So it’s still all going far too smoothly. Accred, as remarked, came through easily. We’ve got the tram/bus trip pretty much down to a fine art now, and so after watching Strommen-Sogndal on the telly followed by the Eurosong 1996 documentary, we all looked at each other and said “Let’s do something. Anything, really.”
And so it was, dear reader, that we went for a wander and found ourselves just outside the front door of the Norwegian royal palace while a few young uniformed Norwegians marched around making clear, in a polite and civilised manner, that they had guns on their person. As far as we can ascertain, those two things weren’t connected. As well to be secure though, Norway has a big day coming up on Monday, with the 17th May national day celebrations. There’ll be more flags and national colours around than you’d know what to do with. There already are! Hugely looking forward to that.
We’ve also eaten reet well again – tucked away in a relatively quiet corner of Oslo city centre is the Jaipur Indian restaurant, and it comes recommended. OnEurope is specialising in the one course meal so far, and seems to be none the worse for it. Everybody’s happy. It scares me!
The one cloud on the horizon is one of volcanic ash, billowing over the British Isles in the next few days. We’ve heard NOTHING official at all on the subject, but we have a small side bet going on that at least one delegation will miss their rehearsal slot because they can’t get to Oslo. Quite a few friendly bloggers are definitely going to hit problems. Cross your fingers folks – we need everyone to get here who’s intending to (not to mention that we need to go home afterwards!)
Signing off for now. There are eight international acts awaiting our attention tomorrow, and we need to be ready for them (and vice versa). Good luck to everyone involved, let’s get this party started.