My last weekend here was a bit of a blur. The nearby town of Montisi has a jousting tournament, the centrepiece of a week-long festival. The town is divided into four contradas, or quadrants, Piazza, San Martin, Torre and Castello, and competition between each is intense. The whole town decks itself out in contrada colours, flags and emblems that have not changed since medieval times, and each contrada puts on an extravagant street party and meal before the jousting. Because my friends are in Castello contrada, I dined with them, and was then baptized with wine into the contrada. The meal was long but delicious, and our table snaked itself down through the curved narrow streets of the innermost section of the old town. Loads of singing and Mexican waves and table-thumping and cheering. Afterwards there was a disco, and the disdain that most Italians normally have for drunkenness is abandoned in Montisi, for this weekend only. It was cheerful mayhem.

The following day, Sunday, the four teams parade through the town and to a field outside. There was thunder and lightning about but it didn’t rain. There was competitive banner waving and throwing to begin with, won by Piazza, and then, after an ambulance took someone away who had collapsed in the crowd, the organizers, in a flurry of guidebook reading, realised they had to stop everything and wait for the ambulance to come back before they could continue with the tournament. It didn’t take too long, though. The jousting was fun, and dramatic in a very Italian way; one horse’s shoe fell off, and had to be replaced, to vociferous complaints from the other contradas. In the competition, a disputed zero point judgment from the jury in round three had one rider storming off in a tantrum. He had to be practically dragged back to ride, in the fourth and final round, to clinch victory for the Piazza contrada.