All sorts..

First of all more bad news from Mali where ISIS claimed the massacre of 30 Malian soldiers last week in the Region of Gao close to the border of Niger. This is a picture of their burial at Gao.

And yesterday a helicopter crashed in the northern region, killing 13 French soldiers on their way to lend support to ground troops engaged in anti-terrorist fighting. It appears that this crash was an accident. The French Barkhane troops are separate from the large number of UN troops stationed in Mali, and actively engage in fighting the extremists. There are about 4500 of them deployed over the Sahel in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Niger. Many believe that the region would be in the hands of ISIS without their support.

 I am leaving for Mali again in December- and will travel to both Timbuktu and Djenne as usual. But there is no doubt that the situation seems to be deteriorating. How long will I be able to go to Djenne? Now I will be on the local bus on my return to Bamako, and that is really more uncomfortable than dangerous, but no doubt all my Bamako friends will once more try and dissuade me...

Meanwhile I have been  getting involved with various London activities I have never had any contact with before. One of these is Politics, in the last couple of weeks before this all-important election on the 12th December. I am out canvassing and leaflet delivering for the Liberal Democrats, which I think is  the only sensible party to join if you are a 'remain' person like me. I have even become a paid up member! Some of my friends - they are all 'remainers'- tell me I must vote tactically and that a vote for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote and will only help to keep the Tories in power. I understand the rationale of course, but I belong to what is called a marginal constituency, Kensington, and there is a very good chance that our Lib Dem candidate Sam Gyimah will actually get in. The constituency is full of traditional Tory voters, but on the other hand those Tories  are predominately  'remainers' and many will be turning their back on Johnson's Conservatives whose rabid Brexit policies are  unpalatable to most here.  And to make matters even more interesting, the current MP for Kensington is Emma Dent Coad, a Labour MP for the first time in this constituency. She was voted in with the tiniest majority in 2017 to the great amazement of all. But this time the race could well be between Lib Dems and Tories here at least, according to the polls...

And below here is 'Tarzan', the venerable Lord Heseltine, a Remain Tory for whom I have always  had a soft spot...

He got on the podium and told people to vote Lib Dem today!

                                                                              

And onto more frivolous matters... but still just as new a territory for me as my flirtation with politics. Below you see me left, wearing my Swedish costume from Leksand in central Sweden, together with three ladies at the Swedish Church in Marylebone, London. We are helping out at the Swedish Christmas market,  a very popular event for the large Swedish community here. I have never even been at the Swedish Church before and never taken part in anything my countrymen do here. But the lady to my right, Gisela, is a dear friend who cajoled me into coming along... And I guess my friendship with my dear ambassador Eva  has also somehow made me return to the fold- she has taken it upon herself to reawaken my slumbering swedishness and it seems to have worked. I bought a whole lot of Swedish delicacies at the food stalls and gave my lunch guests Janssons Frestelse last Sunday- a yummy potato, onion and ansjovis gratin, which is accompanied with schnapps and drinking songs...

thinking of writing about the hotel perhaps...

I had a hotel in Africa, in the mud city of Djenne by the Bani, a tributary to the Niger, the life blood of Mali.

When I think of that time now, sitting in my Notting Hill flat with the November rains battering my window panes those days have taken on something fantastical, it is as if it never really happened. Yet it did. This entity called Hotel Djenne Djenno came together out of nothing, it existed for twelve years and then it ceased to exist. And within that time and within those mudwalls which encircled the hotel a whole new world was born. From within that little world it is possible to extract a million stories if one is only able to choose the right combinations. It is the storyteller’s job to choose those combinations, and I know I must now try. I owe it to this ‘thing’ which was my hotel and to all those that worked with me and I owe it just to the fact that it actually worked!

My hotel is like a friend or a beloved that has passed away. It is virtually impossible to conceive that they are gone. How could something so real and tangible be just gone? Where did it go? Does it exist somewhere in another world? Is there some sort of heaven for hotels or places? Maybe it exists as long as someone still remembers it?
The last days when the mattresses and the ceiling fans and the chairs from the bar were being removed, piled up on the donkey carts and disappearing down the dirt track the hotel was in its death throes, it was like seing the last breaths of someone beloved, almost like sitting by my Keita’s bed as he left me... but I am getting ahead of myself. Where was I ? Should I start at the beginning?

Auckland Castle and Timbuktu planning

More than  two years ago (September 14, 2017) there is a blogpost  called 'Ladbroke Grove', in which I talked about the commission I had been given to paint a floorcloth, for the diningroom at Auckland Castle. Yesterday I went to Bishop Auckland in County Durham by train to be present at the grand opening do at the newly opened refurbished Castle. And this is the glorious dining room with my floorcloth surrounded by all those magnificent Zurbaran paintings! Very pleased with the result, and hoping it will bring more commissions...

 Meanwhile I am also trying to organize the up-coming return to Mali and Timbuktu in December- something which is getting harder every time as the authorities are tightening the control of who is allowed to go up to the northern parts of the country since security arrangements are getting increasingly complicated. But somehow it always seems to work out... And this evening I got confirmation that we had been given places on on that little plane after all, winging our way once more into the edge of the Sahara and Timbuktu like so many times before. This time it will be Father Columba and Dima Bondarev + his wife Klara  as well as Maria Luisa my Italian friend and collegue who has featured before in this journal.
 I wonder what adventures this time will present us with...