I have a lot of thoughts and feelings. What sort of personal site would this be if I didn't write them out for your reading pleasure?
So last night was the Eurovision, which I really like and usually watch every year. This year, as with the last couple of years, the whole thing has been very fraught, mostly because the big boys at the Eurovision committee seem hell bent on letting a country (which is not even in Europe) compete, when that country is currently waging a violent, genocidal war on its neighbour. (I couldn't in good faith write this piece without mentioning that). I do still really want to believe that the contest is about the music, though, and the Eurovision has always been a campy, stupid spectacle to be enjoyed. So here's my play-by-play of each country's performance.
Poor Søren was apparently one of the bookies' favourites, so it's a real shame that he was put first. First is a dangerous position to be in, because the Eurovision final goes on for hours and by the end, you're exhausted and can barely remember any of the songs, let alone the one that came on first. However, I think that his song was one of the better ones. I like it when countries sing in their native language, and the energy and performance was peak Eurovision for me. Even if he did spend most of it gyrating in what Graham Norton called a 'perspex box like a petri dish'.
Germany haven't won since 2010. Last year's song Baller was incredible and felt more cultural than Latvia's singing folk ladies. This year however was dull and uninspiring. Very middle of the road. The outfits and dance were too derivative of Chanel's amazing 2022 entry for Spain, SloMo. Sorry, Germany.
Ooof.
I wonder if the reason he was in the crystal contraption at the start was for his own safety? People have jumped the stage before. The audience clearly did not like this one because they all appeared to be standing dead still, perhaps in protest. There was lots of booing and later on during Israel's jury vote, I swear I heard shouts of 'Free Palestine'. I'm not really sure what else anyone was expecting. In terms of the song, Noam has a nice voice and the dancing was good. But like Germany's, it was pretty forgettable and middle of the road.
...Yeah. I didn't like this one. She sounded really ropey and struggled to hit the notes. I felt the song sounded too close to Kylie Minogue's Padam Padam, which is a much better song. The falsetto thing she kept trying to do didn't really work. Also, let it be known that my girlfriend turned to me and asked, after the first chorus, 'Is this song meant to be in English?'
He's wearing sunglasses, but the resemblance to the YouTube chef Joshua Weissman is uncanny.
The ghostly spectre of the middle-aged woman at the start is unsettling. And why is Anis wearing chainmail? The song is nice though, and my take on it is that he clearly loves his momma, which is nice and very Ukraine 2022 (without the implication that his mother is in fact that motherland). And oh - the ghostly spectre is on stage now! Overall this is too pretentious and confusing to be a winner, but the sentiment was nice.
(At this point, I'm wondering in my Notes app why the male host sounds so much like Christoph Waltz's Hans Landa? It can't just be because they're both Austrian. The cadence is very similar. Oh well.)
Ooh - the first novelty song of the year! The outfit was vaguely reminiscent of Cha Cha Cha, Finland's entry in 2023. And then in the chorus he starts TikTok dancing. I did like the staging for this one, especially when he goes room-to-room teaching an old woman and a statue how to do the dance. He's having fun, and that's the most important thing.
Ukraine usually do really well, but this wasn't it. Boring. She has a good voice and she does hit the notes well, but there's nothing particularly interesting about this, especially when you take into account some of Ukraine's previous entrants (Kalush Orchestra, Jerry Heil and Alyona Alyona, and of course the classic and iconic Verka Serduchka).
So Australia were utterly fucking robbed last year (Milkshake Man was PEAK Eurovision, and it didn't make the finals). They've clawed their way in this year with a bookies' favourite. Her outfit is gorgeous and the staging is also beautiful. She has a brilliantly powerful voice, and is reminscent of Cher to me. This is what Eurovision is for!
I am a metalhead and it always saddens me that metal acts don't always do too well at Eurovision (except Lordi in 2006), but there's a reason for that. Serbia's main man is dressed as a goth bat and spends the first few minutes lurching ominously across the stage. It was all a bit anticlimatic, though I did think the breakdown was cool. If only the rest of the song could've been like it.
