Deepest January

When more or less nothing happens in Siena...

It rains, it is as cold as London, there is no one in my little mini Pensioni.

Next year I will definitely go away! 

My leg is getting better though, and I am using just one crutch, managing to hobble down to the ONDA Stanzina, where there is at least something happening which makes me feel just marginally useful: the winter mending of the ONDA ceremonial outfits. Ivana, who is in charge, plays lots of old recordings of the ONDA choir.  Mostly male voices  sing lovely, sentimental songs about the Contrada, about Siena and some about love...very Senese, very Italian...

       

One rather lovely thing to do here in Tuscany in Deepest Winter is to go to one of the numerous hot springs, and I did just that yesterday. I took the bus to the little town in the Crete Senese called  Rapolani Terme and spent the day at Terme Antica Querciolaia, a lovely Spa where one floats around in the bath-hot water, or getting pummeled by powerful water jets, while the air temperature is around 3-4 degrees C. The picture below doesn't really do it justice: the lovely thing about it is all the steam that surrounds one when the heat of the water meets the chill of the air, creating a dream like atmosphere.                                                  

                                                             

I speak to no one. 

 I float about listening to fragments of conversations, such as a very long winded one from a group of, I assume, financiers or accountants who talked about nothing but money every time I floated bye; I try and guess the age of a rather splendid looking woman with her handsome, much younger boyfriend; I experience a wave of what must be a long dormant mothering instinct beginning to stir while watching the excitement of a skinny little boy of four or so with his blow up swimming 'wings'; I observe the young, and not so young,  couples smooch and whisper things to each other;

I see so many very Italian faces, so beautiful in that very Italian way: young men who look as if they have just stepped out of a Renaissance portrait.

I will go back next week...