Jo's travels

Walking the Cottonera - Images

2012-01-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

The start of a new year and my first post for 2012. This is also the first post from my new iMac. I have worked out how to get photos into the machine, now I will experiment with getting them onto this page!

Titles for my first four offerings:

1. A man and his dog on the road to Rinella

2. Evening light over Kalkara

3. In the Birgu ditch

4. On the road to Kalkara

I'll put up another post with text soon

Images of the North West

2011-12-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

These are images to accompany the adjacent post, more or less in the order of the text. Somehow I managed to put up two copies of the same picture and I still don't know how to get rid of it! Here are headings for each photo.
1. Skorba standing stones
2. Floor of one of the ancient dwellings found next to Skorba temple
3. Ta Hagrat
4. Plant and rock at Ta Hagrat
5. The cat of Ta Hagrat
6. Rolling stones - one theory is that these were used to move the stones into place
7. The fault line
8. Tiny garigue plants with my loaned stick
9 & 10 Sedimentary rock layers

The North West

2011-12-23T11:32:00.000-08:00

Something about the North West of a region seems to bring out the more rugged, wild side. I was born on an island on the wild West coast of Scotland; in the North West of Australia I have traveled through the dramatic landscape of the Kimberley; in the North West of Tasmania, I have been humbled by the Tarkine wilderness area, that is now under threat.

Malta is a tiny island, heavily developed with an ancient history of human influence, yet the North West retains something of the natural landscape and boasts the first of Malta's National Parks, il Majjestral. This is the area that the Malta Ramblers chose for their weekend pre-Christmas retreat this year.

Alex Vella and Sam Grech had laid on a full programme for us. I am not used to the luxury of having someone else make all arrangements for me and I really enjoyed falling in with the group for a whole weekend. If I had twinges of conscience about staying at a luxury hotel that intrudes outrageously on the landscape, my misgivings were assuaged by the fascinating natural and cultural resources we were able to access readily from such a base.

I missed out on the first walk on Friday afternoon because there was too much happening at home, the bus route between Valletta and Golden Bay is tortuously slow and I was unsure about how my recently sprained ankle would deal with what promised to be a difficult walk. The route led along the Westerly cliff of the park and dipped down into the boulder strewn drop-off below the fault line that forms the cliffs. For now, I have to content myself with looking down on this rich terrain from the garigue above. I have attended an excellent lecture by Analise Falzon, Parks Ranger, in which she discussed how the tumbled, boulder strewn areas below the cliff edge becomes a protected habitat for a variety of flora and fauna. The park area also extends out into the sea.

I arrived at the hotel on Friday evening in time to be stunned by the magnificent sunset view over Golden Bay to the Ghan Tuffieha headland. It was a dramatic cocktail before finding my way down for the first of our indulgent buffet dinners. There is something about being in a large group of people that gives us all permission to eat far more than we need. Perhaps it is a deep memory of more ancient times when clans and communities would come together to celebrate a successful hunt in a lean season or fatten up before an anticipated period of scarcity. Whatever the excuse, it was a great way to mellow out before the quiz night that had been planned for us by the unstoppable Sam.

Saturday was planned as a full day of walks and visits that we could drop out of at several points during the day if we wanted an early return to the hotel. First we walked to the Elysium, a plant nursery run by the GAIA foundation where Maltese native flowers, shrubs and trees are reared from seed to be planted around the island. This was a great opportunity for me. I came away with an enormous list of possible plants for my dream roof garden.

The groundswell of public opinion in favour of preserving and extending the cultivation of endemic species is now supported by the development of nurseries such as Elysium. I am hopeful that it won't be too long before roundabouts and public gardens will boast collections of garigue and endemic plants. I recall when I lived in Redlandshire, south of Brisbane in Australia, the local council ran a native plant nursery where they had laid out examples of private gardens using only endemic species. Local people were enabled to consider how to develop their own gardens using endemic plants rather than exotics.

From the nursery, we walked up over garigue paths past Ghan Tuffieha bay where my father painted a water colour of the bay sixty years ago. The old hotel that must have been operating in those days is now abandoned and falling into ruin awaiting permits to develop. I am hopeful that the unpredictability of the terrain in that area and a changing climate about over development of tourist sites will prevent that from happening.

From there, we followed paths and country roads until we arrived at Zebbiegh where we paused for lunch. Very few of us felt like eating after an over-indulgent buffet breakfast. Some decided that the morning's walk had been enough for them and caught a bus back to the hotel. My ankle had felt vulnerable on the garigue and I was grateful to another Rambler who arranged for her husband to meet us at Zebbiegh with a stick for me to use.

The lunch stop was close to the Skorba temple which was our first afternoon visit. I have walked past the site several times and have read about it in the archeological books I have on my shelves but this was the first time I was able to enter the site with a knowledgeable guide. The site is quite small and bounded by more recent development but nevertheless is very significant in terms of a fuller understanding of the temple building era.

The site at Ta Hagrat in Mgarr which was our second visit is no bigger than Skorba but the familiar layout of circular apses is more readable. The site is unique in having steps leading up to the main entrance.

I was tired as we completed our tour of the two temples and was happy to catch a bus back to the hotel along with several other members of the group including our leader, Alex! The remaining members walked back along the cliffs to join us at another over indulgent buffet dinner followed by a quiz night.

On our last day we were scheduled to walk through il Majjestral National Park accompanied by leading naturalist, Analise Falzon. We met up with her at the entrance to the old British barracks which have recently been handed over to the Parks administration. As we walked up through the barracks we were treated to a first-hand glimpse of the tensions that needed to be negotiated between Parks administration and habitual users of the area.

During our initial briefing, several off-road vehicles roared past us and Analise explained how signs or closed gates usually had a life-span of less than one week before being ripped down or vandalised. Traditional hunters and fishers also expected to have parking areas as close as possible to their hunting or fishing spots. Even family picnicking puts unexpected demands on the park administration. One family arrived and established themselves in one of the buildings of the barracks as though it was their own weekender and another family who were using the electronic vehicle track assumed a right to start a BBQ fire using sparse garigue wood.

It will be a long road to establish a shift in patterns of useage for the park. Organisations such as the Ramblers have a role to play in modeling appropriate behaviour and we have also undertaken to help with some clean up work in 2012 but it will require a lot of good will on the part of government and NGOs before we begin to see a shift from a culture of exploitation to one of nurturance.

Once we got out onto the garigue, it was most clearly the culture of nurturance that Analise was able to demonstrate as she stopped us by rich groupings of flora and explained to us the diversity of plants that grew in the various habitats generated by geological processes.

The walk finished at the Manikata medieval farming community at the edge of the park where we had a rustic lunch. This area is now managed by a co-operative of local farmers who have done a great job restoring the old dwellings, caves, apiaries and gardens. By this time, the scheduled short morning walk had extended well into the afternoon and I was happy for the offer of a lift back to Sliema where I would find more frequent buses to Valletta and home.

It was a great weekend that left me pondering several of the dilemmas and contradictions associated with the task of moving from a culture of exploitation and over-development to one of nurturance and conservation. Development such as the luxury hotel at which we stayed cannot now be reversed but perhaps we can find ways of enabling the man-made to support and nurture the recovery of the natural and we can certainly be more careful in granting permits for further development. Some cultural practices exploit and damage the natural environment and it will be difficult to shift these patterns unless we can show that there is real joy in cherishing what we have left and this legacy is the right and responsibility of all.

