Interval Feature # 1

Not for the first time over the past five years do I find myself asking the question “Why is the Eurovision so terribly important to me?” It’s a question I unexpectedly found myself asking a week before the 2002 Eurovision in Tallinn, Estonia. It was a moment which left an indelible mark.

I remember exactly where I was sitting and what I was doing at that moment. Sat at my grey desk, overlooking a typically messy IT support department somewhere in the City of London, I poured over the emails in my inbox.

Email after email listed IT problems demanding immediate attention. Bold red messages rung out with tired inevitability as I scrolled down the screen. I remember looking down at my keyboard and then at my hand clamped to the mouse and then letting out a sigh. I can always be relied on for a spot of self-induced melodrama.

Predictably, I ended up getting distracted by the contents of my own personal email account. I checked it. Then I checked it again. Then I checked it a third time. Surely something would arrive which would allow me to coast through the remainder of the day before my journey home.

A few months before I’d been working on writing some articles for a website I had built. The website was nothing particularly exciting – just a place where members of a social group could post their adverts and find out where and when their next get together was – but for some reason I reckoned what the website needed was a series of articles. I got friends to write some pieces and, inevitably, I threw one into the mix about the Eurovision.

That very process prompted me to review that year’s songs. Pictures I’d grabbed from the internet accompanied what I thought were fairly dull assessments of each act’s presentation. “It will do,” I thought, “I like the layout and I like the fact I’ve made it look like a BBC webpage. It will do.” Up it went on my website for all to see.

What I hadn’t anticipated was an email from someone managing a Eurovision fan website based in the Netherlands. I can’t remember his name nor the website address but it seemed from even a cursory glance over his work that his efforts had been considerable, mine somewhat paltry in comparison. Despite that, his email was charming, flattering even, complimenting me on what I’d written and promising to include a link on his website to that very page.

We conversed via email over a couple of days about this and that until the point he announced that he and his partner were going to be off email for the next few days as “We’re leaving for Tallinn this afternoon! So very excited.”

“He’s going to Tallinn?” I thought, “Why on earth would anybody be going to Estonia to see the Eurovision when you can watch it on TV? What’s the point in going to the Eurovision a full week before the actual show?

It’s true. Back then I had absolutely no idea. It seemed utterly bizarre to me. And yet, at almost the same time, the strangest feeling came over me. Without any warning and certainly no immediately explicable reason, I suddenly began to feel incredibly jealous, incredibly lonely and incredibly left-out. Everyone else was going to Tallinn to see the Eurovision. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. How could I feel I was missing out when I didn’t know what I was missing out on?

I still can’t come up with a reason, even after five years. It’s one of many aspects of this bizarre event which leaves me wondering one fundamental question. How on earth a television programme can provoke such strong emotions in a 30 year old man? If you think you could hazard a guess, please let me know.