fact first thought of by Labour). They all failed, lost their nerve. And government failure is important, in that it doesn’t return things to where they were before - it moves them on: in this case driving extremism on both left and right. And Thatcher herself was the insurgent candidate from the far right of her party, and the era’s political genius to boot. So she won, and got to apply the ‘cure’ (a readjustment of the economy both parties knew had to be made) her way, through extreme radical ideological methods, tearing apart the country in the process and leaving us where we are today.

Posted by Hedgie at 11:47 pm 4 comments
Labels: , , , ,

Monday, March 11, 2013

A London Weekend

However long you live here, London always throws up something new, surprising and fabulous. It’s diversity doesn’t stop at having the largest number of foreign communities resident - every Londoner’s specific interests are catered to in depth as well, allowing for wonderful crossovers, mashups and discoveries.


So this last weekend was a bit of a London mash-up for me. It started, as all good weekends do, on Friday evening. A friend treated me to a play at the National Theatre: This House by James Graham. This is not the sort of play I am usually interested in - contemporary, and about 70’s politics and House of Parliament procedures. My usual theatrical interests are Classics (deep!) and Stars (shallow!) - I recently took in James McAvoy’s Macbeth, covering both - so This House was completely off my radar until I saw a trailer for it at the cinema. It looked amazing! It turns out that it’s a National Theatre hit and had returned for a second run at the larger Olivier theatre.



We were lucky to get great seats in the auditorium. The staging has a block of parliamentary style benches on stage, and some lucky audience members get to sit on these - the blocks are on two of the Olivier’s revolves and swivel round for scenes set in the House for parliamentary votes. Most of the time they are flat on and the front of the stage becomes the Whips’ offices as they plot and scheme (Tories) or desperately try to keep things afloat (Labour).


The play covers events from the fall of Ted Heath to the rise of Margaret Thatcher, through the eyes of the Whips. The Tories are blasé, urbane, worldly, and have seen it all before. Born to rule. Witty, but prone to bullying their newbies and snobbish. They become increasingly nervous of the top dog as Thatcher entrenches her leadership (initially portrayed as a weird fluke they expected not to last).


The Labour side show mainly working class types and accents (and the only women MPs in the play). The men swear like sailor’s parrots and then apologise to the women, who get annoyed by the apologies. Wilson’s government had a wafer-thin margin and was expected to fall within weeks - however, it lasted 4.5 years, and the play shows the desperate lengths the Labour whips went to to keep it all together (and the lengths the Tories went to to take them down). It’s all very funny and engrossing but one is aware that Thatcher wins in the end and changes everything (the play ends with a recording of her famous victory speech in 1979).


We repaired afterwards for a debrief and cocktail at Skylon’s bar. I’ve not eaten in this restaurant in its current incarnation (I did before when it was run by a celebrity chef) - the room itself is so much more beautiful and glamorous now after the Royal Festival Hall refurb. It also benefits from the fifties revival trend. We quaffed fab cocktails, surrounded by Italians - so many of them around in London at the moment. Our discussions turned on the Parliamentary news of the moment - the spectacular and catastrophic fall from grace of Coalition minister Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce, dubbed “the Clytemnestra of Clapham”. Indeed this is a greek tragedy, with both parties being sentenced to a jail term for perverting the course of justice today (over a speeding ticket in 2003!), but all their family dirty laundry has been fully aired in the press over the last few months. The Huhnes’ marital home was actually quite near to me, I’m familiar with their street in a “would love to live there’ kind of way. I also lived for many years with someone who went back and forth to Europe frequently, and would no doubt have known the stretch of road Huhne was caught speeding in (luckily, my housemate had a driver to ferry her to and from the airport so speeding was never an issue).


So far, so usual for me but Saturday would see me yanked right out of my usual tracks.


My niece is in a women’s eights team (Cantabridgian juniors) and was booked to race in the Womens’ Eights Head of the River Race (WEHORR) on Saturday. I’m vaguely aware of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race at the end of March but it appears that the whole of March is a big racing month on the Thames for rowers. My knowledge of rowing is not extensive (I called them ‘paddles’ and was put firmly right by a rowing mother - they are correctly called “blades”).

I met my brother and sister-in-law at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair where they had just made a purchase, and we taxi’d to the finish line at Putney Bridge just as the first boats arrived.


There were around 330 boats taking part. A ‘head’ race means they aren’t all actually starting at the same time - they are let go in batches in number order, so are racing against the clock. Coxes and teams use “Cox Boxes” to monitor their progress. The race goes downstream from Chiswick to Putney (the Oxford/Cambridge race goes upstream but timed to start on an incoming tide).


There was a great atmosphere amongst the crowds of supporters, and the sight of all the boats on the Thames was magnificent. we were treated to watching them sprint for the finish line in front of us and then double back past us to where they disembarked.


It took hours though for them all to come through, and the temperature noticeably dipped throughout the afternoon. After my niece’s team sailed past (they did well and were rightly proud of their achievement in their first big race, even with a broken cox box), we supporters all repaired to The Duke’s Head pub for a very late lunch.