Pictures for Sunday

2011-12-06T11:25:00.000-08:00

Sunday in Valletta and the images are more or less in the order I write about in the following blog!

Sunday in Valletta

2011-12-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

Summer changed my routines, stirred me around a little, made me restless. That's my excuse for leaving the blog for six months.

Now it's winter and the scaffolding of my life is slipping back into place. Lunchtime concerts, weekend walks, writing my blog...

And there is a new feel to Valletta, a new liveliness, more people strolling the streets and they're not just tourists trotting behind a bright umbrella. What are they here for? It's not the restoration work that seems to be happening everywhere, nor the new festivals like Ziguzjag, nor the Christmas decorations (same as last year except for the gorgeous glass ball tree that heads up the post) nor the instant trees with seating down Merchants street. There's an excitement, something is happening in Valletta.

Yesterday I woke to a beautiful sunny day. The harbour entrance was calm and the new footbridge to the breakwater almost glowed in the morning light. (I tried to put a picture here but it insisted on going at the top)

I decided to go out for the Sunday papers and then wander down for the open day at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Something was happening in St George Square. The fountain was off, there was a blow-up gateway where Republic street enters the square and a crane was holding a big screen announcing the President's fun run. Even more startling was the sight of Queen Victoria on her plinth as always but in solitary splendour - no cafe table, chair or umbrella in sight. I have never seen her square denuded of hospitable clutter. The surrounding buildings including the National library and the old sun calendar above Cordina's stood out magnificently.

As I strolled on down Republic street, a sense of gathering hung in the air - band players were arriving in ones and twos with their instruments tucked under their arms, people were leaning cautiously over the barriers to touch the glass balls of the Christmas tree to make sure it wasn't plastic.

At the museum of Archaology, I decided to call in and see the exhibition of Spanish Treasures from the Khalili collections, Magic Metal. This remarkable collection of Damascene metal objects is set up in the upstairs gallery and the accompanying book, Ornament and Malta, An Introduction, draws together the Moorish and Spanish influences on Malta's decorative arts.

I was on my own at the exhibition apart from the young woman security guard who engaged me in conversation and encouraged me to continue my stroll to the Museum of Fine Arts as well as taking in the War museum (another day perhaps?).

I was certainly not alone as I came back out onto Republic street! The walkers in the President's Fun Run turned the street into a purple river, chattering and swirling around the silver Christmas trees, pushchairs, wheelchairs, dogs making little eddies in the stream. I stood on the ramp outside the museum for several minutes before plunging in and walking against the current up towards South street to turn off to the Museum of Fine Arts. I rejected the idea of crossing the stream to go to St James Cavalier and catch their 11.00 am Sunday concert.

The air of something about to happen hung about the museum as well. There was the sound of a piano in the courtyard and as I went up the stairs I could see children drawing on a large board set up on the mezzanine. I glanced at the familiar Mattia Prettis and spent a bit of time browsing the book stall for bargains. Then went down to the basement for the Paul Caruana exhibition, Short Stories, a charming, nostalgic look at growing up in Valletta.

Back in Republic street, the bands were playing and walkers were dispersing into side streets and cafes. My pace had slowed to an amble now, partly due to my sprained ankle but mostly because I really wanted to linger with this new Valletta feeling. In St George's square, children were gathering around Minnie mouse demanding hugs.

I turned the corner for home, my backpack heavy with Sunday papers and reduced price art books. Sweet Sunday in Valletta...

Walled cities

2011-06-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

These are the city walls in Athens and Istanbul. I wonder which of the cities I visit over the next three weeks will be walled cities?

I'm traveling again for three weeks from this evening - Madrid, Portugal, three cities in Morocco, back to Madrid, then Valencia and Barcelona. I'll look out for the walls and when I get back I'll take some photos of Valletta and Grand Harbour bastions. The concept of the walled city is no longer useful yet the fascination remains.

The middle sea

2011-06-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

This is Oceanus in the Museum of Archaeology in Turkey.

I have seized on a new project. I will document all my travels around the Mediterranean sea on a huge chart that I have acquired from the chart office I discovered just across the road from me in Valletta. I will put the chart up on the pristine walls of my renovated flat and gradually fill in the journeys I have been on and will plan in the future. I will also add little snippets about the people in the past whose journeys I cross in my travels.

I have looked back at my blog and some of the early posts will help. My travels this year are directly relevant and in the time that remains to me I will fill in the gaps of the places I have not yet visited.

But for this evening I am off to Ghanafest in Argotti gardens, Floriana, Malta!

Greece and Turkey

2011-05-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

I have been traveling through Greece to Istanbul with a friend from Australia. As I settle back into my home base in Malta I have started to reflect on the difference between living here and living in Australia.

Apart from the obvious contrasts that I have spoken about in previous posts, the location of Malta at the heart of the Middle Sea means that the discoveries I make about the countries that border the Mediterranean have implications for Malta as well. I feel the same awe as the Australian when I find myself standing in a place I learnt about in school, but now, as a Maltese resident, I feel an insider connection with a shared history that has shaped and been shaped by this powerful sea.

The people whose names are whispered or shouted in Thessaloniki, Alexandropoulis, Istanbul are people whose stories have shaped Maltese culture as well. The travels of St Paul, the glory of Byzantium, the campaigns of the Ottomans, all resonate through the cultural landscape of Malta.

I'll try to capture a little of that in my next posts. In the meantime, the photos are of the Greek flag above a monastery in Meteora and the Turkish flag on a fishing boat on the Marmara sea.

Fort Manoel

2011-04-07T07:06:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts compiled a tour that got me thinking about the relationship between conservation of our historical heritage and big commercial ventures.

Fort Manoel has been beautifully restored but we have not yet paid the devil's dues. The conservation work on the fort is complete but Midi have not yet started on the development that will fund the investment.

Most people in Malta now feel saddened when they look at the overdevelopment of Tigne Point which dominates the peninsula and pushes the fort into insignificance. I hope that the development of Manoel Island will be more restrained and will leave the green surrounds of the fort so that its dramatic symmetry will still be readable.

The conservation work has not attempted to recreate the original. Where new work has been needed to enable the shape of the past to emerge, the conservators have not attempted to pretend that the new work is old. New work suggests the original intention but does not attempt to mimic intricate patterning.

The photos are of the ditch, the walls, the arsenal and the chapel. The enormous square at the centre of the fort has been used as an outdoor concert venue in the past and it is probable that the surrounds will become tourist venues. In the meantime, we enjoyed Sunday morning with the fort to ourselves.

Valletta, capital of culture, part 1

2011-03-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

There should be something happening every day. That's one of the propositions put forward at the meeting I attended about Valletta as EU capital of culture in 2018.

That will be the easy part because it's already happening. Even the physical infrastructure is already in place and there are certainly artists producing high quality work here in Malta. What will need a lot of groundwork and imagination is community engagement in art production, not just consumption, and contemporary artwork that challenges the status quo.

I want to give a brief glimpse of what's already happening by summarising some of my cultural activities over the last couple of months. Rather than give a chronological list, I'll group according to some of the cultural venues that are currently in use in Valletta.

