Planning, planning...

 The Season has well and truly started. The narrow streets of Siena are thronging with tourist groups creating veritable traffic jams, their guides holding poles aloft, where brightly coloured handkerchiefs flutter, acting  as guiding beacons to their flocks. 

And on the last Sunday of April came the most exhilarating sign that Siena has woken up from its winter slumber: The Contrada of the Valdimontone started the season of Giri, ( as they always do): those  17 Sundays in the summer when every Contrada has their  own day to display the finery of their costumes, the skill of their Alfieri and the rousing sound of their Tamburini, as they make their way through the city ceremonial visits to the other Contrade. Here they arrive at their allies, ONDA, where their lunch table is laid out on Via Giovanni Dupre. 

I have finally had a long awaited hospital visit: the Ablatione has been done, and I am now home again, feeling fine, but only a little weak still. If I may give some advice to anyone intending to have anything done which requires hospitalisation in Italy, I would suggest trying to avoid the last part of the week...

that is because here one is not allowed to leave during the weekend, there is no staff to sign your documents. In my case my intervention happened on the Thursday. I had to stay the night. And the following day it was the first of May, Labour Day, and a holiday here. So  only skeleton staff at the hospital... and then it was weekend...so finally let out on Monday afternoon. But it is done! And my heart is beating normally again! 

And using these days of rest to plan my trip around the World for the beginning of the year! More about that soon..

Primavera

 Yes, the spring has arrived here in Siena, and that means the first stirrings of the Contrade...

On the 25th of March the CAPO D ANNO SENESE, or the Sienese New Year is celebrated, and representatives of all the 17 contradas take part in a procession between the Duomo and the Piazza del Campo. This, apparently, is a tradition that originates centuries past, when Siena was a City Republic. Above we have the OCA to the right and ONDA to the left. I am still moved by these celebrations, and see them as the beginning of the happy part of the Siena year. 

And now, when the sun shines, I go and sit in the Piazza del Campo and look at the amusing dramas which take place among the multitudes of visitors that have had the same idea...

The local police fight a losing battle every day... Their aim used to be two fold: last year they walked around the Piazza telling people they were 1: not allowed to eat anything on the Piazza and 2: not allowed to lie down but had to maintain a sitting position. They do this in a fairly cordial manner, but with the sheer number of lunch eating sun worshippers they have had to admit defeat on the first part of their task, and now it seems to be OK to consume your picnic.  The second prohibition is still in place, however. I had been watching this group below left, and was aware of  the approaching guardians of the law.  

                       
but, as I said, it is a losing battle... 

New ones arrive, and it is of course only a question of time before these too will face the carabinieri...

And today it is Palm Sunday. I have a charming, young, very tall Chinese guest here, who turned out to be a Catholic. He is a great fan of early Italian art, and saw my newly purchased Vasari's Lives of the Artists on the table. He had read that in Chinese and had also been to see the recent Siena exhibition in London  at the National Gallery.  However, his English or Italian is virtually non-existent, so we  converse through the translation soft wear on his mobile phone.  We went to mass together and he presented me with a small statue of the Madonna of Shanghai:

                                                                       

I am constantly amazed by the interesting and varied people I have the privilege of meeting here...and they are quite often Chinese. I will admit to having been somewhat prejudiced before. I was  feeling quite removed from far Eastern peoples, thinking they were somehow from a different tribe, but now they are becoming alive to me, and taking on colours, like  drawings or films moving from black and white into colours. I think I may have mentioned this before, but it continues being a joyful discovery for me. 

A London February

Yes, a whole month in London, in the depths of Winter... but towards the end of this long time of rainy and near freezing  tribulation  the lovely gardens of Notting Hill and Holland Park began to express that they too had had enough, and started coming alive with the exotic splendour of magnolias and other very flamboyant, and to me rather un-English floral signs  of the arrival of spring...

but until those last days, I spent my days on my hands and knees in the prosaic surroundings of my hired,  un-heated studio space  on a North Acton Industrial Estate

painting the floorcloth for the Richmond Georgian House, which will be installed towards the autumn. This was the only time available for me to do this work, since now, with the arrival of spring, my little airBnb will begin to fill up again and from now onwards till end October Siena is the place to be!

I was often assisted by Iarla, my friend Kathy's son (who, by the way, chose to be Tarzan for my big spring party last March) and it was the second time he helped me to work on a floorcloth, the last being the one I made several years ago for Auckland Castle.

The best time of the day was when we finished the cold day's work and walked down to the lovely haven which was a little Lebanese workman's caff, where the friendly Ali and his nephew made us hot falaffels and there was always a lovely home made lentil soup which one could help oneself to

                                                                                 

 After a month of marbling and painting of border cornucopia to match the splendid wall decorations in the room our the work was finally rolled up and taken away for storage.

There was of course also some time at night to catch up with some of my London friends, and I spent the first couple of weeks at Sanjay's lovely Parson's Green flat before moving to Andrew's Portobello Road pad and then finally I caught up once more with Les and Patty again in the lovely Ladbroke Grove flat they now stay in when they spend time in London. 

All in all a successful but really demanding and exhausting month in London, while my friends Ed and Erika manned the fort in Siena. They left this morning and I am now alone, and about to fix a Campari Spitz to fortify myself to delve into the worrying Middle East news via CNN, France 24 and Al Jazeera...

