A whistle stop visit to Stockholm and other fun

 The winter sun sets early in the North. Flying in to Stockholm across the frozen tundra of my home land, maybe 15.30 pm  last week.

I visited Eva, my dear friend,  the Swedish Ambassador to Mali, who was there as her last posting when I spent my last years there. 

Here she is at 'Svenskt Tenn' a chic Swedish shop featuring all things expensive and highly desirable, a point of pilgrimage on a Saturday afternoon for the well-to .do Stockholm denizens and something of an institution. Eva always thinks it is her duty to 'Swedify' me again, since she thinks I am slipping away from my roots. When I was staying with her at the embassy residence in Bamako she used to show me appropriate Swedish films, such as a biopic of our assassinated prime minister Olof Palme. She also made me Biff A la Lindstrom' and other dishes  which were intended to  help in the Swedification process. 

 Although here below of course it is those splendid Italian Fornisetti plates that are the star of this dining table at Svenst Tenn:

 I also met my brother Anders, whom I see very rarely. His wife Hanna is a Mezzo Soprano and sang the role of Carmen with her little group of very talented  amateur opera singers. The Habanera is always a crowd pleaser of course.                                        

The performance was held in a lovely late nineteenth century 'palace' just outside Stockholm, a pleasure villa built by a wealthy tobacco baron: the Ljunglofska Slottet.

                                                                                

Back in Siena winter has caught up with us too. and the large Christmas tree on Piazza Salimbeni arrived yesterday morning:                                         

            Jeremiah and David will be here again this Christmas, there will be other friends too, as we celebrate Swedish Jul on Christmas Eve and proper English Christmas on the 25th, with the only Turkey in town I believe, ordered soon through the local butcher who always thinks that  is fun. I try and get him to find a smallish Turkey, but that is wishful thinking. He always supplies one which has to be squeezed into the oven with force...                                                                  

Mali Crisis

I knew that things were looking increasingly bad in Mali over the last few weeks, and tonight I was rather shaken by the fact that CNN ran a feature on it, suggesting that Bamako was under a virtual siege by the Jihadists, and that the capital might fall. If Bamako falls, it is more or less the end of the Malian state.  I had already written a little appraisal of the situation in an email to my cousin:

There have been many jihadis groups established in northern Mali since the fall of Gaddafi. Now all Western assistance which was able to maintain an uneasy peace,  has been excluded by the Malian junta when they more or less expelled the UN and the French army,  and they are left to fend for themselves with some help of Russian mercenaries. The Malian army is too weak and cannot withstand the jihadist threat. 
The very effective means  used by the  Jihadists is a form of economic warfare:  the fuel transports that arrive in tankers on the road from mainly Senegal to this land locked country are attacked and blown up. In this way they  break down the Malian state in order to launch a devastating attack on Bamako. 

Now  these fuel transports can only take place with army escort, but this is untenable, and most of the time there is no electricity, as it is provided by diesel generators. This means that transport for the local population is becoming incredibly expensive, and people cannot get to work. Even the big taxi buses that used to cost just a few cents cost a fortune, and the price of gasoline for people's small mopeds, which used to be 775 FCFA per liter, is now 4,000 FCFA per liter, making life impossible.

But this is a more precise account of the crisis, and I recommend watching it: 

                                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeRPw9qPuoE

I am so sad for my beloved Mali, and fear that if the situation deteriorates we may not be able to continue doing the small trading that has continued with Malimali, with the bogolan fabrics and  some jewellery from Djenne, which gave some much needed income for Dembele, who taught me the bogolan technique and worked with me all those years in Djenne...

October Pursuits

 So what has been happening since last time...? Well quite a bit as a matter of fact.

I went to London to stay with dear friends Patricia nd Les in their lovely new Ladbroke Grove abode, and also to see the site for my new commission of a painted floor cloth at Maids of Honour's Row in Richmond, a beautiful Grade One Listed Georgian House, which appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1749:

and which is now the property of a Scottish entrepreneur who wants to restore it all to its former glory, including having the splendid entrance/reception room with its dramatic painted panels furnished with a floor cloth, which he will allow to be a little more exciting than the depiction above, leaving it to me to incorporate some details which reflects the wall scheme onto the floor, perhaps in a border... working on the designs now, so let's see...