I have to start with the churches. Not only are they the hub of the year round programme of fiestas, exhibitions and processions, but now they also play host to lunchtime and evening concerts. Sometimes these are associated with fund-raising projects such as the restoration of the chapel of St Catherine of Italy. The model of lunchtime concerts that was adopted here with the collaboration of St James Cavalier has now been emulated by several other churches in the capital sometimes with the effect of direct competition for audiences.

The restoration of St Catherine's is now nearing completion and perhaps in the spirit of community cultural development, the programme has been reduced to Sundays only and is currently held in the Music room of St James Cavalier. For several years, their programme has raised the profile of the venue, played a major role in raising restoration funds and seeded the idea of high quality lunchtime recitals. Now other venues can capitalise on this foundation and offer their own programmes. So over the past few weeks I've attended lunchtime recitals at St Paul's Anglican Pro-Cathedral (every two weeks on a Tuesday), a beautiful evening concert by Malta's only male voice choir, Cappella Sanctae Catharinae at the Jesuit Church in Merchant Street, and next week I'll take a friend, visiting from UK, to a lunchtime recital of Baroque music at St Francis church in Republic street. Unfortunately, the two lunchtime recital venues are now competing so I have to choose which to attend.

St James Cavalier, or perhaps I should name in particular violinist Sarah Spiteri and pianist/composer/bass singer Alex Vella Gregory, play a key role in much of the cultural activity happening around Valletta. They run their own lunchtime concert series, Performers Platform, on Wednesdays in the Music Room, but also serve as a hub for information and bookings.

St James is a multi-arts venue. The brilliant restoration of the old Knights' cavalier includes several gallery spaces showing top quality work by Maltese artists and sometimes expatriate artists with links to Malta. For a while, Malta Contemporary Art found a home in the upper galleries, but for some reason they have moved out this year as I learnt when I attended the first lecture in a series called Contemporary Art in Dialogue with... organised by Dr Raphael Vella of University of Malta at St James Cavalier.

In part 2, I'll talk about the other cultural spaces in St James Cavalier and get on to the other venues around Valletta.

One last carnival

2011-03-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

Next post I'll return to words but photos are good for carnival!

Dressing for carnival 2011

2011-03-20T11:29:00.001-07:00

And then he said....

Carnival 2011

2011-03-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

A new venture - a photo blog for my nephew in NY who wants more photos!

Augustinian convent in Naxxar

2011-03-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

I'm on my way out to St James Cavalier to see the new play, Immaculate. I just wanted to see if I could put up a brief post with more than one photo. The first one is the corridor of the Augustinian convent. Now I'll try another photo and see where it goes.

So it goes on the top above the first one! But I quite like the grandfather clock going first. Refer to yesterday's post for text about these two photos. Interesting white light in the convent!

Museums, Convents and Palaces

2011-03-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Did you know immediately who this woman was? And whose head she is so casually holding out to you?

Thus do we turn horror into everyday.

The statue is Salome with the head of John the Baptist and I think it is in the Parish Museum in Naxxar.

Already Sunday's tour with Malta Council for Culture and the Arts is blurring together into generic images of religious museum artifacts - clerical robes, ancient books of music, iconic paintings- and chapels - gold leaf, domed and vaulted ceilings, christ crucified. Malta is so richly endowed with historical collections that it is impossible to hold a catalogue of even one morning's exploration in my head.

Nevertheless, the two places we visited in Rabat surprised me. The Augustinian convent is not normally open to the public. We were shown around by one of the seven monks for whom this beautiful cloister is home. The convent is massive with wide, stone flagged corridors around a central court, a huge, wood paneled refectory and a grandfather clock bigger than any I have ever seen complete with its own ladder beside to enable adjustment. It is a contemplative order and the convent certainly provides room to think! Yet the small living room shared by the seven residents has ordinary armchairs facing a TV, and there is an enormous laundry with white and brown habits hanging on a rack to dry.

Casa Bernard is also in Rabat and was the C16 home of a Maltese noble family. It is still lived in today and has been restored and opened to the public. I will return there and enjoy one of the guided tours that they offer Monday to Saturday with a smaller group than we had on Sunday. The family has a huge collection of French and Maltese antique furniture and their modern art hangings include a Dali and several Dinglis.

The streets of Rabat were already decorated in preparation for the feast of St Joseph this coming weekend. But Sunday morning was cold and rainy and it was difficult to appreciate the exteriors of the chapels and museums as we trudged from bus to entrance. For the next tour to Fort Manoel, Selmun Palace and tas-Sultan Castle in Wardija, I must take a note book so I can remember more of the full commentary given by our English-speaking guide.

Gozo in brief

2011-03-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

It's wild flower season in Gozo. On Friday and Saturday of last week, it was sunny and the garigue and meadows glittered with deep greens and the yellows of fennel flowers, daisies and sorrel. The photo is of a rubble wall on one of this weekend's walks with Malta Ramblers.

On Friday morning I had an English language class with a young woman from Hamburg. We set off together on the journey to Gozo because when we were practicing conditional clauses she revealed that if she were to return to Malta, she would like to visit Gozo.

I always underestimate the travel time. We lingered at the news agent in Merchant street and that made us miss the bus that might have connected with the 11.15 ferry. As we waited for the next bus, two other friends arrived who were also joining the Ramblers on Gozo for the weekend. We stood next to the 45 bus (there were several 45s and no-one had revealed which was to leave first) and chatted in the sun. History might reveal that this was the beginning of a fascinating EU project involving older women and craft!

The crossing was calm although still cold from the plummeting temperatures we have had lately. I left my friends to deal with negotiations for the taxi we planned to share to get us to Xlendi and guided my student to the Green bus for her tour of Gozo. The arrival of the ferry in Gozo is always as confused and bustling as the arrival of ferries everywhere. Taxi drivers vie for trade and visitors try to look as though they know exactly what they are doing.

In Xlendi, the whole world was sitting in the sun on the sea front. My brother, who now rents a small flat in this small fishing village, had booked me into St Patrick's hotel. He has made this hotel on the front his hang-out and spends many hours here enjoying the life of the bay or chatting with people inside the bar/restaurant when the wind is up. On Friday he was feeling miserable because he was having trouble with his teeth and couldn't find an available dentist in Rabat to deal with it.

I left him to continue his dental quest and joined the Ramblers for their afternoon walk. The planned circular route lead out of Xlendi, past the knights' tower and along the cliffs towards the channel we had just crossed from Malta. We then headed back through Sannat and down to Xlendi along the side of the valley running down from Rabat As soon as we got going, I had to peel off the multiple layers of clothing that I was wearing against the cold.

The cliffs along this side of Gozo are magnificent - weathered and jagged, white and shear - and the garigue sparkled with the blossoms of small heathers and wild flowers.

That evening, I enjoyed dinner with my brother who had not solved the dentist problem but had worked out a holding pattern with his tooth until he could deal with it the following day. We ate at St Patrick's with one of his friends and discussed the complexities of family and the world.

Saturday's walk was planned as an 8 hour marathon but my intention was to leave halfway through and return to Xlendi to meet up again with my brother and pick up my overnight things ready to return to Valletta. I had booked in for the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts Sunday tour and that will be the subject of my next post.

