So tonight is the first semi final of Eurovision 2011 and I’ve not written up my traditional top five. There are some great songs this year (and even our own entry by Blue has grown on me), but the five I’ll be cheering for are…

First, Popular by Sweden’s Eric Saade. Try and ignore those dodgy first two lines (and the fact that in his rehearsals the glass in his box has sometimes not been breaking, thus trapping him in the cube). The only trouble is, it might just be a bit too mainstream to be memorable. Still, we like it, and I can’t deny it sounds like Rasputin at the beginning:

Belarus, with I Love Belarus. If we re-wrote our national anthem along these lines we’d all know the lyrics and we’d all sing along. Let’s start a campaign:

Russia’s song reminds me of Lessons in Love by Level 42. Despite that, it ought to do well as it was written by the same guy as Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. Even so, I’d like to see the contest heading somewhere other than Russia so soon after they last hosted it.

Hungary’s What About My Dreams reminds me a lot of a couple of trips to Hungary a few years ago as you see so much of Budapest in the video. The song’s not bad, either. It’ll be interesting to see how well it holds up on stage when there’s no scenery to look at.

And finally Emmy, singing Boom Boom for Armenia. What’s not to like? A stereotypical old-school Eurovision lyric to which we can all sing along, and a song that sounds like two tunes stitched together. If you get it stuck in your head, go back and have another listen to Belarus.

We went for a walk. We found a log tied to a rope tied to a tree. We swung (or did we swang?)

It was royal wedding weekend and we all got an extra day off work to watch the big event, so of course we… well, actually, we went to the cash and carry (although we did watch the highlights in the evening).

We should have been out enjoying the sun, but we’d been eating down our stocks in the outhouse to make room for a C&C run, and Friday morning seemed the best time to do it. The roads were empty and apart from a cluster of people standing around the TVs at the very front of the store, so was much of the shop.

Both times we’ve been there we’ve come away feeling that we’ve been ripped off for years by the regular shops. I know they need to make a profit, and the only reason we’ve been able to join the cash and carry is that I not have my own company, but the price of food there is shockingly low when you compare it to the supermarkets. You just need to have enough room to store it all.

We did join in with the end-of-the-road celebrations on Saturday night. Our neighbours had cooked up a curry feast and set out tables on their drive, with bunting and flags on the front fence. There must have been 20 or so of us sitting about in the dark, long after the sun went down, eating together and drinking our home-made beer. It was one of those events that really made you feel like a part of the road instead of just one house in a row of many, and tentative plans were made at the end of the night, as we headed back home at just before midnight, to do it again in June or July.

That’s the kind of thing I’d miss if we moved.

It’s been a fantastic weekend for weather all round. As I sit here typing this the chickens are spread out in their compound, bathing in the dust, and the tamarisk tree is in full bloom, its branches covered in thick flossy blossom.

I think we almost got too much of the sun yesterday, at the annual pilgrimage to the car show at Stanford Hall. We weren’t showing anything this year, so parked up in the field, across the river from the main house, and sat there in our little fold-up chairs to eat our lunch. Close your eyes and you could have been in the south of France.

It looks like holding out for the next few days. What happens after that, though, remains to be seen. For various reasons I’m hoping for sun for the rest of the month.