“Wonderful, wonderful Copen-hagen! Beautiful girl of a town!”
This is roughly what some bloke sang in some old film from the old days. It might have been Danny Kaye in a film about Hans Christian Andersen. I can’t quite remember. The song goes on to list some of the things that make Copenhagen comparable to a beautiful girl. I can’t remember what they are. I’m pretty sure it isn’t “With your great big tits and your nice personality,” but I can’t remember what it is.
Having been round Copenhagen this afternoon I have not picked up any further clues. I didn’t see too much to rave about. Maybe it is “With your streets of shops, many of them selling amber based goods. And your black and small canal”. I don’t know. It was a quiet town. I didn’t think it was rubbish, but I don’t think that it was so wonderful that it was worth calling it “Wonderful, wonderful” and nor was it a beautiful girl of a town. Suddenly the “wonderful, wonderful sounded a bit sarcastic”. If you thought something was wonderful you’d just say it was wonderful. If you thought it was a bit better than wonderful you might say it was “really wonderful”. But you’d only call it wonderful, wonderful if you were taking the piss.
Although there was some great Viking stuff in the museum. Denmark is an archaeologistÂ’s dream as itÂ’s full of bogs that preserves materials that would usually decay over time. And Vikings loved to chuck stuff (and occasionally people) into the bogs. So thereÂ’s clothes and hair and all sorts of great stuff from ages ago, looking a bit like itÂ’s been in a bog for a while, but it otherwise pretty much as it was in Viking times. Plus thereÂ’s loads of treasure that the Vikings got on their pillaging trips. Being a Viking was tough and the hours were long, but the pillaging and the raping made up for the inconveniences.
After looking round wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen it was time to go and see the show. A different bloke called Per came to my hotel to take me to the theatre. Again I only had his word for who he was. But I trusted him. And unlike his forebears he neither raped or pillaged me. Or threw me in a bog. So things have moved on. Get over your preconceptions.
I really enjoyed the show. It stayed pretty true to the original script and Gordon Kennedy was relaxed and likeable and the Taastrupian audience seemed to go for it. Although I am more used to the experience now it is still gratifying to hear people laughing at your jokes in a different language. And it’s still good to meet the people involved who I am connected to through such a strange route (can you read that as rowt, like an American would say? It’s the one time I’d use that, but it is correct in this incident). I think it’s got a chance of doing well. Provided the Danish papers call it at least “wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.” That many times and the sarcasm fades away.
