The Umbrellas of Siena

The Umbrellas were out in force yesterday. It was a big day for Siena, called the Estrazione delle Contrade,  when the ten Contrade which will compete in this long-awated Palio of the 2nd of July were decided upon by the drawing of lots, separating the lucky ones from the seven that will not run this time. 

After about ten days of nothing but blue skies with temperatures creeping up towards the mid-thirties, the skies decided to open up. But nothing could dampen the spirits of Siena's inhabitants- and the excitement on the Campo had reached fever pitch by  19.00 when the windows opened on the Palazzo Pubblico and four trumpeters became visible,  sounding a fanfare which announced that the drawing of lots had been accomplished. The first Contrada Flag was now put up on the facade- It was DRAGO which caused a mighty roar to go up from that section of the crowd; a new fanfare followed  and the next flag went up until the last flag, that of the TORRE made the ten complete. 

A great evening for Siena of course, and I took part in the excitement in the company of Carol and Antonella, in whose jolly company I  managed to forget my sorrows all evening.

And what are those sorrows? Well, we have not been able to start the project yet...although I have spent interesting and creative times with Paolo, putting the last touches to the project - it is fun to watch the drawings take shape on the screen in his studio- we are ready to go! BUT alas, we have had to deal with the other people in my building who called an emergency meeting and were very worried and upset and in fact quite aggressive towards Paolo, our engineer and me- even though we have done everything by the book. They demanded new drawings and new reassurances that the work will be done according to the rules etc- which is of course no problem, but it slowed down everything yet again. 

 However, the one thing that is causing me great frustration and worry and which gives me no wish to write anything here is the fact that the all-important document from the UK government called the S1,  has not arrived although it was sent from England on the 11th of April. The arrival of this document will unleash a series of  essential events:  it  will enable me to be registered with the Italian Health Service; this  will  give me the right to register as an Italian resident which will in turn enable us to present the renovation project to the Commune,  the Town Council. 

Nothing can be done until this blasted paper arrives. I cry every afternoon when I get back from School and there is nothing in the letter box. Tomorrow I shall have to ring them again- that is a process which takes about an hour of waiting before they pick up. Even when and if this finally arrives, it will then take us at least another month before the project is given its go ahead by the Commune!

I guess it is clear why I don't feel in the mood to write here...

More Tuscan weekend delights

And it staarted with a Sagre del Fritto on Friday night- a sort of  hoe-down in a village close by when everyone gets together and cooks and eats- and then gets down to some dancing with the local band.  This was the village of one of Paolo's employees, and the  whole architecture studio - and family and friends- were invited to this great fry-up, where delicious food was enjoyed in great quantity. 

Below Paolo and daughter.

To try and mitigate some of these excesses, the Saturday was spent once more with my trekking pals, as we made another foray into the divine country around Siena- this time into what is called the Chianti Senese. 

 

Toscanizzimo!

It was a fun weekend. Well, I had expected the Friday night to be memorable, because that was the first time that I invited anyone to my new flat in 11 Casato di Sopra, but  only a few, because Paolo (my architect) thinks we are going to run into  problems with the condominio- i.e the other residents of the building concerning our intended work, and he wants me to be very, very well behaved. I did not see why I couldn't offer some friends an aperitivo in my own flat, so I went ahead. And above is my guest book , which had its first entries- I hope there will be many!

                                                      

 Carol took some inspired shots ofrom my balcony...and for the first time I saw what my view is like when the sun has set and darkness invades the city around me...

       

A few friends continued for a jolly wine flowing dinner at my present flat, Via Roma. On the Saturday I felt inclined to indulge in what my friend Cressida calls a 'robe day'...

I was rather brusquely awoken by the sounds of drums under my window again on Sunday morning, as the Valdimontone Contrada had seemingly not had enough parading last week, but were out in force again, and as usual decided to make the space just below my window the centre of their drumming and flag- throwing activities:

                                                 

Since I am always a happy spectator of these Senese events, I did not mind, and that was in fact lucky because soon they were joined by the whole of the Oca Contrada, whose turn it was to parade around town this Sunday:

Having enjoyed this interlude from  my window I went off to mass at the Cathedral, with every intention returning back to the flat and spending a useful and peaceful afternoon at home, engaging in some neglected domestic tasks like hoovering, dusting and doing the washing. That soon proved to be unfeasible, when I received an invitation from Antonella which was just too tempting: did I want to go to an Agriturismo place situated in a village called Panzano in Chianti for a wine and oil tasting? Well, who wouldn't? 

