Buses, trains, ferry, buses and automobile..

 

...brought me finally, after 30 hours, from Siena to Cressida’s place in the little village of Platsa in the southern Peloponnese. 

This is just the round the corner from the beach where Anthony Quinn danced, and almost exactly where Nikos Kazantzakis lived.  Rather exciting for me to see the mountainous Greek coast appearing in the morning mists, having sailed from Bari at night. I have never been to Greece- that is, if one doesn’t count one afternoon in Athen’s airport in the 1970’s...I don’t even know how to say hello, please or thank you in this language, at first encounter so incomprehensible that it might as well be Chinese. When going into the details, it is of course a fascinating language, since so many words have their origin here...

This new adventure has come, like a lovely dessert after a splendid Christmas feast where the first course was London, getting my flat ready for Patty and Les and seeing my old London pals- catching some of the highlights of the World Cup even...

 The main course came in the shape of the Christmas days in Siena, spent in Hettie’s lovely flat with old Lyonnaise friends Monique and Pascal and new American friend Lisa. 

Three days of pure Christmas indulgence: a real Turkey was ordered and purchased from the little family butcher around the corner from where I will live- he told me that it was one of the two turkeys he had sold this Christmas, the other one to an English customer who had bought  one every year for the last twenty. I made a chestnut stuffing- it took me about 4 hours to peel the blasted things. But the first course was the Foie Gras and Champagne, courtesy of out French friends.  

Other traditional behaviour included the watching sitting replete with another glass of wine, watching A Christmas Carol (the version with George C. Scott); Love Actually and the  obligatory (for a Swede)   old Walt Disney classics such as Lady and the Tramp at the Neapolitan restaurant – the Italians love this one too!

 And, of course, walking around Siena which showed its  most splendid and sunny side for all those who were strolling around and having drinks on the Campo.

And tonight, according to Cressida and Paul, we are going to have New Year’s dinner at a restaurant at which apparently Nikos Kazanzakis used to eat – and dance!  

 

In Haste!

Sometimes, in the winter, when there is a sunny but cold day, the Campo becomes warmer and more welcoming than anywhere else... 

and that is when it is easy to sit there and nod off gratefully...oblivious of time but not space

But there has been activity too! Here are the sopranos (me at far back) of  my gospel choir, just before our performance in the venerable, ancient Santa Maria dei Servi, Siena, below:

but now a couple of hectic weeks in London, preparing my Ladbroke Grove flat for the arrival of Les and Patty on Saturday, and catching up with old friends.. here Sanjay:

                                                                                  

and here, last night, to the left of  me (I am wearing a mask because of bad cold) David, who has all the best tickets for all the best things in London.  We are in St Martins in the Field for Bach's Christmas Oratorio,  the Monteverdi choir and orchestra directed by John Eliot Gardiner. We both once more concurred the blindingly obvious: Bach is God.  

And we were in Heaven.

                                                         

More soon....

 

Some alarming discoveries... and a train journey.

When one starts poking around in a building that may be about 800 years old, there are inevitably surprises. It is like being on an archaeological dig. One finds the remnants of centuries of changes to the building, in layers upon layers, in changes upon changes. That is what makes walking around Siena so fascinating: seeing the mysterious archways  that succeed each other as one has supplanted the other, making way for new doorways and entrances during the centuries. I didn't realize that my flat too would have these mysteries to reveal... 

However, the other day Piero told me that all the plaster needed to come off the walls, because it would be falling off of its own accord otherwise... It has something to do with the fact that we have lightened the floor of all its centuries of paving tiles, which has made the whole structure move and change slightly, thus making everything unstable. Nevertheless we thought that we would be able to keep at least some of the ceilings, and Paolo was certain that we would find some lovely affrescati- those painted ceilings so often found in Siena's great buildings. 

That may well have been so. In the  picture above we see part of a ceiling which may have been hiding who knows what marvellous masterpieces. Alas, a third of the plaster on the ceiling above fell down during the night after this picture was taken, so the rest obviously had to come down too. We are now left with absolutely the bare bones of this flat, and those bones are extremely fragile: so much so that our engineer may tell us tomorrow that we need to reinforce all the walls with metal structures like the one below, between my bedroom and the bathroom, on top of which will be applied concrete. I dare not even think of the cost this might add to what has already become significantly more expensive than we planned for. 

