Certaldo

 Another sunny Saturday in Tuscany- just made for some more exploration. It is hard to go wrong here- whichever direction you strike out you are bound to stumble across something lovely...  This time I had researched a little, and had   chosen the little town of Certaldo, halfway to Florence and reachable with a 35 min. train journey straight northwards from Siena. 

                                                   

It is a small, sleepy town.  Its  modern, unremarkable neighbourhoods  nestle at the bottom of a steep hill, at the top of which sits the lovely little medieval town where its most famous son lived: Boccacio, who is also buried here. I inherited a rather beautiful old illustrated Decameron from my father- This place therefore seemed to provided some remote sentimental connection to him...

The medieval hilltop town can be  reached  by a steep ascent, or rather more fun: by taking a little funicular.  Its charming, narrow streets can be explored in ten minutes,  and there were a few Italian tourists doing just that before we all squeezed into a little sunny garden trattoria for lunch. It was  about the only place open today. Undoubtedly many more places would be open in the summer. 

The main attraction is the 13th century castle:

                       with some rather lovely frescoes in a Loggia in front of the main Facade:

I will continue expanding my research into good places to go on day trips from Siena- it seems a useful thing to do now, before everything starts! The coming week is dotted with important meetings: Paolo will show me his finalized drawings- they have been passed by the engineer. That means we can put the plans in for formal approval by the town council... and if all goes well building can start maybe in May if we can find workers?

Meanwhile, my ties with Mali are still very strong of course: I am hoping to go out in March. The recent unrest seems to have calmed down, and Air France, which had interrupted their flights to Bamako are resuming flights again. Djenne is calm at the moment. The little chicken venture I have entered into with my old barman Mamane seems to be going from strength to strength. Here he is with the current generation of chicks which he believes will be ready to sell in 20 days, Inchallah!

Getting Happily Lost

After a few foggy days when the hills around Siena with their cypresses and ancient villages rose like splendid islands in a dream landscape of clouds, the sun has once more  been shining and I have been out walking. 

Yesterday I walked 17 kilometres- something of a record, although it was not meant to be quite like that...I wanted to get to a riding stable, to catch up with my equestrian self, which is quite important and which I have neglected. 

There is this stable, according to Google, which I would be able to reach after one and a half hours walk in a south westerly direction.  I accepted Googles proposal and set out happily, leaving the city through the Fontebranda Gate at 10.55. 

I was supposed to walk for about half an hour before turning right. What Google did not explain was that this led me down a fast moving road where I had to squeeze myself flat against the walls of the buildings at the passing of the vehicles which moved at breakneck speed before having to  cross a spaghetti junction involving a motorway, where there was absolutely no provision for walkers... Siena is an ancient city where nothing changes, where everyone walks and everything moves at a leisurely pace. But just put your toe outside the ancient confines of its city walls and all that is but a faint, quaint memory!

( Illustration only, )

However, once I had crossed this fearful obstacle with my life intact- and some tears in my clothes and skin from brambles as I attempted to forge a path on the wrong side of the road barrier, so as not to be squashed by oncoming traffic, I decided to give up on the stable for this time and just chose the first road that looked like a peaceful option. Thankfully it was. It took me through the sort of Tuscan countryside I had been expecting, and the sun was still shining- in the distance I could see Siena:

I had been hoping for a little auberge to appear on the way- somewhere for a peaceful lunch. In fact this place did appear, and I realize now I should have stopped - in a place called Montalbuccio, there is an eponymous restaurant with very good reviews: I will go next time!

                 After about four hours I scaled the long hill that led to the Porta St Marco: 

after which I was was quite happy to hobble my way to the Piazza del Campo for what I felt was a well-deserved late lunch!

 

Bidets, Palio, Mali and other important matters

 My computer is being mended. I am surviving with some irritation and discomfort, doing everything with my little telefonino, as they call it here.                        

I am having meetings with Paolo, my handsome young architect, and we are running into some problems in the bathroom department (the arguments are  in Italian of course).

