Saturday Song: Dancing Lasha Tumbai

Today is the day.

It's finally here.

I hope you're all doing happy dances.

I certainly am.

Yes folks, it's that time of year again. Time for the wonderfully bizarre and often insane EUROVISION SONG CONTEST!

For anyone not fortunate enough to have Eurovision in their lives, it is, as the name suggests, an annual song competition between European countries. Well, in theory. In reality it's become more about politics and voting for your neighbouring country (oh, what a surprise, Cyprus - you've voted for Greece) but we won't get into all of that today.

I didn't actually know this, but apparently the competition started in the 1950s (with only 7 countries competing) when Europe was rebuilding itself after WWII as a way to bring countries together to participate in a light entertainment programme. What a genuinely lovely idea, huh?

Since then, Eurovision has grown massively in popularity, and now there are two semi-finals before the final in order to cut down the number of countries taking part. It's something my sister and I have grown up watching and each year we love it a little bit more, which made choosing just one song for today's Eurovision themed Saturday Song rather tricky.

After much deliberation, I'm going with a fairly recent song from the 2007 contest because I think it demonstrates beautifully what Eurovision is all about:
- Sparkly/shiny outfits
- Ridiculous dancing
- Hearing music not sung in English (although this song, like the majority of Eurovision songs, does contain some English)
- Insanely catchy tunes (which you may well find yourself humming later in the day)
- General confusion about what is going on (why does he have breasts?)
- Having crazy amounts of fun despite looking like a wally

Maybe this time next year I'll be able to use a song from the 2012 contest.

Bet you're looking forward to it already!

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Okay, so despite the title of this bloglet being Saturday Song (in the singular) I just can't pass up the opportunity to share more delights from Eurovision. Here are some of my favourites (they're all brilliant in their own special way):

Waterloo (Sweden, 1974) Before my time but you've got to love a bit of ABBA.
Making Your Mind Up (UK, 1981) Still before my time but we don't often win now. Europe hates us.
Wild Dances (Ukraine, 2004) She looks like she's having the most fun ever!
Pirates Of The Sea (Latvia, 2008) Forgot this until I started this bloglet. It's pretty unforgettable really.
Fairytale (Norway, 2009) His photo is in the Bergen Aquarium. Just FYI.
Opa! (Greece, 2010) I tried to learn all the words to this one. I failed: it's all in Greek.

[This Bloglet Has No Title - I Was Too Lazy To Think Of One]

I'm beginning to realise I'm quite an extrovert. I like being with other people and get bored very quickly when left on my own for too long. I'm either an extrovert or still a child.

So, with the house to myself today I am obviously already bored (it's about noon while I write). Sarah left for work at about 8am. Four hours, people! I only managed four hours of being in my own company before getting bored. Geez.

In order to combat the boredom, I decided I wanted to write a bloglet. Excellent. Decision made. Problem is I didn't have anything I wanted to write about (I did actually start writing a bloglet about having nothing to write about but began to bore myself even more so aborted that one - you're welcome by the way).

Eventually I realised I could combine this wish to write a bloglet with the beautiful weather we've been having recently and went for a wander round our garden, camera in pocket. What follows are some pictures I took. Enjoy.

An orange flower I thought was pretty. I'm not very into botany so have no idea what it is (other than orange and pretty). I'm also not very into photography, hence my shadow across it. D'oh.

The family who owned the house before us had a son called Cyril. Cyril, it seems was a budding sculptor and inscribed his name into this piece of stone by our front door.

That's the wall where grass snakes like to sunbathe. Unfortunately, they weren't there today. What you're looking at is essentially just a wall. Fascinating.

This is our garage door. It's not very beautiful, I'll grant you, but that horizonal(ish) line you can see is a chalk line that my dad drew about 10 years ago. It's roughly at the height of a tennis net. Made a brilliant thud when you whacked a ball at it.

This is a hand-print. No, honestly. It's mine. It must be around 12 or 13 years old now. When we put the climbing frame up we decided to put hand-prints in the concrete round the base. I should probably have put my hand next to the print so you could see it better, but it was icky and muddy.

Everyone has sun-bleached rubber ducks sitting on a tree stump in their garden, don't they?

We have a statue. Sarah and I named her Mary. One year we covered Mary with snow.

Last year we saved a frog and left this ice cream tub near a pond so it could hop out when it was ready. Ice cream tub got left for a while and seems to have created life, in the form of moss.

Pride Rock (off of The Lion King). Probably enough said.

On that exact piece of patio (well, on a chair on top of that exact piece of patio) I fell asleep one summer and woke up to find that a bird had pooped on me. Worst nap ever.