It hardly bears thinking about... so let's not.  Let's move on instead to the pleasant journey last Sunday with the Treno Natura, an old steam train that took me, Bonnie and Antonella through the sunny Tuscan countryside to the little village of San Giovanni  d'Asso where the White Truffle (and other goodies) Christmas Market was in full swing. 

I had wanted to treat Antonella to something nice- she is my first and most faithful friend of all those I have met in Siena, and she has introduced me to many of my new activities- my trekking group, my Gospel choir, the Lions Club and I can't remember it all...She was due a treat. We had 4 course lunch and there was even some jolly entertainment on the train!

Bonnie was, as usual, being her lovely but demanding self ( impegnativa) jumping around in excitement at everything and wanting to lick everyone. Nevertheless, Italians really like dogs, at least as much as the English do, so no real problem there.

 A lovely day!

Autumnal pursuits

In the two weeks since I last wrote, autumn has finally settled in here, and today, rather than sitting at my favourite place under the tree with the lovely view, (occupied below by Hettie and her Labrador Bonnie)

                                                   

I have moved inside, the heating is finally switched on, and cold winds sweep around the narrow streets of Siena, while  rain is drumming on the window panes. Hettie has gone to the States for Thanks giving, so I am 'dog and cat sitting' , a task that is proving quite demanding- Bonnie is a young dog, very strong, and, like all labradors, (I am led to believe) very emotional, and in possession of an almost excessively loving heart. 

This predicament has caused her great distress in the last couple of days, when she has mourned Hettie  with the most heart breaking howls and sobs in the evening when I have gone to bed... she is also very intelligent, it seems, and last night, before I retired, I sat down with her and had a good chat, stroking her and reassuring her that she was not left alone; that Hettie would be back and also that I would take her for walkis in the morning. And this actually calmed her down, and she trusted me...!

So, apart from becoming, rather late in life, for the first time, a dog whisperer and dog walker , I have continued some traditional autumnal pursuits, like my oil painting course, where we are taught by a lady who is giving us a very classical introduction to oil painting according to the methods of the renaissance masters- i.e. underpainting with earth colours etc. Here below I am depicted, to the right in the painting by a fellow pupil,  carrying out my task, and in the next picture my 'work-in-progress' effort at trying to make some painterly sense of a rather uninteresting still life:

                            

Have also continued my  fraternization with the ONDA Contrada since I hope to become one of their number. When pondering how I could be of some use, it became clear that the best place for me at this point would be the Bandieraie, or the embroiderers. So I have been taken on by the sewing ladies, and here I am, mending ONDA flags, a Wednesday afternoon pursuit.

And yes, there is some progress at the flat too! This afternoon a geometra (surveyor) from IKEA is coming to measure up for my new kitchen!

 

Olives, Bologna and Gospel

I went to southern Sardinia, to Carloforte on the island of San Pietro, to help with the olive harvest at Eva and Leonardo's lovely place. One long hard day's work yielded 350kg of olives, which were taken to the mainland to be pressed the next day, yielding 45litres of rather yummy new oil. This was the first time for me, and I was clearly born to be a contadina, for I loved every minute of this hard working day, when you really felt you deserved Eva's  lovely, plentiful lunch, and when you relished the swim in the still warm Mediterranean at the end of the long day..

Then on to Bologna, and my lovely friends Patty and Les, who will be living in my London flat quite a lot in the future... Bologna gets better and better every visit- I love the colours and the shapes and the grand scale of the city- so different from Siena.

The shapes an curves of Siena are more monochrome, but still enchanting to me, and I spend quite some time now on the streets with my sketchbook.

And other activities are becoming important- the below is the Gospel choir I have joined! We are giving a concert at the end of November, and also a couple at  Christmas, I believe..

and most weekends include some trekking- here yesterday in the Crete Senese with the walking group, where I get plenty of Italian practise in...
                                      

Famous sons of Siena's Contradas

 Or at least two of them: Let's start with Ettore Bastianini, the famous Barytone and the pride of the Pantera contrada. At the end of his illustrous carreer he became the Capitano of Pantera, and at his untimely death from throat cancer in 1967 his American wife took over that position. To celebrate the 100 year's anniversary of his birth, the Pantera laid on a free staged performance of Tosca at the lovely 18th century Teatro dei Rinnovati, situated inside the Palazzo Pubblico. The role of Scarpia was one of Bastianini's most frequently performed. 

