Run Run Run

Last Saturday I went to the May Fete at my old primary school for the first time in years. All the old English traditions are still in evidence. Like the nail bar staffed by eight year old girls. The Egyptian dancing.

The Egyptian dancing was women of a certain age, colourfully-attired, wielding veils and rods, though not simultaneously. I saw no maypole, but there were those who claimed to have seen it, lurking on the sidelines like a sex criminal. Justin recalled a May Fete of his youth in which boys dressed as farmers pursued girls dressed as rabbits (bunny girls, you might almost say) with shotguns to the strains of Run Rabbit Run. Well, it was the 70's. I recall dressing up as an oil rig worker, possibly in some kind of variation on the Village People - to be frank, I've blotted most of it out.

This Saturday was given over to another tradition: Eurovision. The 'outsider music' element to this seems to be giving way increasingly to X Factor-style homogeneity - the only obvious eccentrics here were Moldavia, performing what could almost have been a Faith No More b-side, in very tall hats, while a unicyclist hovered nearby. And they did rather well. Azerbaijan won, with a perfectly serviceable ditty called Running Scared, in which they claimed to be 'scared of breathing'. Blimey, that is scared.

Perhaps it was a response to Russia's entry. They fielded some movie star heart-throb doing a song called Get You, but it didn't do well, possibly because the concept of Russia's spokesman vowing to 'come and get you' set off alarm bells in neighbouring countries. As did, perhaps, the song's somewhat ambiguous compliment: 'You look good on the floor'.