The outfit is a choice. He sounds a bit nasal and at one point I fully thought he was going to take his top off, but thankfully he didn't. The staging was cool but...ehh. The rest of it is pretty dull and I'm baffled by the hugely positive reception. (I've written in my notes that I didn't think Malta was at risk of winning, but they did pretty well with the jury votes, soooo...)
Oh no. Technical problems abound! I didn't think the performance was that bad even with the technical issues. The house of mirrors was cool, but generally it was pretty forgettable. His voice was nice though.
This was fun and an oasis in the sea of otherwise pretty boring ballads. The way she sang 'bangaranga' in the chorus reminds me of Nicki Minaj's Roman voice which she doesn't really seem to do anymore. But the chair dancing was cool and this one actually had energy which was nice.
The body and face art is very neatly done and it looks cool. The vibe of this song was nice and it sounds like a magic spell. I was also, personally, really rocking with the costumes. I'd like a dress like that.
...Why?
But I ask again. WHY?
Another year, another embarassment on the international stage. Look Mum No Computer is obviously very talented and knows his stuff, but it doesn't translate here. The song was trying too hard to be quirky. I turned to my girlfriend after the first chorus and to my amusement, we were both pulling the same face. At least he was wearing DMs.
Royaume-Uni, nil points! God save the king (and all of us who had to watch this).
Why is she trying so hard to Berghain? Stop trying to Berghain! Stop reheating Rosalia's nachos! I listened to Lux last year and it changed my life and clearly Monroe's as well, but COME ON.
She is very talented though. The last high note of the bridge was too shrill, but it's nice to see opera at the Eurovision and I can see Monroe going far. Also, I will always admire France's steadfast utter refusal to send songs in anything other than French, year after year. Way to buck the stereotype, France.
Nationalism, but make it fun! Or perhaps patriotism is the right word. This one was nice and fun, and Satoshi is clearly having the time of his life. Did they borrow their chainmail from Albania's entry?
These two are literally the most Finnish-looking people ever. This is another of the bookies' favourites. But why does he look so sweaty? Is he in a sauna? That's pretty Finnish. That, or the lights are just hot? I guess that fire's burning too. The violin performance is great, but the dress is a bit of a choice. However - look at her arms! Linda's fucking shredded!
We don't get gospel very much in the Eurovision, so this is a welcome addition. It must be hard to dance on that ledge...also, she definitely sang the word 'shit'. By this point it's past the watershed though, and we're all adults here, so it's fine. She reminds me a lot of Ella Eyre's performance on the song 'Waiting All Night' by Rudimental (I mean this positively). Aw, she's crying! This is a big moment for her.
He looks like one of those painted guys who stand around Trafalgar Square and try to get you to pay for a picture with them. Maybe it's just art and I'm too dumb to get it, but why is he dancing like that? Please, tin man, I'll find you a heart. Just stop singing.
YES! Eurodance at its BEST. RETURN TO TRADITION, EUROVISION! NO MORE SHITTY BORING BALLADS! JUST DANCE!
My girl and I both spent quite some time fist bumping to this. I love it. The singing. The staging. The choreography. Even the mask (I have to assume it's for reasons of privacy rather than Covid). Big ups to Sweden, the undisputed champs of Eurovision.
Antigoni was apparently on Love Island, which I refuse to watch but my girlfriend thought she looked familiar. She realised this with a gasp just before Graham Norton said it.
Very Cypriot-sounding chorus and a fun, dancey track. Antigoni has fantastic stage presence. My girlfriend was unimpressed with the 'fucking gloryholes' lining the edge of the stage at the beginning, out of which golden hands poked. Now there's a real Eurovision sentence.