 Paolo is insisting that all good bathrooms must have a bidet and I say that bidets are for the French and the Italians but the rest if the world have managed quite successfully for centuries, indeed forever, without this contraption which takes up a lot of space.  The Malians have in fact got a very good solution, as everyone who has travelled there knows well: a sort if plastic kettle filled up with water stands next to the loo. Apart from this little misunderstanding the work is progressing apace- the drawings that is. I am not going to get possession of the place until the end of February, when hopefully the work will start.

Meanwhile, there seems to be some movement on the Palio front: that is of course the one thing that concerns the Senese. According to this article the Mayor and the chiefs of the 17 Contrade have come to the conclusion that there WILL be Palio this summer, come what may! Hurrah say I.

And what else?  Well, rather worrying news from Mali 🇲🇱... where they are being subjected to sanctions and closed borders with the CEDEAO, the neighbouring West African states. This is no doubt due to pressure from the French according to the Malians and everyone is most annoyed. The sanctions  are aimed at trying to get the ruling junta to organize elections and relinquish power if I understand things correctly. 

But not only that... Djenne which has been a safe haven in the midst of an increasingly dangerous and troubled Central Mali has suddenly deteriorated and Senossa, the Fulani village just a couple if kilometres from Djenne has been attacked  with several casualties. For the first time Babou, with whom I speak about library business every Saturday, said that he would not recommend that I go to Djenne right now...this is bad news indeed. We will have to see how things develop. My trip is planned for March, when I hope to see up the project in Gao too, finally.

 

 

January Blues

 It is amazing how bereft I always feel when taking down all those Christmas decorations. Every year the same feeling - like an empty Brighton Pier when summer is over and the popcorn and ice cream stands have been packed away...Everyone is gone and the only company is me... below is the last view of the tree at the Nichio Contrada on my evening walk: - tomorrow all will be gone.

I wonder how next Christmas will look? All going according to plan I should be in my new abode on Casato di Sopra, Siena, and all the planned building work should be well over- there will be room for some visitors. But right now Siena undoubtedly feels quite empty. 

I should be ashamed for feeling lonely! The last couple of months have been shock full of fun and events; there has hardly been a moment when friends have not been visiting  and not only that; I just came back from a most glamorous New Year visit to St. Paul, Minnesota where I was the guest of dear friends Patty and Les in their stunning loft style converted warehouse overlooking the frozen Mississippi river.   

                                                                     

                          

                           

 A cavalcade of interesting, beautiful  and intimidatingly clever people passed through and drank champagne and had exquisite dinners with us- the sort of people who 'sit on boards'.  Many of them  do indeed sit on the board of  HMML- Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, the  foundation that have been sponsoring the digitisation work in both Djenne and Timbuktu. 

                                                             

It dawned on me, making me blush while enjoying the gourmet dinners,  that I gave Les and Patty roast chicken and roast potatoes followed by apple crumble or something equally homely when they stayed with me... while they made Coquilles St Jacques followed by something heavenly called Flank Steak Mosaic and then Prosecco and raspberry jelly...well, it was probably a good wake up call. I will have to brush up on my cooking after all, to please future visitors and my little guest house...

                         

Patty Les and I visited the HMML head quarter at St John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota,  the Benedictine convent where my boss form the Manuscript World, Father Columba Stewart (with whom I share a hundred memories of  Mali adventures) cooked us Louisiana soul food dinner for us. 

Everyone in Minnesota seems to have a connection to Sweden, and  wanted to show off their few phrases of Swedish on me- the Swedes  was the biggest group of immigrants in this part of the States. There are a plethora of 'Ole and Lena' jokes, which pull the Swedish settler legs...("Ole was excited when he completed a jigsaw puzzle in six months. Sven told him 'Ya know Ole, dat doesn't sound so good.' Ole replied: 'Vell Sven, da box says right here,'two-to-four years.'")

 Below we see Les and Patty in a splendid museum displaying the late nineteenth century  interior that had belonged to a once poor Swedish immigrant that had made it big, a veritable illustration of the American Dream. The setting was straight out of the  Christmas scene of Fanny and Alexander.

                                                                           

So now: back to Italian school on Monday morning and later on a meeting with 'my architect' (gosh, that sounds grand!) Paolo to discuss the work on Casato di Sopra. What am I complaining about? Shame on me!

Buon Natale !

 

A rather belated Christmas greeting from Siena!

