There is a Light and It Never Goes Out

I am going to be submitting these pieces to a local Plymouth publication called Anthologia on the theme of 'Tradition', this last being another which has followed me from childhood: the Eurovision Song Contest. Even now, I make sure I am always in front of a tv or big screen (as is the case at uni) every year to watch it.

Tonight, we are all winners,

Tonight, Graham Norton is Terry Wogan

(rest in peace)

Tonight is a night I will not miss,

Tonight is my religion.

Like an X-Factor judge, I sit

Notepad in hand, ready to reduce

Every standard-issue diva,

Every Slavic heartthrob,

Every native tongue, kitsch ditty

And excessive use of stage effects

To a clinical note and verdict

Out of ten.

With each entry, I cringe at the weirdness,

Shiver with the frisson

And sigh as the countries lock horns

For a place in my leader board,

Turning iffy eights into certain sevens

While the nines smile with giddy pride

Or flip their hair and smirk.

At zero hour

Those smirks are gone,

Just nervous grins behind a flag

As the world’s eye flies over the Green Room.

I clutch my notepad whispering

The names of my precious number nines,

Groaning with every misplaced point

Delivered with predictable precision,

Until a winner breaks from the pack,

Streaks ahead of the rest

With each country’s haemorrhaging

Of the infernal ‘douze points’.

Midnight strikes and it’s all over,

The trophy awarded,

A tear-stained encore

And the torch passed on for another year –

I sigh and switch off the TV.

A month later, the winning song

Will echo in my head,

Lighting that distant shrine once more.