This time we left from Rabat and I just managed to catch a lift to the starting point after breakfast with my brother. We walked down through an interesting little valley in the outskirts of Rabat and then up some very steep inclines. I'm not sure where the route went but we passed through some lovely countryside as we appeared to walk in a large circle around the citadel. Eventually we came down along the cliffs into Marsalforn. It was sad to pick out the spire of the old church now completely hidden by the engulfing blocks of flats that surround the sweep of the bay.

I left the group at that point and joined with others who needed to finish the walk there. We shared a minibus back to Rabat and then I got a lift down to Xlendi to meet up with my brother, now shorn of two teeth but feeling much better. We lingered over lunch and I got back to Valletta late in the evening.

There continues to be discussion about various means of speeding up the journey to and from Gozo. Ideas for airstrips and bridges and tunnels and chairlifts are bandied about. For me, the journey is part of the pleasure of Gozo. Turning Gozo into a suburb of Malta with the inevitable increase in cars and blocks of flats would be a disaster both for the people of Malta and Gozo and for the tourists who visit Gozo because it is different from the built up Northern areas of Malta.

Return to Malta

2011-03-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Valletta. It's wild flower season in Gozo and the cliffs to the South of Marsalforn are glowing with colour. This is a promise for tomorrow.

The photo was taken at Christmas time in St George's square in Valletta.

Gozo revisited

2011-03-10T12:12:00.000-08:00

The photo caught a strange moment of light that made the cliffs around Xlendi float in the sea.

A brief post to satisfy my effort to write something everyday. Tomorrow, after teaching my class in the morning, I'm off to Gozo until Saturday. I'll be staying in Xlendi and walking with Malta Ramblers. I'll write about it when I get back.

An issue of gas

2011-03-09T10:42:00.000-08:00

These ranting statues are in Gozo. They are in a group of four arranged in a line along a side wall as though the parishioners couldn't find anywhere to put them when they were renovating some part of the church. I came across them on one of my rambles out of Xlendi.

Today I want to have a bit of a rant about the gas. The last two days have been cold. I put on more jumpers but still needed to use the mobile fire that takes small cylinders of gas. The gas fires are sold in hardware or furniture shops and are often advertised at reduced rates. In addition you have to buy a regulator, often from some other shop and then two cylinders of gas - one to change and one in use. Once you are set up with all the necessary equipment and have worked out how to put it all together, you then have to find out what day your gas delivery truck comes around and hang out on that day waiting to hear him arrive in the street below.

Lately, there has been lots of grumbling about the rising price of gas, the risks associated with having trucks roaming around narrow streets filled to capacity with cylinders of gas and the confusion arising from another competitor entering the field with different coloured bottles and a different distribution system. More alarmingly for individual consumers, there seems to have been an increase in stories about faulty cylinders being delivered to households. My neighbour has told me horrifying stories about gas explosions in the past and just a few weeks ago there was a letter in the local paper about a man whose gas cylinder caught fire. Another friend told me about her experience with a gas bottle that was overfilled and so wouldn't light her fire even though she could smell gas.

So yesterday afternoon, I have to change my gas bottle. I take off the old bottle and attach the new. There is a smell of gas, the pilot comes on but the filament won't catch. I switch off and ponder my options. I try to remember the details of my friend's experience. What did she say she did?

I have to phone the gas company. OK, I have a way forward. I phone. I am told I am third in the queue. I wait. Eventually, a pleasant woman comes on and asks how she can help. I tell my story. She tells me that the technician will call me on the phone and when he does I should follow his instructions because if he comes to the flat and finds that the problem is not with the cylinder but with the fire or the regulator I will have to pay E20. Already I feel like it is my fault because I am not a gas technician.

The gas man calls at 8.00 pm. He asks if I have another gas bottle. No, I have just finished one bottle and the new one isn't working. Do I have another gas heater? No. Do I have another regulator? No. Do I have a gas cooker? Yes! At last we are getting somewhere, but where? It seems that I have to take my new cylinder to the gas cooker, take off the regulator from that cylinder, attach the new one and see if the cooker works. Weakly, I tell him that the cylinder for the cooker is on the roof so I will have to carry the new, full cylinder up two flights of stairs, work out how to make the switch, come back downstairs to try the cooker and then go back up again to change it all over if it doesn't work. I'm certainly not going to do all that in the middle of the night.

"But madame," he says, "I'm just trying to save you E20."

"Maybe I'll try it in the morning," I mumble, feeling vaguely that already I have lost the battle.

This morning after breakfast, I consider the problem and decide to have a go. I struggle up onto the roof with the cylinder and put it down next to the cooker cylinder. I contemplate the regulator which is different from the one on the heater. I have no idea how it switches on and off or how you remove it. I decide I am late for an appointment and hurry out to get the newspapers. On the way, I try phoning the company but there is another queue.

When I get back, I feel strong enough to phone the company again and point out how ridiculous this situation is. This time I am prepared for the queue and start reading the papers. When the same young woman answers I explain that there is a safety issue involved here, that it is difficult for me to lug gas cylinders around and downright dangerous to be messing around with something that I don't understand.

"But madame, he was just trying to save you E20."

By this time I have moved into my icy logic phase. I suggest that it looks like gas is becoming far too risky, that if we find that it is not the cylinder at fault but the heater or the regulator I will have to make the decision to stop using gas all together and he can take back the full cylinder, the empty cylinder, the regulator and the heater in lieu of payment. The woman says he will call me.

I wait at home for a few hours and then have to go out to teach my class. When I get back I phone again to make sure he hasn't tried to call when I was out. No, she will call him again and remind him.

Round about 5.00pm he calls again. This time he suggests that the regulator is incompatible with the gas bottle, that instead of the blue regulator, I need a green one.

"How come it worked before?"

"They wear out"

This time I am asked to go out to Birzebugga to get a new regulator, try that and if the gas bottle still doesn't work he will come out and it will cost me nothing.

"By then it will be summer and I won't need the gas heater."

I know that we are going round in circles, that I should not be talking to the technician about company policy on health and safety, that it is not logical to have a technician whose job is to look for one fault only and anything down the line must be self-diagnosed, that I am not going to resolve the issue before this cold snap ends.

So now I'm writing this with layers of jumpers plus my blanket that I've made into a poncho, a useless, full bottle of gas sitting on the roof, an empty bottle that I am reluctant to refill in case I get another dud, a regulator that is incompatible and a heater that is just an empty shell. I really wish I could find an alternative heating system that won't bankrupt me, but I also feel that there is a more general issue here that should be dealt with. The problem is finding where to start. Perhaps if I find the person that both the woman on the phone and the technician on the phone connect with...

Wind from the North

2011-03-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

The wind rose noisily last night and is still blowing from the North so the waves are crashing over the breakwaters on both sides of the harbour entrance.

This morning I met two friends, Christina and Roger, who are visiting Malta from London, and showed them around the walking route outside the Valletta fortifications that has become a regular part of my life. Today it is dramatic and wild and we had to dodge flying spray at several points on the route.