Sal here seems like a really nice bloke. This song is in honour of his wife and the theme is nuptials. The choreography is impressive. I was expecting a slow boring ballad, so I was pleasantly surprised with what we got. He struggles to hit the notes and is off-key at points. He was obviously emotional at the end though, which was sweet. He won't win, but he'll win many hearts.
He's trying too hard to be a cross between Yungblud and Harry Styles (and one of those is definitely a better performer than the other). It was okay. Different, I guess? Too derivative to be memorable.
I honestly do not know what to think. This was heavier than a lot of the other songs tonight (except Serbia) and the light-up leashes are neat - goes well with the costume design. I can't tell what the woman in white is meant to represent or if she's even singing. The song is attributed to just Alexandra, so I assume not? Another example of operatic vocals - JJ did this last year and it worked well for him, so now everyone wants to have a go.
(In my notes, I wrote that I "can see this going the way of the Lord of the Lost", Germany's abortive heavy attempt a couple of years ago. They finished dead last with nil points. However, I have to eat my words, because the juries liked this one, and Romania finished with its highest points to date).
His voice does NOT match his bone structure. I was expecting a high-pitched keen. The song is camp and generally kind of dumb, so great Eurovision fodder. I'm not a fan. Girlfriend reckons it's too similar to 'Bad Guy' by Billie Eilish, but I don't hear it.
So there's my thoughts. Bulgaria won for the first time, which is good for them. I also didn't drink whilst watching it this year, which was both less and more fun at the same time. Anyway, thanks for reading.
I've been busy recently and so I haven't really done much with Crushed Marigolds for at least a month. I also haven't been writing as much. This is mostly because of school (it's been amping up again) and so whenever I come home from work, I sit down to study for a few hours and then it's ten p.m. I keep having ideas of what I want to write, but I don't have the time to force them into fruition. Or rather I do have the time, everyone has the same twenty-four hours, you gotta make time, but I don't have the energy. I have sometimes been exercising and sometimes not. I've put on weight; my jeans don't fit properly.
I applied for an apprenticeship in an area that is exactly what I want to do, but I can't get funding for both the apprenticeship and school, so it'd be one or the other. I went with my instinct - I've only two years left of school, it's been my whole life for the last four, I cannot stand the shame of dropping out of university again, and I'm supposed to be the clever one - so after a conversation with the friendly chap from the apprenticeship company, I withdrew my application. He said I could always apply again, and the fact that I'd had to withdraw wouldn't reflect negatively on me. I spoke to my mother and my girlfriend about it, who both seemed to think I had done the right thing; my friend said I should have gone for the apprenticeship. Either way, it's done now.
Every day, more things appear. More things appear to pile on me. Some of the things are changeable (and I'm doing my best) but many, most, aren't. The oppressive cost of living crisis which means I do not earn enough to buy a house, or to do much of anything, really; the hellscape world we live in threatening nuclear war every five minutes. No wonder people are anxious and depressed nowadays. And I don't even have anything to write about.
But the other day I was going through my old files and I found a science fiction novel that I wrote way back out in 2020. I was stuck at home, like everyone else, and through a campaign of 2000 words a day, I had a first draft done in one month. I wrote two further drafts from there, and then got stuck and never again looked at it. I can't believe it was 6 years ago. 6 years ago, I was very different; quieter, not studying, dropped out of uni, not sure where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. The global situation was pretty desperate, if you remember, and back then I had an alarm that went off with the radio. So every morning, all I heard on the hour was 'coronavirus!' I had started a new job, but I got sent home after a month due to the incoming pandemic and so I went home and wrote my science fiction novel and even though I couldn't even leave the house - for I was too gripped with fear - I felt proud. I'd done something.
So I guess what I'm really saying is that more things appear every day. But those things rarely change. And anyway, this will pass.