I've often thought this would be the perfect place to put a hammock. We've never got round to it. If I was more committed to this bloglet, I would have photoshopped a hammock in there with me waving at you from it.

Just imagine I'd done it, will you? Ta!

Saturday Song: Weight Of The World

I'm not very good at writing essays. I dislike the whole process. Thankfully I am finished with full-time education and never have to write another essay in my life if I don't want to. 

One year, while I was still in full-time education (I think it was university rather than school) I had to write two or three essays over the Christmas holiday. Obviously I left everything to the last minute and ended up having to stay up late into the night before term started to write the damn things (my own fault, I know).

Anyway, as well as being an unenthusiastic essay writer, I was also a slow essay writer. I would check the word count after every paragraph (sometimes every sentence) in the hope that I may have miraculously reached the word limit all of a sudden. While I stayed up late and plodded my way through these particular essays, I decided to treat myself after every few hundred words by listening to this song. 

Admittedly it's probably more suitable to be listening to it blasting from a car stereo with the windows down as you drive around the coast of somewhere sunny, rather than in your bedroom at 1 o'clock in the morning at a volume which won't wake up the rest of the house. But I still liked it.

Excuses

So I haven't made an appearance round these 'ere parts for several days now. Except yesterday when I posted a new bloglet. Yeah, except then.

But that wasn't actually me.

Well it was, but it was me from about a week ago when I had one of those rare moments of being organised ahead of time and I scheduled a bloglet.

Anyway, today's ramble is an excuse for why I haven't been visiting and commenting on other blogs recently. To make things more interesting, I have actually prepared two excuses. Only one is true. The other is utter poppycock. I feel kind of bad about lying to you, but it's probably okay if I tell you beforehand that I'm going to do it.


Excuse One
For about a week now we've been having yucky internet troubles in Casa del Groves which have put a stop to blogging, twitter and YouTube (basically all the good stuff). Methods for fixing this problem have included:
- Trying all cables in every possible combination
- Attempts to persuade the router to wake up by changing its view and putting it in different rooms 
- Crossing our fingers and hoping for the best
- Switching everything off and on again
- Swearing at things

Eventually, Mum and I discovered the ethernet cable under the carpet had been squished by years of us walking over it.

Ah, we'll just get a new cable then.

Nope, Dad will fix/bodge it with duct tape.

So in summary, the internet broke for a week but now it's been mended with tape.


Excuse Two
The aliens did it.

They were keeping an eye on Earth (as they always are) and noticed an unusually high amount of blogging going on last month. As you probably know, the aliens are wary about blogs. They find them so darn interesting that they have to read them all (to them, blogs are like pokemon). With all the blogging going on last month, they got so caught up with reading that they completely missed the annual space picnic they had been heading for.

Last weekend they finally finished reading, realised that they'd missed the picnic, and immediately sulked (there had been talk of someone bringing party rings). They decided to beam someone up to explain the sudden surge in blogging and yours truly was selected at random (I know, right? What are the chances?) 

Since then I've been trying to calm them down about the picnic, and convince them that we didn't distract them on purpose. I gave them a heads up that there'll be another increase in blogging next April. They said they'd take the longer but more scenic route that avoids Earth next time.

We parted on pretty good terms - I gave them some party rings for the journey home and they seemed satisfied.

Saturday Song: Runaway Horses

It has recently come to my attention that it's quite common to blog about a particular subject or theme on a particular day of the week. I have never been this disciplined with my blog (it's called inane ramblings for a reason, folks) but I've decided to have a go at it, just for one day a week to start with.

You can still expect the same rambly, inane musings you've grown to love (admit it: it's true), but Saturdays will now see a little more structure. Each week I'll choose one song to write about and include a video of said song. It's an idea I tried out (extremely unsuccessfully) on twitter that will hopefully work much better in bloglet format.

So, without further ado, this week's song is Runaway Horses by Belinda Carlisle.

The first album I owned (on cassette!) was The Spice Girls. That must have been around 1995. Before then, when my family and I went on long car journeys, we would always listen to my dad's CDs. Apart from Meatloaf, his taste in music was pretty good (don't tell him though) and my sister and I would be allowed to choose from 5 or 6 of his albums. I don't think we ever needed other options: we always chose Belinda Carlisle.

For some reason her album became known by Sarah and myself simply as 'Doo-Doo-Dares', so whenever Mum or Dad asked what we wanted to listen to, we'd request, in unison, "DOO-DOO-DARES!" Of the whole album, Runaway Horses was always our favourite. We would insist the volume was turned up and would shout along gleefully to the chorus every time it came round.

It's weird how even now when I hear the quiet tinkly build up at the start of the song I feel excited: I feel like I'm 7 years old again and sitting in the back of my dad's car. And it's ace.

What song transports you back to childhood?