We started the walk by taking the temporary metal steps that have been built at the side of the entrance to City Gate. This scaffolding structure is part of the Renzo Piano renovations going on at the main Valletta entrance and also the EU funded work around the fortifications. I wasn't sure where the steps went so it was an exploration for me as well as my friends but, as I guessed, it lead us down into the ditch outside the walls and from there it was easy to walk down to the Marsamxett side of Valletta. Once past the landing point for the Sliema ferry and round to Jews Sally Port we were free of the parked cars. During weekdays this whole stretch of ditch is used for the vehicles of the Valletta workforce.

The rest of the walk was wet, wild and windy and I was a bit anxious at times that my friends might be swept away by a freak wave. But we made it round easily past the bridge to the breakwater destroyed in World War 2 and the rusting mechanism for the harbour boom defense. From there, dramatic steps and metal walkways lead to the informal fishing village where there is a mural of C20 battleships on the rock carved out by the knights. We came up the steps at the back of the Mediterranean Conference Centre, formerly the knights hospital and from there it is an easy stroll to my flat for coffee.

I've written about this walk in some detail because I am scouting it for Malta Ramblers. I figured that I should start giving something back for all the pleasure I get from living in Malta so one of the things I'm going to do is volunteer to lead one of their walks. I admire the work they are doing in speaking up for the conservation of what is left of the Maltese countryside. Along with other NGOs, they are beginning to change the way people here in Malta think about how we use and abuse the countryside.

The photo that heads the post is of a Xlendi sunset. This weekend the Malta Ramblers are visiting this fishing village in Gozo and I'll be going over to join them on their Friday and Saturday walks. My older brother has also come to live in Xlendi so it will be good to spend some time with him as well. The photo was taken when I was over there for Christmas week last year.

Editing the past

2011-03-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

This sad lion is somewhere in San Anton Palace garden, I think. If I discover at some future date that it is somewhere else in Malta, I can come into the post again and edit.

I wish it was so easy to change the past in the light of new facts that emerge in the present! But except for spelling and grammar, if I decide to edit or add to one of my posts over the past few years I will put in the date of the later additions. My effort for today will be largely devoted to adding some reference details to my posts on Barriera Wharf and Valletta, EU Capital of Culture.

Valletta has been buzzing with carnival this weekend and through until tomorrow evening. The streets are packed. Small witches, cavaliers, court ladies, super heros are everywhere. They ride in strollers and on shoulders, they clutch adult hands or strut independently, they chase each other through squares and side streets. People who have to work complain about the traffic chaos, the float builders complain about the change of route imposed by the work on City Gate. Yet once again the floats and costumes are totally extravagant in colour and form, the marching bands are loud, tourists and locals jostle to get the perfect photo, the roadies guide massive floats and grotesque puppets through the throng without breaking too many papier mache finger nails.

This is my third carnival so I no longer pay for a ringside seat to watch the dance competitions and the parades but I still love the surprise of flamboyant costumes at every turn and massive floats slowly progressing past Valletta balconies and ancient coats of arms.

This week I'm one of the workers. I have classes every afternoon and at the weekend I'll be going over to Gozo with Ramblers Malta. So I may have to renege on my daily posts even before I've completed a full week!

A blogging life

2011-03-06T00:29:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about blogging. So much has happened in my life since I retired from paid work and started the blog in 2008. Yesterday I looked back over some of my early posts and felt glad that I now have something of a record of this changing and final phase of my life. The most interesting ones now are those where I have wondered about personal change, about the challenges, joys and anxieties of living my own life. The factual, historical blogs are useful for remembering the things that have happened but some of them are a bit long and are probably boring for other people to read.

I realise now that blogging is not like keeping a diary because it is immediately public and I have no control over who might read it. That is an interesting discipline to put on my thoughts and my writing. In more recent posts since coming to live in Malta, I have surprised myself by posting the poetry that occasionally comes into my head. Perhaps this is a way of putting some order into a jumble of thoughts and feelings. But usually I have tried to make each post about a particular topic or experience with a photo that somehow alludes to the theme but may not be directly connected. Perhaps the photo is a way of suggesting all the silences that always surrounds words on a page. I have no idea why I have chosen one of the silver roosters that sit on the formal dining table at San Anton Palace to head up this post! Perhaps it is the reflections in the table top.

I am trying to bring some order into the deluge of experiences of the past six months so that the blogs I put up are readable. I won't be doing it chronologically and it will be impossible to include everything but I will try and maintain a discipline of writing something everyday. At least until I start on the next book!

Barriera wharf

2011-03-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

Today I walked over with a friend for lunch at the Valletta Waterfront. I've walked along the Grand Harbour waterfront a few times during the past weeks either coming back from an expedition to a large furniture shop in Marsa where I found my new lounge suite or looking for a back way to the bus terminus displaced by carnival which in turn has been displaced by the work on the new City Gate.

The waterfront has been busy with ships making the run from Libya carrying foreign workers fleeing the upheaval. Sometimes there have been coaches parked waiting to transport people onward to the airport. Today, a South Korean warship was tied up in front of Brown's restaurant. I had watched it come in earlier this morning. The ship has been used to bring 36 South Koreans out of North Africa. In the tragedy of Libya, Malta is once again serving as a staging post for people displaced or damaged by war.

But I wanted to talk about the Barriera wharf which stretches from below Lower Barakka gardens near my flat, under the bastions as far as Victoria Gate into the city. Here, towards the end of their sojourn in Malta, the knights built a lovely curve of stores to service the wharf area. Halfway along the curve of the stores there was a small chapel that served as an open air altar for people being held at the quarantine station. From the small barriered area of wharf the quarantined travelers could see and hear what was happening at the altar.

During the British era, the middle section of the stores, including the chapel, was demolished to enable maintenance of the bastions. The fish market was also built in front of the right hand section of the stores so the lovely sweeping vista around the edge of the harbour was lost. Most of the stores are now derelict but there is talk of demolishing the fish market which is no longer used and putting in another cruise ship berth. I feel very positive about the idea of exposing and renovating the curve of the stores, but to then mask their beauty with another massive block of floating flats...

All part of the vibrant life of changing Valletta!

07/03/11. I am indebted to architect Joanna Spiteri Staines who has completed her masters thesis on the Barriera wharf. She has published an article in the Times of Malta, 20/02/11, and presented a lecture at Din l'art Helwa in Valletta on 24/02/11

The photo was taken from Dingli cliffs.

Valletta, EU capital of culture, 2018

2011-03-04T09:01:00.000-08:00

The excitement is already starting. At the gathering this morning in the Exchange Building in Republic Street there were mayors from around Malta, artists, cultural workers and perhaps one or two ordinary residents like me. The choice of venue for this information session about Malta's bid to host the European capital of culture in 2018 made a statement about the significance of engaging the commercial sector in the venture. A lot was said about tripartite involvement of the business, cultural and political sectors in the process of preparing to host the event in seven years time. But what emerged most strongly for me was the emphasis placed on citizen participation not just as audience but as active contributors to the shaping of the bid and the vision that will inform both the programme of events and the evaluation of success.

Malta is already developing its cultural policy as I discovered last year when I went to some of the community consultation meetings held at St James Cavalier. The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts is also beginning the process of cultural mapping to identify what is happening at the moment so that the year-long celebration in 2018 will support the sustainability of cultural engagement in the longer term.