I get this tremor in my hand sometimes, my right hand. I have it right now. I sit up at my desk, spinny soft grey fabric chair from IKEA with my back flat. I think it's to do with the way my arms are angled. The soft flesh of my forearms presses against the sharp edge of the wood. My hands are pitched up against the keyboard; my laptop is balanced on one of those plastic holders that is supposed to provide wrist support and prevent things like carpal tunnel. I wonder sometimes if maybe my position is cutting off the circulation in my arms somehow, but then surely I'd get the tremor in both of my hands? I'm not too sure.
When I was at primary school, I had an amazing teacher. He wore his hair in tiny little dreads (called 'em rastas) and he brought his guitar to school every day to play us songs. He was an amazingly effective teacher with some astounding methods; for example, in our history lessons, we'd play what he called Doctor When. The classroom was our TARDIS and he would step outside into the playground and shout back what he 'saw'.
"Motte-and-bailey castles, children! And horses, and ladies in long raggedy dresses..."
"The Normans! It's the Norman times!"
He was a fantastic teacher. I was absent for only one day of his classes, because I was genuinely ill, and was miserable to miss it. He was, in some respects, a bit like Jack Black's character in School of Rock (though unlike Dewey Finn, he was actually a trained and qualified teacher).
Anyway, he was also an artistic man, and we spent a lot of time drawing in his lessons. He was a great artist, but when he drew, his hands used to shake. We'd crowd around the table, and he'd demonstrate the day's sketch for us. We were silent, in awe and deference to his authority; authority which none of us ever challenged, for we had no desire and too much respect for him to do so.
One day, one of the boys - I think it might have been Brad - asked the teacher why his hands shook when he drew. He said, with what seemed to be a gentle nonchalance at the time,
"When I was little, my dad used to shout at me a lot. He shouted at me whenever I drew. It scared me, and it used to make my hands shake. So even though I'm grown-up now, my hands still shake when I draw."
As a small child of maybe, at most, eight, I didn't really register the significance of what he'd said. It was a brave thing to admit, and especially to a class of children, some of whom were undoubtedly being hit or otherwise hurt at home. I wonder if that was why he'd said it; to make it obvious to us all that, should we ever be hurt, emotionally or physically, by a parent, we could go to him?
I still don't really know. When my hand shakes, it's hard for me to type, so I have to stop. Bend my hand back (I'm a little double-jointed, something I get from my mother), roll the wrist, maybe stand and take a few steps. Drink some water. Sit down again, start typing. The quicker I type, the less time my hand has to shake, so the quicker my synapses fire, the more I can say. I only get the shakes sometimes, and seemingly at random and without any real warning. My teacher had them all the time.
Whenever my hand shakes, I am always transported back to that day.
For the last few days, or weeks (I am no longer sure, time shrinks and contracts around me), I have been feeling what I guess you could call dejected. Burnt out. Not hopeless per se - I'm not quite there yet - but not at my full ebb. Everyone feels like this sometimes, I know. It is part of the normal spectrum of human emotion, and I am not seeking to pathologise that which is pretty normal and within the bounds of what you would expect for a human person. That doesn't make it pleasant to deal with.
I guess what's really getting me down is the humdrum monotony of my life. When I was sixteen, if you'd asked how my life would look ten years later, I would never have said that it would look like this. At the time, I was planning to head to university to study social work. I expected that I'd be a young professional by the grand old age of twenty-six, with a flat of my own and maybe I would even be married...
Ha!
Now, obviously, when you are sixteen, you are very young, very naive, very green. I had thought that twenty-six seemed impossibly grown-up and mature, and although I am grown-up, I often feel half a child still. There is no sense in going back and wishing to take my younger self by the shoulders and shake sense into her; it's sense that she would not understand due to age, but would eventually gain thanks to age. And I know, rationally, that I am still very young, and that I have plenty of time. I know that when I am thirty-six I will look back at this time with mingled embarrassment and nostalgia.
