Back Home!

Flying in over Florence last night from Copenhagen, I continued this morning on the bus through a  ravishing Tuscan landscape draped in autumn colours.  I arrived back to Siena this afternoon, surprised and a little amused at how much this felt like a homecoming.

I returned to this my new adopted city after two weeks of celebrations in England and in Sweden. They were celebrations of a very different kind- first the sixtieth birthday bash for my beautiful, talented  and exuberant friend Imogen, who is mad about rabbits and lives in a beautiful farmhouse in the Oxfordshire countryside. 'Party animals' was the dress code:

  

In Sweden a more sombre mode took hold  as I arrived in Torekov, my childhood summer Paradise on the West Coast, for the funeral of my dear Aunt Birgit, the mother of that whole great tribe of my Engineer cousins. She had lived a happy, long life and died after a short illness at the age of 94. It was a beautiful, happy funeral, if that is possible- a celebration of her life and legacy. She had the grace and kindness to take me in as a rebellious and difficult teenage girl of 15, and I stayed with her, my Uncle Ebbe and my cousins for my last two years in Sweden, and therefore I am now privileged to be wedged firmly into this great family- 

When  I go back to spend  time with them, I get my once yearly dose of proximity to children- I never ever have any interaction with very young members of the human race elsewhere- but the Engineers have multiplied tremendously and their children have too. There is always at least ten children of various sizes running around playing with their cousins- it is hugely fun. Here is a little future Engineer, in his funeral outfit.       

                        

Pelle, to the right above by the old summerhouse before the funeral, is the head of the family now since Faster Birgit has left us. 

He and his wife Nanny are of course my co-conspirators in the intended Pensione here in Siena. And there are two more- Les and Pat from Minnesota... we are all meeting up tomorrow here.  On Monday we will all visit  once more  THE OFFICE...

                             

and I have also arranged for us to look at that wonderful building I call THE GOOD GOVERNMENT...The owners who are restoring it  have told me that since what they offered me originally  was too small for the pensione-to-be  we can have the floor below too in this building which stands here since two hundred years before it featured on the  fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico below...

Perhaps  decisions will be made this week- more soon!