                                               below details for border on first sketches...

And back in Siena there has been plenty of  activities of various kinds: the contradas have had their 'Banchetti' which mark the end of the year's activities, and here am I  with Luca who is on his way to the Chiocciola (The Snail contrada)  party last Sunday while I am ready to go to the ONDA do. Luca is Swiss, he stays here with me sometimes  when he visits his friends in the Chiocciola, where his mother lived when he was a small boy. 

And I went off to enjoy the ONDA street party with my old friend the jewellery designer Neville, who has visited me from Mexico where he now lives- we met at the Royal College of Art forty years ago (!) and shared a studio in London in the late eighties...
 

First Painting for 20 years...

Well, I mean painting on canvas, to make an ordinary picture, rather that something to go on the floor...

I have started a painting course, quite technical and academic, an online thing, which is rather absorbing me at the moment. Decided I need to start from scratch again. 

One of my three guest rooms has now become my painting studio. This is one reason I have been more and more quiet... But I finally looked in on this blog today, and was moved that there has been 17 people visiting yesterday and 15 today. I feel very honoured and surprised that anyone is interested now... My life in Mali was so turbulent and exotic and overwhelming that I can perhaps better understand that it  created curiosity and a wish to see developments and events. And in fact the Djennedjenno blog still has a following that looks in and maybe rereads some parts. But here... life is quieter now, although pleasant and interesting in its own way. 

I still have much contact with Mali of course, with the library who are still working on the digitization, and also with Dembele, my Bogolan manager/painter. We just had a new commission from an old client in Holland, an interior designer called Mariska Dietz. The fabric she ordered was painted in Djenne and dispatched to Amsterdam, but something went awry with the delivery, so our dear Birgit (well known to some who followed the Djenne blog) had to cycle over, investigate and  help. She arrived in the sumptuos flat belonging to this designer (who, apparently is the best friend of Maxima, the Queen of Holland) and guess what she found: The  living room was graced by our Bogolan, from a commission some years  ago:

And Dembele was thrilled to see this of course! We believe some more commissions are on the way...

Too Too Long...

... much has happened since last time, and mostly of the pleasant, light weight, Tuscan summer  kind. This feels like as a counter weight against the grim events that are unfolding in other parts of the world, and  it makes me wonder, often, if it is wrong to enjoy all this merry making? Or perhaps we should just Carpe Diem, as long as it is possible? Who knows what is looming around the corner..

I have been lucky to have some lovely people here, and my summer has been punctuated with different little groups of house guests who did not know each other when they arrived, but soon became friends,  and we have had at least three such little 'families' formed during the summer. 

Here, above,  is the lovely young pianist Javelyn from Switzerland to the left, here for a three weeks masterclass at the Chigiana Music Academy with the famous Russian pianist Lilya Silberstein, and in the middle is Charles-Henry, a young Frenchman who works in Fashion Marketing in Paris. We are lying on a blanket and wrapped in another one in the Piazza del Campo, on the only chilly evening in the whole of the summer. We are enjoying a fully staged performance of La Traviata on a huge stage in front of the Palazzo Pubblico.  

And below, Javelyn to the left once more, with me, Paolo (my architect) and Ilaria, at a  a great piano concerto at Castello di Murlo in Chianti, on a warmer summer evening, where the said Silberstein played double piano  with her son Anton Gerzenberg. And what did they play? My absolute favourite piece of classical music: Beethoven's Grosse Fuge.

Then there was the trip to the Apuane Alps in northern Tuscany, a stunning area where my walking group went not only to walk and enjoy the breath taking views, and have a four course lunch in a little village restaurant, 

but also to see a one-man performance of Don Giovanni by the wonderful Allessandro Riccio, director, actor, writer, singer and comedian, who played and sang all the roles including Zerlina, Donna Elvira, Leporello,  a very funny Don Ottavio, the Commendadore  and the Don himself of course: 

                                                                                 

He managed to be not only funny, but also profound, and found ways to quote some poignant poetry by Robert Frost, as well as making me see a new side of the ending: rather than the defiant, heartless Don Giovanni who falls into a Hell he richly deserves, he made  him into a tragic and grandiose hero almost, who rather than lacking heart, has in fact an excess of heart which makes him  grasp on to LIFE and LOVE, refusing to the end to let go...   I was so taken by it all that I wrote to this Alessandro Riccio afterwards, wondering if he know the famous Dylan Thomas poem... the one that goes:  do not go gentle into that good night, rage rage against the dying of the light...  he wrote back and said that theatre had made us meet and touch each other, and he said that I had given him brividi...(goose pimples...) so that was a nice encouter.

