The Scary Clone
Another month has gone by, and life here in Valencia just continues to get better and more interesting.
Of the many events that have occurred, perhaps the one of most interest to you lot is the apparation of the
Scary Adele Clone. I attended a party which allegedly belonged to a Danish girl named Katarin, but said Dane
was in fact Adele in every way - she had the same face, hair, voice, mannerisms, dress and degree course.
[NB She is the Scary Adele Clone because her complete similarity was unsettling, not because being like Adele
is somehow scary in itself.] I was so surprised that I wasn't actually able to say more than "hello" to her.
What more? Thursday night saw the celebration of our Christmas Party, which was attended by most of the people we know.
Each person brought a present of about £2 and your correspondent, dressed as Papa Noel (Father Christmas for the
linguistically challenged), collected them all in and then distributed them amongst the people. This could have been
done more subtly I suppose, but it worked well to have all 30-odd of the others sitting in a line waiting for their
turn to come and tell Santa Claus what they wanted for Christmas.
I am going to be on Valencian television! I have spent the past week attending an extracurricular class entitled
"The Culture Of Peace and International Methods for Guaranteeing It". This has been very interesting and confirms my
plans for a career in the general area of diplomacy/world-saving, but at the end of it I was stopped by a man who asked
if I'd mind speaking to him for a few minutes about what I thought about the conference. I agreed and he led me towards
a television camera, where I held forth for some time on what the culture of peace meant to me, and what I thought
individuals could do to bring about said culture. Sadly we don't have a video recorder to preserve my 1.5 minutes of
fame, but it will be on TV on Monday.
Last night was the Christmas concert of my Valencian choir. We performed in English, Spanish, French, German, Latin
and Italian, which was quite exciting... most interestingly, we sang David Doig's arrangement of "Ding Dong Merrily On
High". After the concert, the entire choir went out for dinner. Said dinner was finished off with the arrival of a shot
for every diner, but the majority of said shots were impounded for a drinking contest between myself and one of the
Spanish choristers (a draw). Later on we went to a club (passing over the first one we came to which was called
"Murrayfield"), which involved yet more people commenting on the general excellence of my dancing (?!?) and my
imposition of a 40% Scottish tax on the consumption of whisky (with myself as the tax-collector, as the only Scot
present).
What more news do I have? Walking down the street the other day I encountered an old woman (70-odds) who was being
taken shopping (no idea about the grammatical validity of all those verbs) by a woman who must have been her daughter.
As they passed the bank, the younger asked the elder "Do you have to go to the bank as well?" "No," replied the old
woman, "I do all my banking by internet". May we all be the same in our seniority.
PS Completely forgot to mention the fact that not only did our carol concert
feature extensive use of percussion (I had things which I can't remember the
name of in either Spanish or English, but they look like tiny little cymbals),
but "Adeste Fideles" was choreographed! As we began to sing, we marched out
through the audience and ended up in an (attempted) circle all around the
audience. Unfortunately I ended up on the side of the circle (ended up more
like parentheses than a circle, it must be said) which featured the entire bass
and alto section, while all the other tenors were at the other side with the
sopranos. Oh dear.
PPS Also, our choir has MORE TENORS THAN ALTOS. Hope Anne isn't too jealous.
PPSS Furthermore, our dinner featured an extensive performance in English and
Spanish at the same time of Les Miserables (only Spain could insist on
translation thereof to "Los Miserables"), West Side Story and the theme tunes
to Dogtanian and 80 Days Around The World. Some simple joys are as universal as
McDonald's; doesn't it give you a warm feeling inside.
