The ginger badger on a bike: Almost Palio time! 1st luglio 2011

Almost Palio time. 1st luglio 2011

It's almost time for Palio - there are two every year, the first on July 2nd and the second 16th August. This is good for a couple of reasons, although one is missing this time. Since I've moved to Siena there does not seem to be many bank holidays. If a bank holiday lands on a weekend, it does not roll over - you lose it. It seems that this has happened a lot in the two years that I've been here, so we've not had many bank holidays. This year 2nd July falls on a Saturday so we lose that one too.

On the upside, the town is ALIVE. Normally I think of Siena as a quiet sleepy town, but when it's approaching Palio time there is a tangible electricity in the air, the streets are fuller and it feels like a city rather than a weird mediaeval city.

Part of the Palio celebrations include a whole load of eating - no surprises there. However, they don't do it inside but take up the streets with tables and tables and tables, within each contrada. This scuppered me last night. My bike needs some TLC, after I got a bit annoyed with it the other day and ended throwing it across a road, and I was taking it to the one bike shop in town. However, one of the dinners had started in Istrice (Porcupine) contrada, where the bike shop was, and the gates to enter the city were shut, so I couldn't get my bike fixed. Frickin Italians and their eating!

It has been stinking stinking hot here the last weeks, comfortably over 30C every day. Today however, the rain came. A huge loud thunder storm plus the biggest hail stones I have ever seen. When I left the office lots of the sand that they put down to run the Palio in the Piazza was washed all over the city. There is a chance that if it rains again on Palio day they will cancel it, but we shall see. Also, yesterday during the prova (test races for the horses and jockeys) one of the horses ran into one of the walls, broke it's leg and got shot, with the jockey in hospital. That's game over for that contrada - once the jockey and the horse is seleceted, this cannot be changed. Also, it is extremely bad form by the jockey to be pushing that hard for there to be an accident in the prova. Of course, they don't give a hoot if they kark it during the race, but doing it the day before is a no-no.

In fact, the free paper announced that the prova was cancelled:
A causa della pioggia, caduta copiosamente nel pomeriggio di oggi, è stata annullata la Prova Generale del Palio che si doveva correre questa sera alle ore 19,45.

When the horses were chosen a few days ago, the people at work were like excited school kids seeing live text stream and seeing which contrada got which horse. The ones who aren't racing want their enemy contrada to get a bad horse. Of course, there was some posturing during the selection, the italians tried to tell me that they were fighting, however, I have seen these Italian so called "fights" a few times. It's just juvenile posturing and is of no value. I told the italians that they were rubbish at fighting, and a proper fight involves at least a bit of claret, and some good knives, shanks or at least something!