Beautiful scenery of course, with lovely Tuscan little eats to go with the Chianti Classico- I learned a new word- and these 'izzimo' superlatives always make me smile: it was all Toscanizzimo!

 

Sadness and Joy

The week began with the  sad news of the death of my dear friend John Wilkins who was a regular member of our little reading group in London during the last few years when we  read, every other week, the entire Divine Comedy. He was the distinguished journalist and editor of the Tablet, a highly respected Catholic weekly magazine for the two last decades of the last millenium. It was a privilege to know him and I will always miss his kindness, our conversations which were always such fun and so illuminating; I will miss the mischievous glint in his eye and remember  his laughter...

https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/15349/john-wilkins-former-tablet-editor-dies-aged-85

Spring has arrived, finally, after was has been described here as an unusually cold April, the last day of which I went hiking again with my Italian walking enthusiasts. This time into the splendid country of the Val di Farma.

It was quite a demanding walk of ca 15 k in steep terrain this time- but the reward was great  as we ended up soaking  in the hot springs of the Terme di Petriolo: 

And as if this was not already enough to create the perfect weekend, Sunday presented an opportunity to reconnect with my dormant equestrian self: my new friend, the American Carol- right below- picked me up on Sunday morning at the Porta Romana and drove us  to her riding club close by Volterra, where she keeps her lovely Hunky- an apt name for her handsome white and very big horse! After her private dressage  lesson with the Austrian proprietor below, we went off for a perfect lunch in a little village Osteria... wondering what we have done to deserve all of this ...

                                                     

And that was not all- once back in Siena I met up with Satomi for an aperitivo at the Campo and then moved on to the Duomo where there was a concert in honour of St. Catherine of Siena, whose anniversary was being celebrated. However, I had missed the main attraction in the morning which was, apparently, a procession involving all the Contradas in full regalia, carrying a reliquary containing the thumb of St Catherine through the streets of Siena. Hmmm, nevermind... 

                                                                                     

Happiness is a friendly Italian Civil Servant

After those few days when we were granted a little foretaste of summer, the skies opened again yesterday and a Biblical deluge swept over Siena all day. But that didn't matter, because I had a very successful morning at the Anagrafe with my little lawyer girl Valentina, the one I was castigating so viciously last week...I now take it all back, unconditionally. 

The Anagrafe is the Registry Office, the place where you have to go when you want to become a resident. It is situated in the Palazzo Pubblico, above, and has been for the last 700 years- probably in the same rooms, even. I went there in October or November to ask how to go about becoming a resident, and was given an atrocious reception- multo antipatico! - which gave me a deep anxiety about the whole place, and actually made doubt my chances of ever being able to get anywhere in the labyrinthine bureaucracy which is the Italian civil service. 

But the meeting with the Capo, which had been arranged through Valentina, went swimmingly. He, also a lawyer, probably in his last couple of years before retirement, bespectacled and grey suited, was friendliness itself. We spent a pleasant hour in his office, which was of course much longer than what was strictly necessary to impart the information we needed. Nevertheless, since he seemed to enjoy our company, the conversation flowed happily, and  at one point turned to the laws and regulations which are changing in response to the developments in modern life, for example in order to accommodate the fact that Muslims are able to have several legal wives. This somehow meandered into  the gender debate. Even in Italy -quite a conservative country, after all-  there will have to be forms for people to fill in where the gender choice is not simply 'Female' or 'Male.'  The Capo then explained  that it would no longer  be necessary to go through a sex change operation in order to claim that one was the opposite of one's biological sex. One will  soon be able to claim it simply for reasons of personal preference.  I could, for instance, decide that I am  a man, and relatively soon I would be able to enter that on my resident application. No one would be able to dispute it, and physical evidence to the contrary would be disregarded. 

I am no philosopher, but this seems to be straying into areas of fundamental definitions of 'what is truth'?  And what if I decided that my personal preference was to be in possession of a PHD from Harvard University, would I have the right to declare that too? Now, let me explain that I have no problem with sex changes at all,  but I think that people  actually  have to have  the operation if they want to change their sex...At this point I, in my old fashioned way, exclaimed:

' Ma questo e completamente pazzo! 

Valentina and the Capo laughed heartily at this, because I think they  secretly agreed with me, although, being lawyers, they were not able to air their opinions so openly...The Capo ended up telling us exactly what we wanted to hear- he will personally make sure that I  get the residency and he will instruct his people to get on with it! I said I would make sure he was invited to the opening party at 11 Casato di Sopra.

