Italian Plotting...

A couple of weeks ago:
Dripping nose, a cough like an earthquake, looking out of my bedroom window onto the depressing view of the Grenfell Tower (I was in Mali when it burned).  The sky is beginning to take on the gold and rose of a late winter’s day in the west, and I am wondering what I could possible have to write about. For some time an unaccustomed feeling of floating in a void and wondering what comes next has invaded me, at the same time as I know that it is only I that can decide what comes next. Everytime I have felt like this, I have had to jump in and shape something new. London life is good, but at the moment it feels aimless.

A few days later, nose still dripping:
                        

                                                                             

 I have decided to investigate Italy... just as I went to Djenne in 2006 to investigate possibilities for a new future (and remained for 12 years) I am now going to go to Italy. More specifically Siena, with only the tenuous reason that it is beautiful, medieval and has something to do with horses through its Palio race. Yes, yes, call me frivolous and irresponsible, by all means.

I will stay for a month this summer and  just look around, without too much of a strict plan, apart from studying Italian and looking  at property. The idea seems not entirely unsound. If I decide not to invent a new future, what could possibly be wrong with a month in Siena, learning Italian and sketching and looking at properties, perhaps for a little Pensione? A roof terrace with sunset views over the distant hills of Tuscany where I could invent a new sunset cocktail for my guests would be nice...

I would never have left my hotel in Djenne had the political situation not become impossible. Life in a historic city like Djenne, looking after a long stream of interesting guests was my idea of an earthly heaven...

Meanwhile, my next trip to Mali- Bamako, Djenne and Timbuktu is booked in April. And I have the incredible good fortune to once more to be invited to stay in my old ‘Bamako home’, the Swedish Embassy residence that I know so well. Now Eva is of course retired and living in Sweden, but I will be the guest of Carin Wall, another former Swedish ambassador to Mali, who is also retired but have accepted to do a six month’s  stint as ambassador again, while the Swedish foreign office puts a new ambassador in place.  Carin was very kind to me and gave Malimali a fashion show at the Villa Soudan, a boutique hotel in Bamako on the river Niger : see www.djennedjenno.blogspot.com March 20^th 2013 for a report on the lively after-show celebrations... 

And here in London the David Parr floor canvases are installed, finally, in the little museum-to-be in the Cambridge working man’s cottage – here with my old friend Dan who came to help me on the day.

And finally, Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, has probably ruined  Theresa May's last ditch attempt to get her deal through Parliament tonight for the all-important Brexit vote by pronoucing that the legal implications  for Britain in the new codicils that May negociated last night with Barnier aimed to provide reassurance to enable the vote to go through represent no improvement and will not be legally binding. This all  seems to get closer and closer to an all or nothing scenario: perhaps in the end no brexit (Hurray!) or hard brexit are the only options since noone seems willing to compromise...

Legalize drugs.

                                                                                    

I hate drugs.
Ever since I had a nightmarish  LSD trip that nearly lost me my sanity as a teenage girl I have been totally opposed to them.
But nevertheless I believe drugs should be legalized.
In an article in the Sunday Times this morning concerning the epidemic of knife crime in Britain- crimes almost always related to drug trafficking gangs- Lord Hogan-Howe, the London Metropolitan police commissioner in 2011-17 is arguing for more police officers to be deployed, pointing out the escalation in drug use and the market forces that controls the trade.

"We have seen a huge rise in the supply of cocaine into the UK and Europe over the past two years. We cannot grow cocaine. It is an import and 90% comes from Colombia where bumper harvests have caused the price to drop and violence to rise. When the market is stable, the violence levels are stable. When supply drops, the criminals compete for business. When the price falls, the criminals compete for business. It is not a pretty sight. This is not a regulated market.
The distribution routes have changed. Once it is in the country then it must be moved around. Hence “county lines”, where drugs are sent by road and rail around the country. Now very young people are carrying the drugs and money and are using violence. The ordering system has gone online and works through social networks. Apparently, pizza deliveries are slower than your street dealer’s logistics chain."

I don't believe we can stop people from using drugs. But I do think that if whatever drugs people want to use were sold through government controlled  selling points, a little like the system of selling alcohol in Sweden, it would pull the rug from underneath a huge section of organized crime, which is often fuelled by the drug trade. And  the vast revenue which would be generated could be used in programs  both to detox and  to educate and tackle the underlying problems which drives people to using drugs in the first place. And the A+E wards would be cleared  of  people who have taken filthy heroin mixed with god-knows-what.
I know this is hardly a new argument but it is one worth revisiting in the light of the current knife crime epidemic. Let's take away the temptation  of making good money by belonging to a drug dealing gang!

Revisiting Hotel Djenne Djenno...

                                                                               
 For anyone who visited my hotel in Djenne (and anyone else), this is a little film from the very last days of the hotel...
Please copy and paste in your browser:

https://vimeo.com/307716932?ref=fb-share&1&fbclid=IwAR1Kmc6O9wfpCa4vpCayCgcU-DJLJ7LHLsJYv5sozkQo1PlTwXwbOcNRVzc

 And last Sunday I had a lunch party here in Ladbroke Grove which included the Malian honorary Consul Mark Saade and his lovely wife Julia who were able to translate the Arabic tablet for me that I received from the Djenne Manuscript Library  at our ceremony in Bamako last December:

                                    The world is a deep sea and many people drown in it. 
                                    Make your ship fear God and reinforce it with faith.
                                    Let your trust be in God and you will be saved.

I wonder who chose those words from the Koran for me? Maybe my dear old friend Yelpha, the Imam of the Great Mosque of Djenne?