Marching on...

Lordy! It's already March!

Actually it's nice that it's March. For a start the date has finally caught up with the temperature and it feels like it should be warm (or at least almost as warm, it's still slightly unseasonal). And the evenings are getting lighter which means socialising would be great.

Except that I've stopped.

Almost.

I'm trying to save money, so the dinner dates are being cut down and the random shopping has been cut down. I am a soup-man now and have tins of soup for lunch most days (too lazy to get up early and make something else) and I am also trying to develop discipline by setting myself a running plan of at least 3 times a week.

In fact I've been quite unsocial of late, having gone to dinner one week with Mark, then round Megan's for tea, dinner with Adam and drinks with Roland and Neil. That's been it for 4 weeks. Except for one thing of course...

Melodifestivalen.
It's all coming to an end this week and I think I shall miss having somewhere fun to go every Saturday night. The company's been brilliant- there's always someone new to talk to, some great songs to dance to and tasty beer. And the contest itself is more than entertaining.

Last week was the "second chance" round where contestants were paired against each other. One of the pairings was Magnus Uggla (think 50 year old dwarf with too much hair, a comedy song about nationalism and dancers in army uniforms) against perennial favourite Nanne Gronvall (think 45 year old dwarf with too much hair, a song about kissing and a dance routine based around a ropey climbing frame). The crowd wanted Nanne to go through- after all she was robbed of victory 2 years ago- but Terese and I, and seemingly most of Sweden had other ideas, and in a perfect display of how to make friends and influence people we sang Magnus' lovely ditty and laughed as much as we could while the gathered throng booed and hollered.

Fortunately we were all united by the mighty Sanna Nielsen, a lovely traditional Swedish blonde singing a lovely traditional Swedish schlager stomper.


There had been much gnashing of teeth when she didn't make it straight through to the final as it pretty much the perfect example of how to make a Eurovision song the Gays (tm) will love. And we all did. And to add insult to injury, she was beaten by a fat woman whose make-up had been applied by a transvestite using a sandblaster. Fatty's song was called "I remember love", which was probably a reference to the thinner days when she wouldn't accidently crush someone to death in the name of rumpo. Bitter? Me? Taking it all a bit too seriously? Me?

Anyway, as has become the norm, we drank till the bar closed and headed off to a club. Trash Palace to be exact. It was quite odd to be in there and not be molested in seconds, but actually it was quite nice. Although what wasn't nice were the sulky teenagers that were hanging around the stage bit where Terese and I were dancing. I couldn't help but wonder what was wrong. They were young, they weren't unattractive (although their scowls could maim from 50 feet). They should have been taking drugs, having unprotected sex or robbing pensioners- whatever it is the young people do for pleasure nowadays...

And so to this week, a week of early (ish) nights, indigestion, running and soup. Soup, soup, soup. It does taste nice, but the novelty's wearing off, and I'm sure there's a type of person who enjoys soup. I don't want to be one of them. Next week I'll have to reintroduce solids...