After this charming interlude the blessed Valentina and I emerged from the dreaded Anagrafe into the deluge on the Piazza del Campo - she went on her way and since I had forgotten my umbrella I was forced to spend two hours in my favourite bar and have two Campari Sprizas!

 

Easter in Tuscany

Since I have now been the proud owner of 11 Casato di Sopra for over a month, I had hoped that we might have started to work on the extensive reshaping of the place that Paolo and I have planned... However, things move slowly here. Several permissions need to be granted first- such as the all important agreement from the other owners of the building; then there is the permission from the Comune to start the work, and to install a building rubble escape from one of the windows down to the Vicolo del Sambuco below- one of the most narrow and one of the steepest of all the Siena alleyways...

But there are other complications too. I absolutely have to have my residency here sorted out before building work starts.  This is proving more of a puzzle to solve than anticipated, and it may well be aggravated by my very nice lawyer girl- I call her a 'girl' because she looks as if she's just out of high school. When I present her with a problem or a question, she always says: 'Well, I don't know, but I will find out...' Now my patience is running short here. I would like a lawyer who says' This is how it is done'. Is that too much to ask? I might have to find someone else. In fact I WILL HAVE TO. 

But let's talk about something else:

Easter, for instance. 

Spring has just arrived properly to Siena. It is very warm in the sun, and in the evenings it has been warm enough to sit outside again. The streets of Siena are filled with happy people eating, drinking and celebrating Easter and the arrival of spring. 

But on Good Friday, at 21.00, just when all the happy crowds were enjoying a meal, they were presented with something which must have seemed rather chilling: 

I had gone to the Good Friday service at the Duomo, and did not realize I therefore become part of a 'Procession of Penitents'. I was given a candle to carry and told to take  my place in the congregation which followed behind  about twenty monks in hooded black cassocks  bearing lit torches and  three great Crosses.  During  our  slow progress through the streets of Siena the Ave Maria and the Pater Noster, as well as various mournful chants were intoned- we must have looked like a grim reminder of the Plague Year...or maybe, more pertinently, a reminder of the danger we all live under this Easter? Here below a bad picture of the Procession leaving the Cathedral:

Easter Saturday was filled with sun and light as I took the bus to Arezzo, deciding that I needed to explore more of Tuscany.  How lovely that Piazza Grande! 

                                      And of course the beautiful Piero della Francesca frescoes in the Basilica di San Francesco.                                                                                                 

The Easter Sunday Mass in the Arezzo cathedral was packed, an occasion full of light and hope, while  at the same time transfused with urgent prayers for  peace and for Ukraine... It was conducted by the Archbishop of Arezzo, an avuncular figure who strolled down the aisle and spoke to the congregation as if he was chatting to neighbours on a Sunday morning over the garden fence.

I found out something funny about Tuscany: it is a tradition to bring ordinary eggs to Mass on Easter Sunday in little parcels. They need to be blessed, and then eaten at Easter lunch, as a good omen for the coming year!
 

Palm Sunday as Eco Warrior and Beach Comber

 Palm Sunday was a lovely sunny day in Tuscany.  But I did not know that of course when the alarm went off at 5.20 and I stumbled out on the dark empty streets of Siena to board the bus to Colle di Val d'Elsa, where I met Caterina -in front in the picture above- who drove us to the little town of Cecina, in the Province of Livorno on the coast. 

I had decided to join her little group of  eco warriors https://www.plasticfreeonlus.it/ who wants to free the world of Plastic. We, however, contented ourselves this morning with the more modest task of freeing three parking lots in this small town of its plastic and other rubbish- it is quite surprising how much stuff can be collected in just a couple of hours- as the harvest above shows.

                                        

After the morning's effort Caterina and I felt we deserved some seaside fun- in the shape of a stroll along the beach, from which you can see the islands of Gorgona and Capraia.  Although the nights and mornings are still really quite cold here, as soon as the sun comes out it is glorious and warm. We saw only one intrepid swimmer,  while many people were snoozing in the sun and  getting ready for summer...

The beach at Cecina Mare is covered with strange , stripey, flat stones, and I was trying to figure out what I could possibly do with them- could they become a bathrooom floor perhaps? Or even the walls?
 

We then had Campari Spritz at  Da Antonio a Mare, right on the beach, followed by lovely seafood- I had Octopus and Caterina  had Mussels.  Polpo and Cozze,

Once back in Siena, I stopped in the Campo, which was covered with happy  people enjoying  the last afternoon sun of this glorious Palm Sunday.