Y’see, it’s not just about the contest. Just got back from spending an hour or so in Independence Square, just picking up the vibe and taking it all in. We were on the short trot back from the Marinsky Palace to ours, but had to stop a while to soak it all in. There was this lone guitar playing busker strumming mournful songs at the base of the big lady on the pole, surrounded by getting on for two or three hundred kids of all ages, singing along, dancing, snogging or just mucking about in the fountains. Two or three hundred kids all sat out in a city square at around eleven o’clock on a Monday night, beered up like it was the last weekend ever, just getting on and getting down and having a lot of dumb fun and doing it because they could. It was something they probably could have even have thought to have done six short months ago. Well at least not without looking over their shoulders, just in case like.
So for the moaners among us who complain that GreenJolly shouldn’t even be in the contest, and who’ve never been any further afield than the Sports Palace, their hotel and the Arena Bar, get out on the streets, party with the kids and feel this incredible passion for life that the young Kyivians have got. Ani Lorak can compete any time she likes. This is the only year that GreenJolly can ever do that song, and the Ukrainians, in the most part, are so damn proud of that song and what it means that no song has ever been more relevant in this funny old contest we all follow. It might come plumb last with minus 58 votes, but there’ll be nothing to touch the atmosphere in the hall when them ugly buggers shuffle onto the stage on Saturday night.
The welcome party was bleeding ace too, but I’ll write about that tomorrow. Somehow swaying around a two bob busker we couldn’t understand was far more important than an obscenely plush party at a palace for 39 pop acts of varying quality. Special comes in all kinds of packages.