Christmas and Sinatra in Valparaíso
Valparaíso, on Chile’s Pacific Coast, is one of South America’s most charming cities. With its barrios stretching up the hills from the coast and port area, it is renowned for the street art and graffiti all over the walls of its steep streets and alleys, serpentine and maze-like. Somewhat faded and dilapidated in places it has a suave vibe, it is spunky and has an edgy, cooler-than-thou feel. Plenty of pisco, ceviche to die for.
With an adopted family of fellow travellers, I spent Christmas in this bohemian wonderland a few years ago. As luck would have it, there was an accomplished chef among us, a French one to boot, so Christmas dinner was neatly taken care of. Mi buen amigo Doug and I were put in charge of the music. We poured ourselves bourbon-and-cokes, heavy on the bourbon, and got cracking. We found out we had similar taste in Christmas music so there was a lot of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby. Jethro Tull, James Brown and Willie Nelson to change things up.
As Frank Sinatra crooned — it may have been Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas — one of the adopted family came to Doug and myself. She asked if we liked Sinatra. We looked at each other and responded in the affirmative. How can you not like Ol’ Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board?
“I hate Sinatra,” she said.
Doug and I were taken aback at this apparent passive aggressiveness. Valiantly but politely we came to Frankie’s defence, wanting to understand her dislike for Sinatra. One of us said he really liked Sinatra, the other one agreed. One or the other said that he was great to get into the Christmas mood. We discussed this a bit but even as The Voice wafted from the stereo, she would not budge.
“Sinatra is terrible,” she said. “It tastes like soap.”
Hang on! Sinatra may be many things but taste like soap he positively does not. And then it dawned on us, she wasn’t talking about Sinatra at all but cilantro. As in coriander. Realising the misunderstanding, we burst out laughing. We refreshed our drinks and carried on having ourselves a merry little Christmas. Even though she was actually rather fond of Sinatra we decided to change the music to Elvis. Elvis Parsley, naturally.
Merry Christmas, y’all!