This morning, the artistic director of the Cork EU capital of culture event in 2005 spoke about the need for honesty and authenticity in the particular programme that we will develop here in Malta. She also talked about the inclusion of debate and cultural dialogue as important in building a vibrant sector that is sustainable and continues after the euphoria of a glut of events in one year has passed.

It is too early in the process to begin to consider detail of actual events but some relevant issues were raised from the floor. Questions of cultural democracy, social inclusion, political instability in government commitment and the involvement of all of Malta and its people will be significant in developing our bid, planning our programme and implementing a year of cultural focus. I'm looking forward to that and feel glad that I am already talking about it in terms of 'we'!

07/03/11 Today I received an email from the organisers of the information session giving the link to the website for European Capital of Culture:

https://secure2.gov.mt/ECOC/home?l=1

The photo is of a botanical pianist in the garden at San Anton.

Touching base

2011-03-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

Things are aligning to bring me back to my blog.

I have finished the first full draft of the book and printed out a manuscript. It is still clunky and needs more work but it can sit for a while. I'm hoping it will be like soup and improve the next day.

The drama of the return to my (almost finished) flat has mellowed. I have sorted the issues with water leaking into the flat below, irate neighbours blaming me and the workers for broken lift, insomnia, invasive dust, rubbish on the roof, illegal development. I have worked out a strategy for dealing with stolen internal doors and the unfinished washroom. In time this will all become the theme for a blog.

I have settled back into life in Malta and reconnected with all the things I love to do here.

I have started to reflect on my three months away and my travels in Australia, Asia and Russia. I am getting excited about my travel plans for 2011.

I am starting to chafe against the limitations of Facebook.

So I will make lists and go through my photos and make the blog a part of my routine again. The photo was taken on a recent Ramblers' walk.

View from a train

2010-11-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

From a hotel lobby in Moscow waiting for a ride to the train station to pick up the overnight to St Petersburg. I'm on my way back to Malta and need to catch up on promises made over the past few months. The photo is a view from the dirty window of the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian. More on that and my adventures in Australia once I am back in my home base in Valletta.

On my way

2010-08-23T02:34:00.001-07:00

I'm on my way! Waiting for the taxi to take me to the airport, then Rome, Heathrow, a week in UK, two days in Singapore and back to Australia on 5th September. I leave Malta with a curious feeling of displacement. There are too many unfinished things including my beautiful flat, my book and my unwritten blog. But I promise to spend my time in Australia productively and hope that work will continue on my flat whilst I'm gone. In the meantime, the photo is of the Moulettes busking in Republic Street, Valletta.

Promises

2010-07-25T07:06:00.000-07:00

The photo is one of many I am taking as the sun rises over the breakwater. I will post soon on Malta Arts Festival and the arches that are taking shape in my flat. In the meantime, I have to prepare my lessons for next week!

Water on the block

2010-07-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

Water is a precious commodity in Malta yet we are depleting the aquifer as though it is fed from a bottomless tank in the sky.

I guesstimate that there are 142 households in my large block of flats and each of us has at least two tanks on the roof, one for the kitchen and one for the bathroom. The tanks are replenished regularly and mysteriously by the government who then send irregular bills for large amounts of money. Everybody complains.

When I first arrived in Malta, I struggled to find my way in a new country with a very different culture. My neighbour was very helpful in helping me to switch on my water and he told me which of the many tanks on the roof were mine. I wrote it down on a bit of paper and forgot about it.

More recently I have begun to feel sufficiently at home to start wondering about things and explore beyond the feeble water pressure in the shower. I discovered a few things.

The first revelation came when I was investigating strange dragging sounds on my roof. It was the man from Melita who was busily dropping more cables down the front of the block to connect a new household on a lower floor to one of the many satellite dishes that mushroom around the water tanks. I learnt from him that if I wanted to get rid of any of the cables or disks or antennae, I should ring the office. His job was just to connect people, not make sense of the rivers of cables that snake all over the roof parapets.

He got on with his job. That was how I made my first discovery. His job appeared to be associated with the mysterious small box I had noticed near to my washroom on the roof. He had to connect the cable that he had dropped down the front of the flats to this box which was at the back. He did this by running the cable along the rusty iron beams that support four bathroom water tanks including mine.

My interest was aroused. I worked out which tank was mine by tracing the pipe down the service well to the bathroom wall on my level. Discovery number one, my tank was missing a lid. A small portion of fibre glass hung on one of the lid ties but where the rest of it had gone was impossible to fathom.

Now I had a specific problem to address. Where do I find water tank lids in Valletta and how do I get them onto my roof and then onto my tank? So I asked my hairdresser. He sent me to an ironmonger on the Marsamxetto side of Valletta.

"What size is it?" asked the ironmonger, "I only have big ones."

He advised me to go and measure the tank across the diameter of the top. This was a good opportunity to get to know about my water tanks, to become familiar with the dimensions of the problem.

I returned to the roof, calling into my flat on the way to pick up my steel measuring tape and incidentally discovering the scrappy bit of paper on which I had noted the whereabouts of my tanks according to my neighbour. It seems I have three tanks, one for the bathroom and two for the kitchen. At least they all look the same size.

Gingerly I climb on a table that was left on the roof when I arrived. It is the same table that caused the original dragging sounds that led me to investigate the Melita man. Now I am armed with measurements and I return to the ironmonger.

"That's a 500 litre tank," says he, "I don't have any. Maybe next week but if you can find someone else..."

Over the next few weeks, whenever I remember, I call into any ironmonger I happen to be passing and ask them about lids for 500 litre water tanks. No-one has one. The closest I get is when a woman says "Call back this afternoon when my husband will be here."

In the meantime, I have begun to investigate the other two tanks. I discover that I have two tanks for the kitchen because the large family that lived here before me did a lot of washing. I also realise with horror that I am leaking and have been for a long time judging by the green slime sitting in the corner of the lift shaft next to my tanks.

I scurry to my neighbour. She sends me to one of the ironmongers. He lives in my block. He gives me the phone number of a plumber. I phone the plumber and he says he will come round the next day, Saturday.

I am thrilled that I seem to be solving this problem so easily. I wait at home at the appointed time. When he doesn't turn up, I phone his number. His wife tells me he came but he couldn't find my door. A Maltese friend tells me the World Cup is on. I try and reframe it in a positive light but I can't block out my obsession with all the water I have wasted through evaporation from a lidless tank and dripping from a leaky one.

On Monday the plumber comes right on the allotted time. We go onto the roof to investigate. He is happy to explain to me what he is doing so that I can get to understand my water system. The leak is solved with worrying alacrity by adjusting the stop cock inside the tank. The lid will have to wait until tomorrow.

The next day, we discover that the leak is still leaking and it is from a hairline crack at the bottom of the tank. We ponder this issue as the lid is put on the bathroom tank.

"I don't really need two tanks for the kitchen."

He looks at me to make sure I mean what I'm saying. Then he beams as he works out how to get rid of the leaking tank and give me one good kitchen tank. I leave him to get on with the heavy plumbing stuff. I return when he is cutting up the old tank to take it away. I feel almost euphoric at the small extra bit of sky I can now see where the old tank used to be. The smallish fee seems very reasonable to have all my plumbing problems solved.

