Roll up

Last week was reasonably insane. Four different people came to visit, which was lovely. Seeing friends from Oxford is always wonderful because it enables me to stay in touch with the university world which otherwise feels a very long way away at the moment. So I did the tour guide thing and showed them around the Reina Sofía (which I enjoyed a lot more than last time) and the various bits of the city. On Sunday we had the Christmas church service and the drama, which all went swimmingly, I think; the English gags got a good few laughs from the (predominantly American) congregation, which is always nice. The lack of sleep is annoying though; for the past four days I have been out of bed before 8am, which in Spain (and over a weekend) is more or less unheard of.
To celebrate the end of this festive madness, Matt 3 (aka Prince William, aka Brian Nicholson´s godson) and I went to the Cirque du Soleil. I had heard of them before, of course, but didn´t really know what to expect. Well, the whole thing was utterly stunning from start to finish. The acrobatics and the skill of the various participants were almost unbelievable; it was embarrassing for me, with my rugby-induced disability, to see what the human body is capable of if you train enough. Some highlights: a Chinese acrobat "standing" on a pillar on one hand and twisting her body around until her toes were touching her forehead before hopping to the other hand; another Chinese acrobat somersaulting from a see-saw onto the shoulders of three more Chinese acrobats who were standing on each others´ shoulders; people running on top of giant spheres and doing backflips on them (while they were in motion), people doing somersaults and twists through a two-foot wide brass ring - I could go on. Every single thing was gobsmacking. The costumes were gobsmacking, the stunts were gobsmacking, even the music was gobsmacking. In fact, I left with my gob so thoroughly smacked that I felt as if I had had a run-in with a Basingstoke townie. It was incredible, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
I now have a mere eight days to do all my Christmas shopping and prepare for the end of term, which is marked in Spain, judging by the English department, by all the English teachers ganging together and singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with undisguised glee. I haven´t laughed that much in a while. Ah, you had to be there.