A stirring Eurovision night

A precious new book from Brian Bolland

Ben and Kaz came over on Saturday morning to celebrate our Eurovision defeat with Edwin and Andre and us. While Andre set about organising food for the evening, Ben and I strolled down to the pub with the dogs for a quiet drink. Ben is a huge fan of Brian Bolland who lives in our village, so he asked the landlord if he ever came in. Ben has amassed a huge collection of comics from the early '80s onward, and Bolland is the comic-collector's favourite illustrator. Seemingly, Brian comes in regularly and the landlord knew him well, so gave Ben a copy of Brian's new book, Bolland Strips. It is a delightful story of two memorable characters: a bishop and an actress, but told as a straightforward relationship rather than the subject of old jokes. Very imaginative, and inevitably beautifully illustrated.

When Andre told us he would organise the food for Eurovision, he did not go half measure. I lost count of the number of dishes he prepared but, including English pork pies (selection of meat and vegetarian) and Ann's English trifle, representative foods from perhaps sixteen countries. After that, the competition itself was an anticlimax and the songs seemed to merge one into another with a certain sameness of beat and instrumentation that washed over my numb ears in a torrent of sound. The colour and costuming surprised the senses, though, and I think the points must have been awarded for those flickering, epileptic designs that best impressed the judges. 

Eurovision Food Hall

Edwin and Andre left next day mid-morning, as Andre was booked onto a Zoom chat with his family to celebrate international Mothers' Day, which Brazil follows although the UK and America go their own way. Ben and Kaz stayed over till the afternoon, allowing us to watch the Middlesbrough/Coventry match as part of the playoffs for promotion, a complex procedure which Ben explained but is still probably beyond me, but it ended with a draw, so they meet again later in the week for a rechallenge.

Ann had yet another hospital appointment. Her AF remains poorly controlled, but they could offer little advice but to tinker with the tablets and await an indefinite appointment for an echocardiogram before they can proceed with anything more definitive. Once, GPs were proud to be called "The Gateway to the NHS". A&E was strictly for emergencies: people who'd fallen out of trees, or brought in by ambulance for a suspected heart attack. Now that wize gateway has been smashed with the outpatient clinic basically a glorified GP practice to which Ann has been going once a week for a check-up. Even busy pharmacists are being paid to do GP's work, and so many people complain they can never see the GP the only solution to the NHS crisis is to completely close all GP practices and attach them to hospitals, such as Addenbrookes and West Suffolk, where the GPs could take on a new salaried role as outpatient triage doctors. So bad and slow is NHS care, we are now seriously considering a private cardiac appointment. Ann's compulsory payments into the NHS over the years would far outweigh even expensive private care!