                                                       

This was all very generous and nice of course, and Hettie and I went along happily. No one told us where we were supposed to sit, so we went in and installed ourselves on  a couple of good seats a few rows from the front, where we remained, unchallenged, until a few minutes before the beginning of the performance, when a couple of officials arrived, in the company of some important Contradioli, and we were unceremoniously told to get out and take the seats that were allocated non-Contradioli. Now, this did not go down well- of course I would not have minded in the slightest if we had been told where to sit in the first place! As it now happed, I got angry - in Italian- once more in this theatre... (see December 11, 2021)

I'll have to watch it, I don't want to get a bad reputation after all... so, we were bundled away up in the gods, and this is what we looked like:

                                         

                        below a bad shot of Scarpia's demise: 'Davanti a Lui tremava Tutta Roma!' (some Pantera flags in the background...)

                                                  

            And now onto my own territory- that is to say the ONDA Contrada, where, in the crypt of the San Giuseppe Church, is housed the Museum of the ONDA with the original plaster sculptures, from which were made, in bronze or marble, the oeuvre  of their  most famous son, the nineteenth century sculptor Giovanni Dupre.  

                                              

                                                         

I went this morning at 10 to a lecture in this museum,  and it was really quite interesting- Dupre was regarded as something of an innovator in his day, however conventional his work may seem to us. His dead Abel, plaster cast below, was considered shocking in it realism at the time- the marble is  placed in  the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.           

                                                 

  Dupre said that he wanted to find beauty in reality, not try and enhance the real into something ideal, which was the contemporary approach to art. 

I had only seen one of his works, the lovely little sleeping girl on a  funerary monument   housed in the Palazzo Pubblico. Here is another funerary sculpture, regarded as his masterpiece: the Pieta, at the Misericordia cemetary in Siena where we went after the lecture, a short stroll through the Porta Tufi. I was chatting amiably with Simonetta, one of the pillars of the ONDA, who thinks I have to become an Ondaiola...                                                           

                                            

Feeling suitably  inspired by the morning's artistic pursuits I decided to continue in the same spirit and went to the new exhibition at Santa Maria Della Scala: Arte Senese, from the collection of the Monte di Paschi di Siena. And here I found another little gem, an Amor,  from Giovanni Dupre, who excelled at children:                                                               

              And then onto the Campo, where there always seems to be something going on- this afternoon it was the competition between the children of all the Contradas: the new generation of drummers and Alfieris, the flag throwers with their intricate  manoevres (those that used to exercise under my window at Via Roma...) And here are the young Ondaioli, doing their best... we will se tomorrow who were the lucky winners!

Well, actually, it just came up on Facebook, and here they are : SELVA! Bravi!!!

 

Views and Stripes

And as far as the first of these items go, this is now 'my' view from the garden at Hettie's place. One can see far across the Crete Senese from her great flat in the Tartuca contrada, where she is kindly letting me stay in her guest room until I will move into my new abode- inchallah, in the early New Year? I will be 'dog sitting' her lovely labrador Bonnie in November, and in fact 'cat sitting' too, for she has two cats. So my days in Via Roma have come to an end- a whole year in that flat which became so familiar, and in which  I was able to welcome many friends in the past year. 

Hetties place is just around the corner from my new flat, so I can pop in just about every day and check progress.

And from one great view to another spectacular one: this is the view from the Piazza dei Martire in Volterra, one of the many towns which I had  not yet visited in Tuscany. And what a town! It is quite breath taking- the spectacular scenery during the bus journey between Colle Val d'Elsa and Volterra literally brought tears of joy and amazement to my eyes- and this wonderful Roman town itself- even older than Siena, and - dare I say it- even more beautiful perhaps..

Here too, one sees a lot of those black and white stripes that make Siena Cathedral so spectacular:

It was market day in Volterra, where I stayed for lunch before heading off to Cecina on the bus, in pursuit of more black and white stripes: 

Those strange flat stones, found  on the beach at Cecina, which I hope to use somehow in one of the bathrooms at Casato di Sopra...

If you zoom in above you will see...I filled up a little rucksack while some people  were still sun bathing.

P.S. Forgot! Who is Hettie? Well, she's a Texan friend of a friend, introduced to me recently- she, just like I,  have decided to make Siena her home- at least for the foreseeable few years. She is part of a growing set of friends, both expats and Italians. I am not used to seeing mostly women though, but this seems to be the way here...