''Thunderstorm Warning for Italy. Toscana Severe Weather Expected"

 That is what it says, ominously,  on the weather forecast for today.

 And yesterday the Palio was postponed because the skies opened just before the Corteo Storico  was about to start.

The umbrellas above, however, were first used for a different function by  those  patient and expectant crowds who had installed themselves since early morning at the Campo, in order to get a good viewing spot. The umbrellas were to  protect from the hot sun which streamed down all morning...

                                                                       

           There were many disappointments- my lovely young English guests Theo and Will had to leave this morning without seeing the Palio... but they were with me for the great dinner in the ONDA Contrada and enjoyed the Provas and even got to see the charge of the mounted Carabinieri, so they left with some good memories I believe...

According to the Corriere di Siena, there have been 37 postponements of the Palio since 1655. When it happens, a green flag is put up on the Palazzo Pubblico. Four times the postponement has had to last for two days because of severe weather.

 Who knows what will happen this afternoon. I am all packed for my trip to Mali, leaving on the bus for Rome tonight. I will have time to see the Palio, which, if it runs, is expected at 18.40 this evening...more later!

Don't quite know where to start...

Let's be  sensible and  adhere to the chronological order of events:

 it started with 

the Whistle-Stop trip to London, where I met up with my Minnesota friends Patty and Les, (middle above) who were interested in seeing my Ladbroke Grove flat... more of this later, hopefully.

 They were also interested in being immersed in London life, and particularly in what happens in and around Notting Hill. 

This desire of course led us to lovely restaurants and happening watering holes, as well as irresistible Portobello antique jewellery stands...and on Sunday we ventured into Mayfair and Mass at the lovely Jesuit church in Farm Street, where we met up with my old friend Andrew, above left, and picked up, in the pew behind, Pieroluigi, an Italian lawyer who joined us for  lunch at L'Artiste Muscle in Shepherd's Market, where he  regaled us with hilarious and  incredible tales, purportedly all true; like the one about the Arch Duchess in the bunkbed and Captain Kerr abseiling down the Union Jack...

Now back in Siena, where in the Campo the grandstands are up; the  tufo is down on the pavement, and the mattresses line the San Martino bend once more; and where there is palpable excitement in the air since there are only four days left to PALIO! 

I have two young Englishmen staying with me, and decided to choose the ONDA Contrada for us to have the Cena della Prova Generale. It is of course 'my' territory, once I move into my new  flat.

I went to buy the tickets with my new friend the Texan Hettie, who also lives here in Siena, and who will join us for the meal. The Contradioli who sold us the tickets in the Onda Headquarter couldn't have been nicer... when I told them I wasn't a tourist but I would be living in Casato di Sopra they took us down to the garden/terrace with  the bar, and invited us for a drink- I was introduced as the new contradiola...although I will have to pay my membership fee and register of course- but I was really surprised at how friendly they were!

The big Onda Contrada dinners are held all along the Via Giovanni Dupre, named after the 19th century sculptor who is the most famous of the sons of the Onda. 

And finally, Hettie and I wandered off to the Palazzo Pubblico, where inside the Cortile the Mayor had just unveiled the August Palio banner, which is the prize for the victorious Contrada in Tuesday's  Palio.

                                       
 And tomorrow morning starts the Provas, when the horses and the fantini can try out the race course around the Campo.

Swedish TV- channel 4?

 And during all this summer fun, where are we with the flat? Well, we have started knocking the walls down, but work has once more ground to a temporary halt. We are waiting for the Town Council to give us permission to put a container on the street in Via di Sambuco and a 'shoot'  from the top window to get rid of all the rubbish... 

So, at the moment, niente si fa...

However, a Swedish TV programme- channel 4- might be interested in making a little feature about it- it is one of those programmes that follows various people abroad in their building projects.. And I have actually already featured for  Swedish Channel 4 (show -off!) see blog post 20 March 2013: 

http://djennedjenno.blogspot.com/2013/03/

when I became a short lived celebrity in Mali because I was on the spot and could report on what was happening during the French intervention after the events of the 2012 coup and Jihadist invasion of northern Mali. The lovely Stefan  Borg, news anchor for channel 4 is here seen interviewing Baba in the bogolan studio in Djenne:

 And since my director/producer friend the Irish Peter was just here with a top notch camera on his mobile, he was able to film me in the Casato flat - top above- when I make my bid to be part of this TV series. Let's see what they say!