The Duke’s Head is a quintessential rowers’ pub, and makes the most of its prime position on the start line of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race with a magnificent dining room - soaring ceiling and massive windows on three sides overlooking the river - and racing paraphernalia as decoration. The pub nails its colours firmly to the mast with its walls a Cantabridgian light blue.


Lunch/dinner was a hugely welcome wild boar burger with triple fried chips and a bowl of “allotment vegetables” - chanterey carrots, savoy cabbage and french beans. I toasted my niece’s team’s performance with a glass of sauvignon blanc, even as said team was whisked back to Cambridge thoroughly exhausted from their 4 hours on the icy river.

Posted by Hedgie at 12:53 pm 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Spring in Clapham

A brilliant display of crocuses out on the Common this February - last year the early Spring was so hot it killed them off early
Lambeth Council at work pruning the large Plane tree at the entrance to the Common

Very neat work!

Meanwhile, on The Pavement, Boulevard cafe life gets into swing despite Arctic temperatures
The council men cleaning up after themselves

Industrial wood chipper in action!


Posted by Hedgie at 4:39 pm 0 comments
Labels: , , , ,

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Happy New Year



Happy New Year!

Onwards and upwards: it's our annual chance to forget all the troubles of the past year, start anew and to dream big again. May it bring happiness to us all. It looks like it's going to bring the long-awaited Abba Museum to Stockholm, which is another reason to visit Sweden again (along with the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö this May).

My new year was very mellow, as I didn't feel like venturing out of the warmth into rain-drenched London town to see the fireworks or do any parties. Instead I paid culinary tribute to my half-Polish origins by making a batch of placki kartoflane (pronounced PLAHTZ-kee kar-taw-FLAH-neh) and washing them down with Winter Pimms (this representing my English half). The pancakes were a huge treat when I was a child - I remember it was my dad's job to grate the onions; my mum would then mix the grated onion with grated potatoes, a tablespoon or so of flour, salt, pepper, and an egg or two and then fry the batter in a deepish slick of hot oil until the pancakes were crispy golden brown on the outside and meltingly soft inside. I think the grated vegetables allow more mixing with the fat and therefore possibly an even higher fat content than French Fries (the pancakes also take quite a lot of salt).



These days I drain them on kitchen paper before eating, and limit myself to one batch a year - usually in the winter when one needs a bit of mental and physical insulation.

I also pace myself - two medium-size baking potatoes' worth of placki go quite a long way, although they are very moreish. So the batter sits by a pan all evening - heating up the pan and frying a batch of three placki is the work of minutes (getting rid of the excess poundage from one's waistline will of course take months).

With friends and relatives spread out now across the globe, new year greetings, texts and calls started coming in at 2pm (Australia), followed by India, Zanzibar, South Africa, The Netherlands, and then finally Los Angeles. It was fun to feel the New Year wash over the globe like a gigantic wave. The world seems a lot smaller than when I was a child.


Now, of course, cities compete on YouTube for the best fireworks display - with Sydney and London being the most competitive. London's was extraordinary, if slightly spoilt by all those Tory voiceovers. New Year's fireworks as State propaganda. Oh well, at least it was over in 12 minutes!

Posted by Hedgie at 7:39 pm 1 comments
Labels: , , , , ,

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

A Christmas Feast

At the beginning of December I attended a lecture at the British Museum on the origins of our modern Christmas celebrations in the ancient Roman feast of Saturnalia. Basically, the early Christians stole Christmas lock, stock and barrel from the Romans (December 25th was the birthday of the god Mithras) and it is surprising just how much a Roman coming back today would recognise - feasting with family, parties with friends, gift-giving, “peace on earth goodwill to all men” - but even silly hats, jokes and japes, cakes, puddings and nuts, and (remarkably) gingerbread men. The idea of the ‘king of the feast’ - surviving in the form of a coin hidden in the Christmas pudding or the fève a lucky guest discovers in a galette des rois - comes directly from the Romans.

It made me think about how cultural traditions work - both in terms of the larger culture as a whole and in our individual lives. Repetition never repeats entirely exactly - traditions and lives evolve - but the repeated attempt at the ideal encourages comparisons and brings back memories of how it was when.


I am a hardened traditionalist, and I wholly concur with Felicity Cloake’s assertion in the New Statesman that “December 25th belongs to the birds”: a ringing defence of all things turkey and sprouting.


To be fair though, it is has become a traditional pursuit in itself to defend the Christmas turkey - the bird is entrenched in our tradition but it has always had its doubters. In their favour, turkeys are out of the ordinary (and therefore ideal for special celebrations), large (ideal for feeding multitudes), fairly bland meat (again, ideal for feeding multitudes) and relatively low-fat. Their downfall is a tendency to dry out in cooking. In my childhood the cure for this was to wrap the turkey in bacon and tin foil; these days soaking it for 24 hours in a brine bath is the fashionable option. But there are those who depart from the turkey route flagrantly - I remember as a child being totally shocked by a friend’s mother serving prawn curry as the Christmas meal. This was all the more outrageous as our family, good expats, stuck with resolute rigidity to the prescribed Christmas formula - even down to the brussels sprouts, which were a particularly exotic and hard-to-find vegetable in the 30˚C heat of an African midsummer.



