Royaume-Uni, nulle points

It's not all that often that one can claim to be in at the birth of a legend in the way that I was back in 1974.  Although, truth to tell, that wasn't the real moment of birth - nor was I actually there.  But before I explain further you will need a bit of the back story, as I believe is the technical term.

It was in the mid 1950s that the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union were invited to participate in a competition.  Each country could enter a song not previously published and the other countries would allocate points to decide who won.  There were just seven countries participating in 1956, with a further three taking part the following year.  The whole thing has become a bit of a joke and there are now far too many countries taking part.  It doesn't help that voting tends to be partisan: Latvia awards maximum points to Lithuania and so on, with the UK frequently getting no points at all ("Royaume-Uni, nulle points") although we have actually won a few times back in the early days.  The winning country earns the privilege of staging the following year's competition.  Luxemburg won in both 1972 and 1973 but decided the cost of hosting the event was excessive and declined to host the 1974 contest.  The BBC stepped in and selected Brighton as the town where the competition would take place.

In 1974, Eurovision had not descended into the farce it is now and the Old Bat and I sat and watched the show televised live as it took place in the Dome, Brighton's concert hall originally built as stables for the Prince Regent (although that fact is not at all germane).  So I was nearly there when the Swedish group Abba won with their song, Waterloo.  Abba were catapulted to international fame, which is why I said I was in at the birth of a legend.  Well, it felt like it at the time.

So you can probably guess what CD is playing at the moment.

~~~~~

Stanmer church and village seen from the edge of the Great Wood one afternoon last week.