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One Saturday in May

When you can’t see the poles.

Saturday was election day in Australia.

I have to admit to being disappointed with the result. Not just because I was hoping for a government that would take climate change more seriously, but mostly because the winning party indulged in a scare campaign that worked. All they seemed to do was tell you how much more badly off you will be if you vote for the other parties. There was a lot of dishonesty with it, too. Advertising made to look as if it came from the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission), and so on.

Sadly, other parties will see now that it worked. Sigh. It’s the Tragedy of the Commons.

In contrast, the Eurovision Song contest was an affirmative statement of ‘be who you are’.

Saturday was also Eurovision grand final.

Because we write, we don’t get a lot of time to watch television, but the one thing we do watch is the Eurovision final. Three years ago we switched from cable television to internet-based TV. Loved the cable, incidentally, it just worked; all the time, with no problems. Sadly, the phone company discontinued the service. We bought a smart TV to work with the new internet connection.

But every time we turn the television on now, we have to relearn how to use it.

That means that the first half hour of the Eurovision is spent by us trying to get the TV to work and trying to get a channel. We don’t have free-to-air any more, we have to rely on SBS On-Demand to see the show, and we always forget how to set it up.

I have no idea why it takes so long. Well, I do, because we’ve never really learned to use the television. In the end, we gave up and put it on Sherylyn’s laptop.

We missed the first two entries, but we heard the rest.

I liked most of the songs, and many of them were about acceptance, or being yourself. Australia’s entry, for example, was about post-post-natal depression. (We know, Australia, Eurovision. Don’t ask. We have no idea why, either.)

Actually, I was more impressed with Kate Heidke Miller’s (Australia) entry than I expected to be. I like the song, but the poles got to me. Three people swaying around on poles seemed a weird thing. But in the end, when they put the effects of the earth and the stars together with it, it was amazing.

The poles are still weird when you see them, though.

You have to watch it to see what I mean.

So politics is getting dirtier, but there’s hope if people can still sing about positive affirmative things. I’ll leave you with my favourite Eurovision song. It didn’t win (I did like the Netherlands song, which won) but I really liked Norway’s song. This one is about the northern Aurora, and has a really catchy chorus.

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