A Robe Day

                                                   

...is what they call this sort of day in New Orleans, if I remember correctly. Of course my last trip to that lovely city was some time ago, before Catrina wreaked its deadly havoc.

A  Robe Day  is the sort of day when one doesn't ever really get up properly, normally because of some over indulgence the night before. In my case that is perhaps true, but this need for a Robe Day was not ONLY caused by the double- ok- triple Campari Sprizas consumed here on the balcony last night with my theatre group friends before our customary wine flowing dinner.  It was also induced by a couple of weeks living under some persistent curse- as if all the most tedious gremlins had decided to hold their annual meeting and had chose ME as their meeting place, to try out new methods with which  to annoy people most efficiently: 

Important DHL documents went missing, bank transfers did not arrive; bank accounts with well tried and tested IBANS suddenly became unreachable.

Some gangster called Johnny Rizzo (a good gangster name) who had been entrusted with bringing a sofa to me from Carlo Forte in Sardinia, and to whom I had paid 750E up front for this job (I did not know he was a gangster then) never brought the sofa and pocketed the 750E. When I, finally, having written increasingly irate emails asking for my money back without response, arranged for my lawyer to write a letter to him, he countered with a letter from HIS lawyer to me, saying that I owed HIM 4500 E! He had, according to this letter, been backwards and forwards to Sardinia three times, had never been able to meet up with my friends because 'they were not there'! He wanted compensation and damages!!!

Meanwhile my friends  were able to come up with plenty of evidence - Whatsapp messages, audio messages etc- and I also provided plenty, which was all duly sent off with another letter from my lawyer, telling them to get stuffed- in appropriate legal language of course. So, this was some ten days ago and we have heard nothing back so we are beginning to hope it MAY be the end of the story...

AND there is more in this tedious saga of the gremlins' general meeting: I was supposed to have something called an Ablation, which is a procedure to get one's heart ticking in the proper rythm, and I was in need of this operation. I had waited months for this, and last Wednesday I finally went to the hospital and the procedure was due on the Thursday morning. I have already had this operation, eight years ago, in London, and that time I was given general anaestetic, and thankfully slept through the whole thing.  But this time, when they had already wheeled my trolley to the operation theatre, and were about to start the procedure- which involves making holes in one's groin, threading electrodes up through the body to the heart, and then somehow burning our certain areas to jolt the heart into proper action again- I realized that I was not going to be given general anaethetic but had to remain awake during the procedure! 

I am afraid I panicked. I am normally far too brave for my own good but this really rattled me. In floods of tears, I was unable to remain absolutely still, and they had to abandon the procedure. Instead they performed an electro chock, which I have also had before but which is not so invasive but

also not so efficient. As I write this I am still feeling my heart beeting normally, though... who knows? 

A lot can happen in a Week!

Well, last Sunday it was Easter- here ,above, the beginning of my Contrada Easter egg collection, which will nestle among the crystals in my 'chandelier'  and be completed next year, inchallah... 

Easter Sunday was a beautiful sunny day when Giuseppe - our Sicilian from the Theatre group- picked me up at the Porta San Marco and we went off deep into the Crete Senese for Easter lunch at the gorgeous little village of Chiusure, high up in the hills, a stone's throw away from the beautiful Abbazia di Monte Olivieto Maggiore. The Campari Spritz was welcome after my  non-alcohol lent observance.

Talking of the Theatre group: here are two other members, just last Friday, still rehearsing that Alan Ayckbourn play on the park benches. They are honing and polishing and getting better, but I now firmly believe they need to perform it and we need to start something else... 

But is is still fun to have them here of course: every Friday I make soup, trying not to repeat myself and come up with new variations. 

 If I have any paying guests in my rooms, they are always invited too- many accept and others prefer to go into town for dinner. If that is the case we normally try and keep the noise down later when we  rehearse- they are quite a noisy bunch- and move into my bedroom after dinner. 

This soup tradition is rather venerable. ( It just dawned on me, that I have in  fact told you all this soup story before ... oh, well, here you have it, once more...) 

I started it with my chess club when I lived in Islington in the late 80s, early 90's. It then migrated into the Ladbroke Grove Tuesday get-togethers, which some used to call, rather pretentiously,  'Sophie's Salon', where soup was always served at ten.  This tradition further migrated, after my return back to London from Mali, into a literary get together, when we read through the whole of Dante's Divine Comedy during three years, and there was soup then too...

And that eventually became our ZOOM meetings every other Wednesday for  short stories, during Covid when meeting up in real life was impossible, so no soup then.. but since, every time I manage to get back to London we meet up, and this is just what happened this last week: three nights in London because I have decided to sell my Ladbroke Grove flat finally-  one of these nights with the Short story group, and more soup... 

When I meet up with my old London friends I often reflect on how much I enjoy their company, how easy it is to laugh with them, and how much I do miss my English friends- I love it here in Siena, but there is not doubt that I am an outsider here still- the easy banter, the laughter of a London evening still escapes me here, maybe because of the language barrier I still experience. 

Once back here is Siena I find that the Scirocco has caused havoc on my balcony- Sahara sand on the pavement and on the folding chairs!  It is the same wind that I know from Mali- just from a different direction.  In Mali it is called the Harmattan-  it is a North easterly wind that brings fine Sahara sand- and here the Scirocco comes from the south of course.

And with spring comes the first stirrings of the Contradas...after their winter hibernation the 17 contradas sent out their  alfieri to bear their  ceremonial  banners at the solemn Mass in the Duomo this morning, celebrated by Cardinal Lojudice.

So, Siena starts to reverberate once more to the sound of the ancient drums, the harbingers of the summer season...