But also, I think there is some merit to the way I feel. Yes, twenty-six is young, but there are others around me of the same age who have proper careers, are married, have children. I am in a relationship, but we aren't married, and children seem very far off. I do have a job, but it's not a career. And this is the point which my brain keeps catching on, that of my fucking job. I don't dislike the job. The job is pretty straightforward and doesn't require unsocial hours. The pay isn't great, but neither is the responsibility. I can't work from home, but it does mean that I am able to leave my work at work. The people I work with are generally very nice and I have made some lifelong friends there. I guess I just didn't think I'd still be working there. The month just gone marks my sixth anniversary.
It happened like this - sixteen-year-old me worked really hard and got into university. She went for a year, liked it, met nice people, and realised on the eve of her second year that she didn't want to do social work at all and probably never had. So she dropped out. She already had a job at a shop, where her contract was for eight hours a week and she usually managed to get more, but she needed a proper job with more hours and more money, just for a year. She was going to try and settle herself and then go back to university after a year. She was going to study sociology or psychology or philosophy.
But she ended up staying at the job she found, because the job she'd applied for - part-time - miraculously became full-time and she found that she liked the routine. But then she decided to go back to university, albeit online, albeit part-time, but she kept at her job, and then she became I and I am still there.
I believe there is an old Jewish proverb that applies here - "You make the plans, and God laughs".
There's no progression. The nature of the job dictates that, as does the structure of the organisation I work for; positions at a senior level are exceedingly rare. I would need to wait for somebody to die or retire for a post to open. Promotion does not exist. It also isn't at all related to the degree I am doing. Every day that passes fills me with another drop of dread; what if, because I lack the required experience, I can never break into the industry I'm studying for? I look at jobs in my area for somebody with my level of experience (read: none), and I apply for them, and I never hear back. I know that part of this is the generally nightmarish job market at the moment - and I know also that I should just be grateful to be in work, as there are scores of young people who simply cannot find anything - but that only stems the dread flow for a little bit before it begins dripping once again in earnest.
I am stuck in this rut. Spinning my wheels. I keep thinking that perhaps I ought to hand in my notice and take a year-long sabbatical. Go travelling - backpack around Vietnam, roam the streets of Barcelona, maybe camp up in the Scottish Highlands for a bit. Maybe focus entirely on writing and get one of those fucking novels that have been brewing in my head written, actually written, not polished up to a half-draft before being abandoned in favour of another, better idea. Maybe I'll take a year out and get fully up to speed with my schoolwork. But my workplace doesn't actually allow sabbaticals - not for somebody in my role, anyway - so I'd be leaving and then spending a year with no job. If the market's bad now, it'll only get worse for somebody who has spent a year out of it entirely.
I have felt this way before, and I know it will go away. What is stopping me from making changes? The fact that I - for all I have said above - actually fear change quite a bit, I guess. And like I said, I know I'm being a bit of a baby. I know I should be lucky to have a job, even if it is dead-end and ultimately a bit pointless. I do have skills - mostly technical, and of the customer service variety - so I know that it isn't totally hopeless.
I don't know. I guess I just want to wallow for a bit. I'm sure I'll feel better soon. I already feel a bit better for having written it all out.
I don’t usually do New Years’ Resolutions, or not these days, anyway. Like a depressing number of teenage girls, my resolutions throughout my adolescence were usually appearance-based – ‘lose weight’ took the top spot for a period of four or five years – and were generally unattainable entirely. (For example, the year I turned twelve, I took the idea of a fake genetic condition called Alexandria’s Genesis very much to heart, and my resolution that year was to, no joke, dye my hair silver and convince my mother to let me wear violet contact lenses. I do not need to wear contact lenses, or even glasses. Thus this resolution was quite quickly crushed).
However, since being an adult, I have given up with resolutions, simply because they do not usually work. Sure you’re filled with new resolve and dedication when January first rolls in, but by the 20th, you’ve given up. The running shoes you bought remain unworn in the wardrobe and the yoga classes you signed up for will actually just tick past whilst you spend another evening in bed watching Netflix, but our constant ‘reinvent yourself!’ culture remains happy.