This year, as I found myself alone on Christmas day, a turkey was out of the question, and I didn’t think a chicken would be Chistmassy enough. I decided to go for quail (which I’ve never cooked before) and went with a traditional pot-roast Spanish recipe: brandied quail with caramelised onions. But the accoutrements were the same as for the traditional English feast - bread sauce and roast potatoes, sprouts with roast carrots and macadamia nuts, and a gingered parsnip purée. I love sprouts but am not a fan of parsnips. I made an exception this year because (a) they’re traditional and (b) I have recently become a fan of ginger and a recipe for gingered parsnip purée intrigued me (it may have converted me; I will do this again). The recipe claimed it was a replacement for ‘outmoded’ bread sauce but I love bread sauce so had both.


My starter was a plate of smoked salmon on rye topped with home-made gently pickled cucumber slices and dill, snacked while watching the Christmas special Doctor Who, and to finish I had Passion fruit puddle pudding. I kept myself liberally quenched with poinsettias - Cranberry juice and Cointreau topped with Prosecco. Merry Christmas all!
Posted by Hedgie at 10:19 am 1 comments
Labels: , , ,

Friday, October 12, 2012

We're all winners!


Hilarious response to the EU winning the Nobel Peace Prize:



Posted by Hedgie at 6:17 pm 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Clapham's New Library Opens

In these austere times it is pleasing to report some positive news: a new modern library building has just opened on Clapham High Street. I went along today to use the fax machine (they don't have one yet) and take some snaps - please forgive my arty hipstamatics. I reported before about the building itself while under construction - the flats above have helped to fund the new public library facilities. The building itself seems to have taken ages to construct - almost as long as the much higher Shard, if my memory serves correctly. Last June they were expecting to be completed in September last year.

The flats tower above the library and the high street.

Builders are still busy completing the streetscaping at ground level - the paving does not appear at this stage to match the superlative standards of the Venn Street development.

A huge mural above the librarians' station maps out the interior space - two spirals curve out from the entrance and the desk - one upwards and the other downwards - around a central atrium rising the full height of the library space. A spiral staircase and a lift link all the levels. Books and other media line the curving spirals; reading areas, computer stations and meeting rooms lead off the spiral. The atrium houses a play space for children. It's like a mini Clapham version of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York
the ramp spiralling upwards
A view across the central atrium, with oculi allowing glimpses of the book stacks on the spiralling ramp
The spiral staircase

It all looks new and shiny, and the books have the feel of just having been arranged on their new shelves. Loads of users are already using the spaces - the reading and computer rooms look like they will be very popular.

Overall, the space feels modern and generous. I have some niggles with the finish, which lets the standard down - the exposed concrete ceilings look like they've been demanded by an accountant late in construction rather than originally envisaged by the architect. The librarians' space will probably need to be redesigned - it's way too small and encourages spiralling gaggles of users to besiege the poor duty librarian from all angles - while I was there fights were erupting amongst library clients (over where the queue was) and the librarians themselves appeared stressed.

Noise levels are quite high - the central atrium and hard surfaces throughout create an echoing acoustic, and the children's play area generates a large amount of noise to echo.
Posted by Hedgie at 8:39 pm 0 comments
Labels: , , , ,

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Jubilee

Well, this month saw the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen - London was positively awash with festivity (as well as rain). Here are some of my photos of the Jubilee preparations.
All of London is excited for HM Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee
Official Jubilee Shop in Hyde Park
Union Flags lining the Mall
Stage set up outside Buckingham Palace for the BBC Jubilee Concert
Covent Garden
Adjusting the flags in the Apple Market, Covent Garden
A Classic Jubilee entrance to Harvey Nichols
Witty Jubilee windows by L.K. Bennett, one of Kate Duchess of Cambridge's favourite shops
Harrods made a full-scale Jubilee effort with its store decorations

A Jubilee crown designed by Paul Smith in the Windows of Harrods. Harrods commissioned international designers to each design a crown for the retailer's Knightsbridge store's windows.
Oxford Street, London
God Save The Queen in Selfridges windows
A colourful corgi getaway in Selfridges windows
The Changing of the Guard in Selfridges windows

Jubilee-themed windows in Ann Summers
Bond Street
Lever House lavishly decorated with Union Flags
The Thames the day before the flotilla pageant. The giant photograph was of the royal family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace during the Silver Jubilee.
Early (hardy) birds for the Jubilee flotilla river pageant - a full 25 hours before the event, with arctic temperatures and heavy rain forecast
A splendid array of alcoholic drinks and party paraphernalia in the window of Laithwaites
Konditor & Cook's Jubilee cakes

London Underground poster

The Jubilee week cover of TimeOut Magazine
Posted by Hedgie at 1:33 pm 3 comments
Labels: , , , ,

Quote London

“We seek cities because there are a greater range of girls at the bar, of reproductive choice. Number one. Number two is there are better outcomes for health and wealth. And now we care more about the environment, and cities are better for the environment. But above all, talented people seek cities for fame. They can’t get famous in the fucking village.”
- Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, in New York Magazine
Posted by Hedgie at 11:48 am 1 comments
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)