Mother's Day in Lviv

We didn't know it was Mother's Day in Ukraine until we were walking through the Park of Culture in Lviv, on the way to Striskyi Park. We saw flags flying so, as usual, wandered over to see what was happening. Initially, it seemed like a display of military equipment, in support of the army charity, ЗСУ.

Then we saw lots of children congregating by the nearby stage, some in national costumes, girls' hair being braided, and we heard the announcements about the concert for Mother's Day. What followed was an entire afternoon of singing and dancing, traditional and patriotic, and also modern and fun. Most of the children were very talented and, for such a lot of performances, it all seemed very well coordinated.

We thought how lucky it was that it was such a lovely day, and also that there were no air raid alerts to disrupt things.

We also thought that, in normal times, there might have been such activities in other cities - Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhia - and that it should be the right of all children to sing and dance, and enjoy themselves, without fear of being bombed or shelled.

We didn't stay up for the Eurovision song contest, which started at 10pm here. It really wouldn't have been worth it - it seemed brash and inconsequential. Just as the show began an air raid alert sounded, across Ukraine, which seemed surreal, and also too much of a coincidence, which turned out to be the case - one of the bands that performed on the Eurovision stage was from Ternopil, where explosions were heard during their performance as a result of Russian shelling.

I think you can never have too many pictures of tulips...