Estrazione- the Luck of the Draw

 Last night the first Act was played out for the August Palio: the Campo filled up again with an expectant crowd awaiting the Estrazione, which is when the flags of the Contradas that will take part are revealed, one by one, from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico, after the spin of the lottery wheel.

They are good at theatricals here- and the drama unfolded after the customary trumpet fanfare from the windows. Three Contradas were to be drawn- there were already seven who had a place secure, according to the complicated, and -to me- still rather nebulous rules of the Palio.

After the trumpet fanfare was heard, total silence and palpable tension in the Piazza- and then the light blue and white banner of ONDA appeared- and that is 'mine' of course! Great eruption of joy from the Onda section of the square, when they all broke into that Siena song...

The second flag to appear was that of the  SELVA, and that too pleased me, for quite arcane reasons:

I have mentioned that my little literary group read through the Divina Commedia in London for some three years. Well, as you know, it starts: 

Nel mezzo del cammin di  nostra vita/ mi ritrovai per una Selva oscura /che la diritta via  era smarrita

(of course, I am not pretending that we read it in Italian!) 

Selva, then, is the old Italian  name for forest, the place where Dante got lost when he was  having his mid- life crisis. For such tenuous and sentimental reasons I have always had a soft spot for the Selva contrada... Today's Italian word for forest is Bosco.

The third Contrada, making  the  ten, was Chiocciola, or the snail. 

And the flat business? Well, false alarm yesterday. Maybe tomorrow, says Pietro, the Capo of the construction company ...