And then it has been PALIO of course... here is our horse in the ONDA church being blessed by Don Emanuele, although it is hard to make it out... 'Vai e torna vincitore!' says the priest, sprinkling holy water on our horse called Veranu, but alas, that did not work this time... 

                                                                                   

It was in fact Paolo's Valdimontone that took the victory this time, and it was a great Palio! Here they are, arriving at the Piazza del Duomo after the victory, about to enter the cathedral for the time honoured Siena Te Deum sung by the high alter in front of a medieval painting of the Madonna.

And, as if all this is not enough, tomorrow early I am off to Ferrara, where I have never been before, to meet up again with the lovely Charles- Henry the Fashion Frenchman. I am studying it all, that is the Ferrara history, which includes two most interesting women of the Renaissance: Isabella d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia,  the latter probably unjustly maligned from what I seem to understand...bad father Pope and bad brother, but maybe not so bad herself?

                                                                                     

The Quicksilver Summer

 Today is the 18th of July. That means more than half the summer is gone, and that thought is sitting uncomfortably with me, I want to grasp hold of  it and make it stay... but it flees, seemingly faster and faster each summer. But we do what we can to make some memories for winter:

We go to Castiglione della Pescaia where we take long walks on the beach, admiring the creativity of the sand castles and the sand Ferraris:

                                                                                

We go to BRUCO, the contrada with its great garden just inside the eastern city wall, with its marvellous parties right in the middle of summer, where le tout Sienne goes:

                                                                                   

BRUCO means caterpillar, but actually it is a silk worm, because in the fifteenth century these gardens were used for growing mulberries for the silk production for which  this part of town was known: 

                                              

 While this well-known summer merry-go-round is enjoyed, I get occasional news from a previous life, far away in Mali;  some courtesy of an internet service that sends me pictures every day of what happened on that day in previous years, such as this picture from 2018, which  must be the last time I worked at the bogolan tables in Djenne, since I had already left Mali by then, and only returned briefly for a few weeks in the year, normally in July or August or in March, to deal with Library business since the projects were still running both in Djenne and Timbuktu. I was still, at this point, able to stay in my own house, on my land in Djenne, which was sold soon afterwards. 

Much nostalgia looking at this, since it is unlikely that I will ever be able to return to Djenne....:

And just now a phonecall from Garba, the archivist at the Djenne manuscript library. They are still able to work, now directly with HMML, the Minnesota Benedictine Foundation. I am pround of their tenacity and pround that they are able to continue without me. They all want to talk to me, and I am moved by hearing their voices asking me the well-known questions about health and work and life: Ika kene? I ni baara ke? 

Meanwhile I also still work with Dembele, my bogolan assistant, with very occasional fabric orders, and also with a local jeweller through whom we organize orders of the beautiful Malian twist earrings, once worn  by the Fulani women. 

But life in Mali is hard and their summer rains have been wild and have destroyed some of the fragile mud buildings. And last year what remained of my house and my erstwhile hotel was simply swept away in the floods...

Palio, Palio and more Palio!

 Yes, the July Palio is over... Postponed on the 2nd once more, because of rain, but run on the 3rd. 

My friend and guest Frederic Fleury, a photographer from Paris, made a series of lovely pictures: 

https://www.loeil2fred.com/le-palio-della-madonna-di-provenzano

And what was the outcome? 

OCA with newcomer Diodoro, ridden by Tittia, who clinched his 11th victory in the Piazza.

And tonight the ESTRAZIONE: the lottery which establishes what contradas will run on the 16th of August... The Piazza will be filled to the brim with hopefuls...including us at ONDA..

                                                                            Next day: 

                                                           ONDA will run the August Palio!