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...