Saturday, May 11

We sit watching the Eurovision Song Contest, waiting to see if the seething discontent about Israel’s participation breaks through into the contest itself.

It doesn’t. Contestants restrict themselves to anodyne and generalised pleas for peace and love and unity for all, and so on.

Yesterday and today we have been promised a spectacular display of the northern lights. Last night we saw nothing, and then looked in social media to find out that everyone else in Helsinki had photographed a psychedelic light show of reds and pinks and purples.

Tonight we take a break, during what we hope will prove a burst of dull entries, and walk out into the woods, cameras ready. We see nothing at all except the dark night sky.

I take some photographs as we stride back towards the warmth.