The next day I pop up on the roof to bask in the glory of my drip-free tanks. The slimy area is still damp and there is a glisten of water on the pipe above the new stop handle he has put in. I almost cry with disappointment. I phone. He will come tomorrow around midday. He comes a few hours earlier. In no time he has whipped out the offending bit of pipe and attached the stop handle at a different angle. And this time it seems to be fixed even though the pipe juts out against the Valletta skyline where the old tank used to sit.

I now have an urge to run up onto the roof and check! The photo is of the bouganvillea at the old Birkirkara train station.

Everyday Valletta

2010-06-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

This is an installation by Sabrina Calleja Jackson down on the Valletta waterfront. A large unused space opposite the cruise terminal has been taken over by a group of artists. I want to write something about how the everyday becomes extraordinary here in Valletta.

I have a friend visiting me from Australia via UK. I am enjoying showing her some of the quiet treasures of Malta. Last night we walked over to Msida for the festival and watched as young men ran up a steep greasy pole to try and grab a flag from the end.

This morning we went to see the new 35 minute movie about Valletta that opened at the Embassy cinema complex earlier this week. Apart from the hype of the launch, I suspect we may have been the first people to pay to go to the show and my friend was certainly the first person to buy something at the small shop in the foyer that has been set up to accompany "the experience".

The movie makes good use of Valletta's historic location as well as Malta's fascination with reenactments. My friend loved it and I thought it was a fine way to get a potted history of what makes Valletta what it is today.

There are still teething problems to iron out. We arrived for the first show of the day and I was surprised at the cost (almost E10 with no KartAnzjan concessions). Sadly, I don't think many Maltese people will go along to a show that costs more than a full length feature film. This is a pity. It seems to me that the most successful "tourist" attractions here are those that also draw local people.

We were the only people there. We waited in the foyer whilst they prepared the auditorium and a young man explained to us how to use the headphones. We chose our seats in splendid isolation, inserted our earpieces and then spent the first ten minutes of the show trying to make them work. Finally, in desperation we attracted the attention of the projectionist and after fiddling with it for a while he took my set away to try and solve the problem. Once we had sound we enjoyed the remaining history and were then invited to watch the first 10 minutes again. This time we didn't need to use headphones, and I enjoyed it much more.

Afterwards, my friend browsed the small tourist shop that has good quality souvenirs. When she came to purchase a small glass Maltese cross, the delightful young man behind the counter couldn't get the new till to open. After valiant phone calls and charming comments of "This is Malta" variety on his part to try and lighten the situation, he finally resolved the issue of change by digging in his own pocket. The film is about the courage, persistence, resilience and openness to change of the Maltese people and he certainly showed those qualities in full!

In my next post, I want to tell the story of my water tank.

Seeking Anna Vella

2010-06-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of my grandfather's school. The chalk board in front, held by two of my mum's sisters, reads McKay's High Schools, Cospicua and Hamrun. My mother is the little girl standing in the middle between my grandmother and my grandfather. My cousin and I worked out that it must have been taken around 1920 and if you look carefully you can see how someone in the intervening years has put numbers on all the McKay children down to my mother who is number 7. Number 8, the baby of the family, my auntie Anne, doesn't seem to be in the picture.

This week I followed up on the family history research undertaken by my cousin Alison, who now lives in France. She is the daughter of number 8. Armed with my grandmother's family tree showing that three generations of Vellas before my great grandfather were married in San Paulo church, Valletta, I called in to see the parish priest.

My cousin had told me that the parish priest would be in his office on Tuesdays and Thursdays and that he looked after the records going back centuries.

I worked out that St Paul's church must be the one on St Paul's street but when I found the church closed and a sign advising tourists that it was worth visiting St Paul Shipwrecked church around the corner I started to feel confused. I wandered in the general direction of the stepped street going up to St Paul Shipwrecked and was rewarded after a few paces by a small, open door with a sign announcing the parish office. A man with a crucifix was just coming down the stairs as though he was on a mission but when he spotted me he asked if I needed help. I waved my family tree and mumbled about living in Valletta.

"You need Father Vincent," he said and pointed me up the stairs.

At the top there was a tiny office with a man sitting at a table carefully copying something from a book. He looked up and I started to explain what I wanted. He indicated for me to sit in a chair and continued with his task. I have learnt that in Malta, when you go into an office, you have to wait until the person behind the desk turns their attention to you. Sometimes this takes a long time. I looked around at the paintings on the wall, one of which seemed to be of the man behind the desk but dressed up in purple. On two other walls behind the table there were khaki metal cupboards like standard issue British bureaucracy.

This time it was only a few minutes until parish priest Vincent Borg looked up from his writing and invited my story. I told him about the family tree.

"So what do you want?"

"I don't really know. I think maybe I just want to see the marriage certificates of these three," I said pointing to the three boxes with dates going back to 1753, all married in Valletta (San Paulo).

Father Vincent looked at my piece of paper. Without saying anything he swiveled in his chair and opened one of the cupboards to reveal shelves full of large, aged books that looked as though they had been used in a Harry Potter movie. He glanced back at my paper and selected one of the books to place on his desk. He opened the tatty brownish cover to reveal pages of spidery black writing. He turned a few pages in the same way that I would look up a word in a dictionary. He explained to me that the dates were at the top of each page and the names of the people were down the side.

"Here it is," he announced. His voice was matter-of-fact. He had chosen the middle date, 1786, the wedding of Gio-Maria Vella and Rosa Xuereb who were married on my birthday. More than 200 years before, somebody, perhaps looking rather like Father Vincent, had carefully written in Latin the details of their wedding: the people who had been witnesses, the parentage of the contracting parties, the officiating minister. I stared at the hand that had recorded my genetic line.

"What do you want to do?" asked Father Vincent.

"Can I have a copy?" I managed.

He reached into a drawer and drew out a small form. I expected him to bite the end of his pen as he began to scan the document and pick out the relevant details to record on the form. There didn't seem to be anything I could do so I looked away and up at the portraits on the walls.

"That's me," said Father Vincent, catching the direction of my glance as he continued writing.

"Oh. I don't suppose I could get a photocopy, could I?"

"No, the book would fall apart."

Silence again as he continued bending to his task.

"Could I take a photo?"

"Yes, that would be OK."

I felt a surge of elation as I got out my camera and tried to work out the most unobtrusive way of getting round the table to take a photo of the page he was working on.

"Yes, come round because I'll close it soon," said Father Vincent. I carefully sidled between the table and the wall and positioned the camera for the shot. The book was closed as I went back to my chair.

"So there were two more, I think," said Father Vincent as he carefully replaced the book on the shelf. He looked again at my page of family history. Another book was selected and opened. Different writing but the same cursive recording of dates and names. This time Father Vincent looked puzzled. He looked back at my paper, then back at the book, then back and forth a few pages. This was the earliest of my ancestors marriages, Giuseppe Vella and Carmela Monti. Finally he opened another cupboard and reached up for another ancient book. This one was like an index.

"You see I can't find it." Back to the paper, back to the index, back to the book, pages were turned. As he works, Father Vincent has started to make conversation now. He asks me where I was born.

"Ah, here it is, the date was wrong, a typing error." My paper said 1753 and my ancestors were actually married in 1763. Father Vincent started copying out the extract and I prepared for the photo. By now, I felt confident enough to ask if I could take a picture of him pouring over the books and he seemed quite happy with that.

