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Eurovision 2019
May. 19th, 2019 11:00 pmWhen Eurovision collides with a Leeds Meet day, it's always a busy one and so it proved to be yesterday. Thrown into the mix was the annual Pudsey Carnival, which always takes place on the third Saturday of May, meaning we can invariably never go. This meant that all of the buses were cancelled from 11am to 1:30pm, with only a small sign telling us that this was the case. Indeed, the little yellow board of lies was still displaying the timetable as if the buses were turning up in real time, and it took one beligerant old man to highlight the aforementioned sign before we realised there were no buses coming. Consquently, we had to phone an Uber, which resulted in us being at the venue about twenty minutes before it opened. At least this helped Wolfie's knee as it significantly curtailed the walking, plus it did enable me to ring First Bus to deal with the bag I inadvertently left on the bus last Wednesday. Fortunately, they had found it, but it's all the way at Bradford Interchange, whose lost property office is only open during office hours. Having a job in Leeds makes this somewhat annoying but I guess I am just going to have to find the time to go down there.
The Meet itself was rather good and better attended than I had imagined, particularly with Confuzzled in the offing. I got to meet a number of new people again while some came as far as Stockport and Norwich, the latter being Fen_ra, who was staying at ours over the weekend. We hadn't seen him in years and it was great to catch up again, with us regailing me with his stories of his travels from last year. I spoke to him - along with Enteirah and Adia - towards the end of the meet as I was meeting other people, as well as helping with the fursuit walk as Tonks was elsewhere. This meant I even had custody of a radio which only intermittently worked. The walk this time was a more sedate affair than the usual romps, with plenty of time to mingle. This enabled us to get a few good photos but alas we had to skip briefly over Briggate as we had the Kippers to one side and a very irate fundamentalist Christian preacher on the other who was borderline aggressive. It's a shame that Leeds's main street is becoming a no-go area really with the people protesting on it and I only hope the council do something about it.
I don't really like Eurovision being on the same day as a meet as we cannot invite everyone around for the party and it's inevitable someone would miss out. As it was, I had forgotten to invite Arcais and this left me with a huge sad. Still, we did have Ottercon, Stray and Adia in addition to Fen, making a nice little number. Adia and I got the bus back to our house while the other four hopped in a taxi. Wolfie kindly saved my usual seat with mini Lupe and once we had arrived after a rather tortuorous bus journey (which Adia seemed to love), we ordered some pizza and settled down to watch the show. The standard of the songs this year was incredibly high and it was good to see that there was very little 'political' voting outside of the usual Greece/Cyprus love-in. However, most of the songs we liked (Spain, Denmark, Azerbaijan and most importantly Iceland) didn't do as well as we thought they would, with most of the top five being a melange of medicority. Indeed, once it was clear that the race was between Italy, North Macedonia and the Netherlands, we were rooting for the Dutch, particularly as the Italian song was a bit of clapping and very little else. Perhaps my finger isn't much on the musical pulse in Europe any more but much of the top songs were pretty average and yet consistently picked up votes. What was also worth mentioning is that the British entry didn't deserve to finish bottom, but when you send unrecognized no hopers and piss off an entire continent, I guess that's expected. Furthermore, how much marketing had been done was something unknown. The only other thing to mention was the length of the show, which extended forty-five minutes before the advertised time largely to accommodate one of the most awkward interviews followed by one of the most terrible performances by Madonna. This was a little frustrating as Eurovision has never really been about established stars and performances, living in its own little bubble, so I am not a fan of this new direction.
The event finished shortly after midnight, when Adia headed home and the rest of us chilled to watch Blackadder II. It was a sedate way to end the evening, although it was notable how little we had eaten. Indeed, we had over bought on the pizza and had barely touched the nibbles, which was quite surprising. Still, it gave us more room for food this morning as we headed over for our traditional post-Eurovision breakfast (at Stray's insistence) at Cafe Barthez. I really like this place and the fact they had Now That's What I Call 90s 'Greatest Hits of 1998' on the TV just added to the naffness of the place. It's run by a friendly Italian and is an excellent greasy spoon, although I only fancied beans on toast whereas everyone else had the usual fry-up.
We took Fen_ra back to Leeds station after this, with Stray and Otter spending the rest of the day walking down the River Aire in the south-eastern part of the city with me (after we had grabbed chai tea lattes from Starbucks). We were looking for geocaches mainly while the otter was enjoying playing Pokemon Go. The highlight of this walk was the cultivated section by the river down which there were a number of signs highlighting all of the wildlife you could see here. To the left, there was a green fence beyond which you could see a number of bunnies frollicking, while the grey skies yet warm air gave a very springtime feel to things. Further down the walk, it became a little less urban and more natural, which sent Ottercon's hayfever into overdrive and resulted in us turning back once it had gotten too much for him. Still, it was a pleasant three-hour stroll through a part of Leeds I had never seen before, apart from Thwaites Mill of course which was pretty much halfway down here and it was great just chatting with friends and chilling. Alas, Wolfie wasn't with us though as he needed to work on his car.