My dear friends Jeremiah and David have joined me for Christmas, as well as the lovely Pia, who was with me on my very first trip to Mali at Christmas/New Year 2005-6 when  I decided to start someting in Djenne. It feels appropriate and good that these friends should be with me now, for my first Christmas in Siena!

Christmas eve started  in the earliest hour with a brisk walk in the rain  down the precipitous Via del Comune to Porta Ovile, where one finds a lorry with a charming fisherman who comes up to Siena from Castiglione della Pescaia most mornings. And this morning was of course an important one, since all Italians have to eat fish for the Cena di Virgilio, or the dinner of the 7 Fishes, before going off to Midnight Mass.  I think we managed at least ten types... Below I am tackling the Branzino.
                                              

    Jeremiah was in charge of the prawns and aioli:

                                       

    and Satomi, my lovely Japanese friend from the language school brought sushi!

                            

 

 Pia, left above, brought a luxury Panettoni and the two of us, being Swedes, managed to find Walt Disney's Christmas cartoons at three in the afternoon- this is a Swedish tradition so entrenched that it equals Santa Lucia and Midsummer celebrations, and could only equal the Queen's Christmas Speech for the English. No self respecting, patriotic Swede would ever go with out this hour long medley of  treasures like Santa's Christmas factory, Snow white, Cinderella and here below, Lady and the Tramp at the Napoli restaurant, something that is also much loved by the Italians:

I managed to take time out of the kitchen long enough to show Jeremiah and Pia my new flat, where the owners, who  still live there until formalities are completed, were kind enough to let me show them around- we walked through a  rain sodden Siena, beautiful in the low mist, past the Campo and up to Casato di Sopra in 'my' Onda district: 

                                               

                                   

                                 

  Finally, we made midnight mass in the sumptuous Siena Cathedral: 

Christmas Day we played all those games...Charades of course... The Novel Game... and Botticelli... 

and tomorrow at 3.30 am I will pull my little trolley bag down the Via Pantaneto and up the via di Citta and down the Via Montanini to the bus station to board to bus to Roma.

 I am off to Minnesota: The coldest place in the whole of the US for New Year!

 More about this soon!....

All is well in a wintry Siena

  Although that opening reminds me of that -probably apocryphal- headline: 'Small Earthquake in Peru. Not many dead'. 

But the fact is that today I have not been angry at all. It has been a good day. 

It strikes me it was easier to write in Djenne: Africa was so full of extreme experiences that having just a nice, ordinary, day was always out of the question. Extraordinary events kept tumbling over one. It did suit me, although it was exhausting. But here I am, in beautiful Italy which has a reputation amongst other European nations for being charmingly chaotic- believe me, on the Richter scale of Chaos it  barely registers a tremor...bureaucratic, yes, but it seems to work and I am still, after spending twelve years in Mali, in awe of buses that arrive on time even if there is only one person on them; or, for instance, of having received a letter here with an invitation to a give a blood test in a national drive to prevent bowel cancer. How did they even find me?? Amazing. So, here I am, in Siena, in a well ordered, functioning Europe, (yes- notwithstanding the continual Covid threat, in comparison it IS!) and I  continue  being amazed.

The sun keeps shining in Siena and the students are out in force having passed their finals, wearing their laurel wreaths and celebrating on the Campo with friends and family- the narrow streets are echoing with a song celebrating the new Dottores and Dottoressas. There seemed  to be an awful lot of them I used to  think- until someone explained that a Dottore here is not someone with a Phd, but someone who has a passed their  first degree. And here are some happy successful candidates this afternoon:

                      

Siena has  a very ancient and venerable University  of course, and the final exams seem to be spread throughout the year, if one is to judge from the frequent celebrations.

And last night, being a good Swede, I felt I ought to take part in some sort of Santa Lucia celebration. This is the only saint we kept in Sweden after we became Lutheran- she, the harbinger of light, was too important a saint to throw out... we felt we still needed her when the chill winter creeps up on us and the winter solstice looms...

So, I walked across town  to the tiny beautiful little church of Santa Lucia, a Baroque pearl, were most of Siena seemed to be thronging outside- as much for the Christmas sweet market, which seemed to stretch for miles,  as for the mass, which was officiated yet again by that famous Cardinal Lejudice , and much over subscribed. I only managed to get in before they decided to bar the way. People are being good about wearing masks here- including the clergy, which makes it even more difficult for me to understand ... 