Meanwhile, have decided to try out a long standing but not yet created idea on the large interior northern wall of what in Tuscan speech is called the Tinello - the dining room. I want to put up posters and then tear them down - at least ten layers. so I create a sort of mosaic of interesting bits- better than the above.. but it was the best I could find...It might go quite well with the polished cement floor I have decided on for more or less the whole flat. The Swedish producer thought it was quite punk she said..? I wonder what Paolo will think of it...? 

Siena Summer fun

There is lots of it! 

Meanwhile Italy is of course imploding- the government has once again fallen ( it was the fault of the 5 Star Movement. I am very cross with them. I liked Draghi.) However, here people are shrugging their shoulders, eating, dancing and enjoying the heatwave as if nothing had happened...

The Contradas take it in turn to open up their large gardens, and every night for a fortnight or so, le tout Sienne visit the particular Contrada whose turn it is to entertain. There  the wine flows, the live music plays, and the grills, manned by the Contradioli volunteers, produce vast quantities of Salsicci ( they really are very good at sausages here.. although I maintain they don't know how to make bread in Tuscany...) and Costolette alla Griglia etc., consumed at  long trestle tables set up on the grassy slopes. Here I am at BRUCO (the silk worm) Contrada with Italian friends from my walking group.

After all that meat the tradition  is to jump up and down waving one's arms in the air frenetically for an hour or so to the live band - this particular night they did excellent cover versions of hits by the  Beatles, Stones and the Who etc,...below it looks like daylight, but it is only strong illumination...

An English (oops, Irish as a matter of fact) friend from London kept me company for three days here, and made me laugh- Peter Cavanagh, 

who also partook of the Contrada evenings with me, and introduced me to a new friend, the American Hettie, who lives here too and here she is below with her German nephew Louis at last night's Hoe-Down at the Nicchio  (The Shell) Contrada, where just as much Salsicci and wine was consumed...and just as much dancing took place.
                                                 

And the best of all: I have started to ride again, after some years break- Here below in the manege, but I now go on lovely treks along the Via Fancigena in the early evening with Laura, the manager of this stable, close to Siena. The horses are MUCH BIGGER than I was used to in Mali.

Bathing

Paolo made me laugh today.

 I have insisted on having a bath tub somewhere in the flat. First it was to be what is apparently grandly called a 'Vasca Pompeiana', which is a slipper sit-up bath, because there was no space in what will become my bathroom. I rather liked that idea. From my  Vasca Pompeiana

I would be able to admire the view of the Duomo; a candle lit, a glass of Prosecco in my hand, on a winter's night. 

However, I had to abandon my dream in order to create  space for  the rather more prosaic impiante idrico sanitario.,or the water heating system...

But naturally, neither I nor Paolo gave up completely.  And a new bathroom idea was formed, this time on the other side of the flat, and this time involving an antique bath with lion's feet, sitting in the very bedroom itself, with a view over Basilica of Santa Maria del Servi (in fact the Vadimontone Contrada head quarters...) and above is Paolo's drawing of me in the bath, with my glass of Prosecco, enjoying my view over just that. 

This was supposed to be accompanied by the sound track of Otis Redding's Dock of the Bay, the lyrics of which Paolo  had changed slightly:

"I'm sittin' in the tub of the room. watchin' the view at noon

Oh, I'm just sittin' in the tub of the room, Wastin'Time...

Other news from Italia include an outing, yesterday,  with my trekking group Camminando a Quercegrossa- only this time the walking was done in the water on the beach of the Parco della Sterpaia.

We joined a large multitude on this sandy beach where the beach umbrellas seemed to go on forever and  would probably have covered  more or less the entire coast of Tuscany as everyone tried to find a little cooling relief in the waves-

And then, tired; sun-baked and happy, we all decamped to a little country Trattoria on the route back to Siena and had things like  Tagliatelle al Cinghiale...

 

Finally!

These decidedly lacklustre pictures are not as boring as they seem...on the contrary! The first is the notice put up on the front door at 11 Casato di Sopra, announcing to all and sundry that renovation work has started, and that the Architect Firm Ingeniu is in charge.

I arrived to have a look at the first day's work , and found that two chaps had already dismantled all the interior doors and built-in wardrobes etc. So as not to get in the way, I decided to decamp into the kitchen and try my hand at the view for the first time... The Torre del Mangia seems to be in competition with the leaning tower of Pisa... oh, well, there will be plenty of time to try again...

 

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 ...