But – and this is the crucial bit – because I have managed to make quite significant changes in my life over the last couple of years, changes that I have for the most part succeeded in sticking to, I feel more confident about the idea of a resolution. But I don’t want to call it that, because then it feels like an obligation. So I have decided (albeit a bit late), because I am the master of my own destiny, to decide which things will be in for 2026, and which will be out.
Carrying around my nice, black, moleskine notebook and a pen will be in. Occasionally, I – whether at work or on a walk or sitting in a coffee shop – will be overcome with the desire to write, but because I exclusively write on a laptop, this is not always practical. By carrying around the notebook (which I bought – Christ only knows why – at an airport, so of course it cost me almost thirty pounds), I will be able to force myself to jot down thoughts on a more regular basis. This will also have the added effect of hopefully improving my handwriting. Carrying a notebook is in.
I have a habit. A nasty habit. One that irritates my girlfriend, mother, and older sister (in that order). I – when bored, spaced out, walking along, doing just about anything that leaves my hands unoccupied – pick and peel the skin from around the tips of my fingers. Essentially, I flay myself. It ends up hurting quite a bit when, for example, washing my hands in water that is slightly too hot. It is also rather unattractive.
My girlfriend, convinced I will end up with sepsis, gently slaps my hand when she sees me doing it. It has even begun to leech into her dreams; once I was awake in an early morning haze and she was not. I was scrolling through Wikipedia on my phone and the tap-tap-tap of my nail against the screen must have sounded too much like me picking for her liking, because it made her – in her sleep - whack me. (She did feel bad when she realised what she’d done).
Anyway, I am going – with my most honest effort – to attempt to stop picking this year. I only started doing it a few years ago, so it’s hardly something that I’ve had to do my whole life. Picking the skin around my nails is out.
I sit here writing on my laptop at my desk. On the wall, just about a little over level with my head, I have a corkboard. Currently on the corkboard are notes to self; essay plans and due dates, an envelope to remind me to pay for a periodical, a sweet note written to me by my girlfriend. But I also have some – well, perhaps affirmations is the wrong word, but – things written down. For example:
EVERY DAY, YOU MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN THE PAIN OF DISCIPLINE AND THE PAIN OF REGRET
Or,
THE LONGER YOU STAY ON THE WRONG TRAIN, THE MORE EXPENSIVE THE JOURNEY BACK BECOMES
and so forth.
I am going to write more of these. I am going to tack them up around my mirror and scatter them about my house. I will write them out and stick them into my purse; I will tuck them into pockets of coats and jackets. I have to start saying them to myself. Why write something if you don’t even believe in it?
(Incidentally, if anybody out there on them world-wide Internets has any further ideas for inspirational little witterings, please tell me).
Believing these things – and thereby believing in myself – is in.
Having no fun is out. Self-doubt is out. Eating one biscuit and then deciding ‘fuck it, seal’s broken, gimme the rest of them’ is out. Feeling bad because I don’t read forty books a year or because I read something less than literary is out.
Working too hard is out, and so is not working hard enough – I need to be in the Goldilocks zone.
Over-reliance on streaming services is out. I was sorting out my bookshelf and found CDs and DVDs that I’d long forgotten about. My laptop doesn’t have a built-in CD/DVD drive, so I’ve bought an external one.
Listening to music that I’ve bought and paid for is in.
Listening to whole albums rather than just the singles is in, or should I say back in – teenage me listened to albums in their entirety all the time.
Writing consistently and well is in. Again, this is a harking back to a time before; during the pandemic I wrote two whole novels is as many months because I wrote two thousand words a day. (I was also furloughed; I want to write more, but I do need to be realistic).
Being calmer, more chill, is in. Eating fruits and vegetables and oily fish is in. Drinking three litres of water a day is in.
Gua sha is in. Flossing my teeth every day is in.
Recognising the beauty and horror of the world around me – duality, yin-yang, two halves of a coin – is in.
(This post was supposed to be done in January. Ins and Outs start now).