Siena feels alive with Christmas spirit- everyone is out shopping and I cannot really get very serious about anything apart from planning Christmas when Jeremiah, Davide and Pia are coming! 

 It is nice to be so childish that I am still mad about Christmas!

The Moral of this story ...

I am sixty-six years old.

There is no getting away from it.  

But I had not realized it quite- everything feels just the same as it always has. But occasionally something happens to point out to me that I am no longer middle aged- I am actually considered ‘elderly’. There has of course been my ‘smart’ TV in London which was hooked up to Amazon and Netflix and various other bodies that informed it, somehow, of the fact that I was born in 1955. Therefore it used to roll the most annoying adverts all the time: ‘Have you thought about your Will?’; ‘This is a good time to plan your Cremation’; ‘Just check out this marvellous contraption for getting into the bath’; Special price on Stannah chairlifts- hurry!’ And Facebook too kept popping up with ads about incontinence panties…but that apparently starts for women who are only fifty. I had been too shy to mention being solicited about incontinence relief, (let me just clarify I am thankfully  not in need of it)  so was very glad when a very glamorous friend of mine aged 52 ‘spoke out’ about getting the same treatment. (Yes, yes, I know that if you read this and you are under forty, you will think that being fifty is the end of the world- but believe me- life  is sometimes only starting then...)Nevertheless, although this was all faintly annoying, it was endurable. Until something happened tonight that made me lose all composure.

I had been on a free guided tour of Siena- to do with Dante yet again- this time rather specialized: it concerned Dante’s Siena connections – the great families of Siena that he knew. The tour was intended for Italians, and particularly the Sienese. I noticed a rather old woman who was on her own, just like me, and she seemed to be enjoying the tour. The excellent guide was ‘interrupted’ three times during our progress through a freezing Siena- a great local poet/rapper/actor  gave  some rather idiosyncratic interpretations of certain passages in Dante to everyone’s delight:

 And this evening I had booked a ticket for a performance at the Teatro dei Rinnovati, which is situated in the Palazzo Pubblico. It was a dance performance ‘Les Nuits Barbares’ choreographed by Herve Koubi to traditional Algerian  music as well as  Mozart, Faure, and Wagner. This was quite a treat and I had been looking forward to it. When I arrived I was surprised that I kept being ushered to some side stairs that led me higher and higher, until I ended up in the forth and last circle, far off to one side. I looked down and noticed  that there was plenty of space left in much better positions. Then I looked at who else was sitting on my level, and realized that the only one on the whole level sharing this dismal position was the old woman I had noticed from the Dante tour! I had bought the best ticket available, but, always with an eye for a bargain, I had claimed the over sixty-five discount of 3 euros, just like I expect the lady from the tour had done. This had clearly been a mistake- two old women arriving separately on their own- we were put away as far as possible!  I saw red, and stomped out, just as it was about to start.  I was immediately intercepted by one of the ushers who attempted to calm me down. I am quite proud of the fact that I managed to be very angry all in Italian, while I was led down to the ticket office. There I continued to splutter venom in what must have been quite comprehensible Italian for the ticket office staff were most apologetic and asked me if I had booked online- as if that was a mistake?- I was finally led to one of the last places in one of the first rows- and meanwhile I had also been able to ‘rescue’ the other ‘old lady’ from outer space : ‘e l’altra povera vecchia signora, voi la lacherete li, tutta sola? Maledizone!’Once installed, I noticed with some gratification that the lady had also  been moved to a seat a few pews away…!

It took me a certain amount of time to calm down but the spectacle was good enough to soothe me: thirty beautiful male dancers performing something between acrobatics, break-dancing and ballet conjuring up tribal scenes that seemed to belong more closely further south on the African continent than  Algeria, whose  music was sometimes intertwined with Mozart’s or Faure’s Requiems. It all worked, and as I left I managed a little smile to the lady in the ticket office who I had insulted previously.

The moral of this story: NEVER be stingy enough to try to save three euros because you are over sixty-five!- at least not if you are a woman…