An American Journey in Two Halves

First it was once again Minnesota, this time Rochester, the seat of the famous Mayo Clinic, where my dear friends Patty and Les worked and lived most of their careers (both physicians), and where they have now moved in to a new flat where they spend little time, since they are mainly in Europe. 

Those who have visited my former London flat may remember the copper mirror that hung in the entrance hall, which I made many years ago. When I left I unscrewed the copper 'roses' and now I remade it for Patty and Les and their new flat. I am pleased with how it turned out.

 

Minnesota, and particularly Minneapolis, just down the road from Rochester, has featured on the news recently, with Trump's crack down on immigration and the legitimate and lawful demonstrations. We did not see any signs of this, but just the knowledge of recent and ongoing events made us happy to move on to the second part of the Journey:

 our  thoroughly indulgent, peaceful  and joyful trip to New Orleans which was limbering up towards Mardi Gras, and putting up the carnival colours on their ravishing balconies: I had forgotten how stunningly beautiful the city is...

Columba Stewart, my old friend and (now former) Benedictine monk (to the right below) with whom I have had so many adventures in Mali met up with us for four days of eating, drinking and music: 

Here at the famous old Galatoire's on Bourbon Street where there is a dresscode: jackets for the men. It is  a haven for traditional Creole Cuisine is at its best: above we sample the Shrimp Etoufee, and below Souffle Potatoes with Bearnais sauce to start..

Galatoires is a haven, as I said, on Bourbon Street, the centre of the French Quarter, not only because of the divine food, but also because it offers an escape from the otherwise noisy and overwhelmingly commercial street outside, where gaudy bars and sleazy dives are competing loudly for the custom of  inebriated tourists...

However, there IS also good music in one or two Jazz bars: here is The Bourbon Street Quartet playing Dixie and other New Orleans sounds at Fritzel's Jazz Club:

                                                                                 

But my New Orleans friends Ed and Jaye, below,  with whom I have spent two wonderful New Orleans Jazz Fests a long time ago, do  their best to avoid Bourbon Street altogether (most of the rest of the city is so stunning anyway) 

                                       

There is another culinary New Orleans experience one has to have: the Beignets at the Cafe du Monde on Jackson Square:

                   

And the other thing one has to try in New Orleans is of course the Bloody Marys, which are always drunk in the morning. We found a cafe in the sun on Royal Street called the Vampire, to which we returned:

                                                            

The Vampire theme for New Orleans was not, apparently, started by the novels of Anne Rice, but they  drew on older legends of the city...

All in all, we could not have hoped for a better time, New Orleans was a pure delight, and remains  my favourite city of the United States. 

Back in Siena now, where it is chilly and windy but sunny today, a climate in fact not so different from New Orleans!

 

On the Last Day of my Christmas...

 ...'Last', because tomorrow the tree comes down, in anticipation of my U.S. trip on Tuesday, to visit Patricia and Les, AND Columba, my dear friend with whom I have had so many adventures in Mali... but I am getting ahead of myself.  Let's start at the beginning, which was really the event advertised above. A lot of my Italian friends came for this my Swedish Christmas 'Aperitivo'. I had made a lot of Swedish Christmas fare, and had even managed to squeeze myself (only just!)  into my  traditional costume from Leksand in Central Sweden here below:

                                                                            

and it got another outing on Christmas Day, when Jeremiah, David, Hettie, Andrea and Silvana joined for that HUGE Turkey I was talking about... 

                                                                                   

                                     We behaved just like one should on Christmas Day,

                               
                                               and that involves of course Charades:

                                                                                

Some film watching (Disney's classics animations for a Swede like myself- Lady and the Tramp of Course. The Italians LOVE that one... maybe Love Actually, or A Christmas Carol- always the version with George C Scott:

and Hettie's American Christmas present game when you can steal each others presents. Last year I did not do so well, I ended up with a piece of garlic as my only Christmas present... but this year there was a great improvement, since I had stipulated that if the garlic event was repeated no one present would EVER be invited to my Christmases again...

And then came New Year's Eve, and a little group of Italian friends gathered here again, this time we made a 'picnic' and everyone brought along something. My place is perfect for New Year's  because there is a view over town and all the fireworks can be seen at midnight. 

There was a big New Year's concert at the Piazza del Campo, an Italian pop star called Irama : 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPwdQCb3lc

However, not really our cup of tea... so we stayed in and my song-loving Italian friends made their own concert. But I don't seem to be able to add the film of this splendid event! You will just have to believe me.

Last night I saw my lovely French friends Pascal and Monique here, faithful readers of my blogs, even  from my early times in Mali when they visited several times. They have made me a big fan of the great city of Lyon, where they live.

And tomorrow my lovely tree comes down... always a nostalgic event for me.  But this time there is ample consolation: at 3.30 in the morning on Tuesday a taxi will be taking me to Florence airport where I will board a plane first of all to Paris, whence I will be winging my way to Minneapolis,  Minnesota,  and then on to Rochester and Les and Patty. After a few days in sub cero temperatures we shall be flying off to New Orleans, and there will be news from there anon!

                                                                                

                                                   

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...