Once we had gotten back to the city centre, the three of us went to the newly refurbished Brewdog Leeds bar which has only really seen the installation of some booths, the taking out of one of our favourite battered sofas and a new sign being put up over the bar. Still, it was great having a well-earned drink and chatting with the staff, rounding off an incredible weekend with some good friends.
The Meet itself was rather good and better attended than I had imagined, particularly with Confuzzled in the offing. I got to meet a number of new people again while some came as far as Stockport and Norwich, the latter being Fen_ra, who was staying at ours over the weekend. We hadn't seen him in years and it was great to catch up again, with us regailing me with his stories of his travels from last year. I spoke to him - along with Enteirah and Adia - towards the end of the meet as I was meeting other people, as well as helping with the fursuit walk as Tonks was elsewhere. This meant I even had custody of a radio which only intermittently worked. The walk this time was a more sedate affair than the usual romps, with plenty of time to mingle. This enabled us to get a few good photos but alas we had to skip briefly over Briggate as we had the Kippers to one side and a very irate fundamentalist Christian preacher on the other who was borderline aggressive. It's a shame that Leeds's main street is becoming a no-go area really with the people protesting on it and I only hope the council do something about it.
I don't really like Eurovision being on the same day as a meet as we cannot invite everyone around for the party and it's inevitable someone would miss out. As it was, I had forgotten to invite Arcais and this left me with a huge sad. Still, we did have Ottercon, Stray and Adia in addition to Fen, making a nice little number. Adia and I got the bus back to our house while the other four hopped in a taxi. Wolfie kindly saved my usual seat with mini Lupe and once we had arrived after a rather tortuorous bus journey (which Adia seemed to love), we ordered some pizza and settled down to watch the show. The standard of the songs this year was incredibly high and it was good to see that there was very little 'political' voting outside of the usual Greece/Cyprus love-in. However, most of the songs we liked (Spain, Denmark, Azerbaijan and most importantly Iceland) didn't do as well as we thought they would, with most of the top five being a melange of medicority. Indeed, once it was clear that the race was between Italy, North Macedonia and the Netherlands, we were rooting for the Dutch, particularly as the Italian song was a bit of clapping and very little else. Perhaps my finger isn't much on the musical pulse in Europe any more but much of the top songs were pretty average and yet consistently picked up votes. What was also worth mentioning is that the British entry didn't deserve to finish bottom, but when you send unrecognized no hopers and piss off an entire continent, I guess that's expected. Furthermore, how much marketing had been done was something unknown. The only other thing to mention was the length of the show, which extended forty-five minutes before the advertised time largely to accommodate one of the most awkward interviews followed by one of the most terrible performances by Madonna. This was a little frustrating as Eurovision has never really been about established stars and performances, living in its own little bubble, so I am not a fan of this new direction.
The event finished shortly after midnight, when Adia headed home and the rest of us chilled to watch Blackadder II. It was a sedate way to end the evening, although it was notable how little we had eaten. Indeed, we had over bought on the pizza and had barely touched the nibbles, which was quite surprising. Still, it gave us more room for food this morning as we headed over for our traditional post-Eurovision breakfast (at Stray's insistence) at Cafe Barthez. I really like this place and the fact they had Now That's What I Call 90s 'Greatest Hits of 1998' on the TV just added to the naffness of the place. It's run by a friendly Italian and is an excellent greasy spoon, although I only fancied beans on toast whereas everyone else had the usual fry-up.
We took Fen_ra back to Leeds station after this, with Stray and Otter spending the rest of the day walking down the River Aire in the south-eastern part of the city with me (after we had grabbed chai tea lattes from Starbucks). We were looking for geocaches mainly while the otter was enjoying playing Pokemon Go. The highlight of this walk was the cultivated section by the river down which there were a number of signs highlighting all of the wildlife you could see here. To the left, there was a green fence beyond which you could see a number of bunnies frollicking, while the grey skies yet warm air gave a very springtime feel to things. Further down the walk, it became a little less urban and more natural, which sent Ottercon's hayfever into overdrive and resulted in us turning back once it had gotten too much for him. Still, it was a pleasant three-hour stroll through a part of Leeds I had never seen before, apart from Thwaites Mill of course which was pretty much halfway down here and it was great just chatting with friends and chilling. Alas, Wolfie wasn't with us though as he needed to work on his car.
Once we had gotten back to the city centre, the three of us went to the newly refurbished Brewdog Leeds bar which has only really seen the installation of some booths, the taking out of one of our favourite battered sofas and a new sign being put up over the bar. Still, it was great having a well-earned drink and chatting with the staff, rounding off an incredible weekend with some good friends.