The most recent wedding in San Paulo church (1827), Giovanni Vella and Rosalea Sammut, was easy to find and by now we had the photography down to a fine art even though this entry went over two pages so I had to photograph the whole opened book. By now I was beginning to worry about how I should offer to pay for this amazing recording that had been going on for centuries. I mumbled an enquiry.

Father Vincent handed me three small sheets of Extracts from the Marriages' Records held in the Collegiate and Parish Church of St Paul Shipwrecked - Valletta.

"There's the offering box," he said indicating a small wooden box fixed to the wall.

"And perhaps we will see you in church," added Father Vincent, "or do you go to the Scottish church?" He had taken his glasses off.

I turned from putting some money into the slot of the offering box, hesitating.

"Actually, I don't really go to church."

"Well, start going, go to church," said Father Vincent with a little smile as I went out of his magical office.

This is a dunny!

2010-06-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

The photo was taken at Popeye's village at Anchor bay to the north of Malta. It was taken when I visited for the first time with my 8 year old niece. The theme park emerged from the specially constructed set used for the making of the movie of Popeye. My niece loved it and I appreciated the quirky village buildings and the dramatic setting. There was a strong wind blowing into the bay that day so the floating water features weren't in use and I could see why the breakwater constructed for the making of the movie is already breaking up.

In Australia, dunny is the term for an outside toilet. This setting makes it an extreme example!

This post is just a promise. I have neglected the blog this month as my life has taken over and I have been enjoying visitors. As soon as I organise my thoughts I'll catch up. I'm aware that I still haven't told the story of our walking trip to Liguria and there is so much happening in Malta that I want to write about.

Walking the line

2010-05-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

The railway line in Malta was inaugurated in 1883 and carried passengers between Valletta and Mtarfa on the northern side of the ancient city of Mdina. It was never a huge success financially and was forfeited to the government in 1890, extended northwards with a half mile tunnel built under Mdina by the British in 1896 and then finally closed in 1931. What remain are some additions to the secret underground spaces of Valletta, remnants of bridges and embankments scattered between the two old cities, stations at Hamrun, Birkirkara, Rabat and Mtarfa, some unusually straight sections of road where the old lines used to run and the beautifully constructed circular tunnel under Mdina that is now used as a mushroom farm.

On Sunday, Malta Geographic organised a walk/coach trip tracing the route of the railway from Valletta to Mtarfa. We met at the old ruins of the Opera house where I was surprised to discover that the old train station was actually located at the side of what will become an open air piazza/theatre in the reworking of the entrance to Valletta. The new Parliament building will be sited over the station where people used to descend into the underground tunnel to board the train at the start of the line. What a great opportunity for park and ride into the capital to attend cultural events!

We walked out through City gate and across the bridge entrance so that we could look down into the ditch on the left hand side. Here we could see where the train used to exit the tunnel from the ramparts of the city, crossed a bridge and re-entered another tunnel on the other side. Already, everyone in the group was buzzing at the possibilities presented by this century old construction. How will the beautifully arched stone railway bridge be used in Renzo Piano's designs for the new entrance to the city?

We followed the line of the tunnel across the bus terminus and along the footpath by the side of the granaries. Here there are gratings that used to serve as ventilation shafts for the tunnel after they had first been used in construction. At one point near the granaries, the tunnel builders discovered an underground water storeage system and had to detour slightly to the right. This got us thinking about the juxtaposition of the underground storeage system for grain, the aquaduct bringing water to the city that someone suggested finished at an unmarked fountain in the linear park next to the granaries and the transit tunnel for the railway. Is the whole complex system mapped somewhere?

Near the Argotti Gardens, we observed the ramp down to the Floriana station site and found our way down to the Filippo Neri Garden, one of the hidden gardens nestled into the ramparts in Valletta and Floriana. Looking over the rampart walls at the far side we discovered where the tunnel exited the underground shaft and crossed the ditch to re-enter the ramparts. Re-tracing our steps to Port-de-Bombes we could see this from ground level as well as discover where the train re-emerged again to cross another neat small bridge. This is the photo that I've used to head up this post. At this point, everyone was dreaming about walking/cycling routes into Valletta using the old railway tunnels.

From there we followed the busy main road from Valletta to Hamrun. This parallels the old railway that ran over ground from Port-de-Bombes until the tunnel under Mdina. I was getting excited now but for a more personal reason. My mother used to talk about family walks from Valletta to Hamrun when she was a little girl. We were probably walking in her footsteps. Sure enough, we passed the old Lyceum building in Hamrun where my grandfather used to teach.

Just round the corner, we found the old Hamrun station now used by the scouts. The station here is almost intact including the old corrugated iron platform cover. Inside there are framed photos of the old railway and outside there is a stack of old rails. For the first time, here we noticed how mature trees often mark the route of the old railway.

Now we picked up the coach for the section to Birkirkarra. I have already visited that station with a tour of Birkirkarra run by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, so the station, with it's park and old carriage were familiar. I have used the photo of the third class carriage in my post about the conference on Communicating Poverty. What was stunning at this time of year was the display of bouganvilleas all down one side of the park and once again, the mature trees running along the side of the track. I'll use that photo in another post soon!

On to Corinthia near San Anton gardens where we walked along the railway embankment up to the site of the Attard Station. At this stage, I was enjoying how the trip was helping me to link up odd bits of information that have been crowding into my head since I started to explore this amazing island that is now my home. Some time ago I read a snippet in the paper about how a local council was trying to get rid of a colony of cats that had established themselves in a local park supported by a local eccentric. The sign outside the little park at the start of this section of the walk banned several things including cats. Yet inside there were several cats as well as cat kennels, feeding basins and a woman going round filling the bowls with water. I hear an expression almost every day here: "Only in Malta" It is an expression of loving exasperation.

Now our guide, Frans Attard, who had done a wonderful job of getting together our programme and guiding us along the route with the help of his grandson, started to become mysterious. The plan was to drive along Triq il-Linja (Street of the line) to Mdina road where we would walk up to the Rabat station. There was now a slight change of plan and we were to go to the end of the line at Mtarfa for a reason that he would explain later.

The Notabile tunnel had been built under Mdina by the British in order to service the troops' barracks and hospital at Mtarfa. If this seems like an extravagance, it also opened the railway line for further expansion to the north of the island. We stopped at the lovely old bridge across the valley that is now used by the little road train that circumnavigates Mdina and walked up to an old railway building that has been used as a restaurant but is now planned as a railway museum. Here we could see the exit from the tunnel but it was closed and gated. People were starting to wonder why we were hanging about here and some were even starting to make their excuses to leave the group and head home. When an old car drove up the road and through the group, I just assumed it was normal traffic, but in fact it was the mushroom farmer who had arrived to open up the tunnel for us. The mystery was solved!

For many people this was the highlight of the trip. We were able to walk in through part of the tunnel and learn something about the process of growing mushrooms. We even got to see the remarkable circular tunnel construction that needed to be put in place at this section under Mdina because it went through the blue clay that is under the globigerina limestone of Malta's geology.

After that, the walk back from the station at the other side of Mdina through the fields was almost an anti-climax although I enjoyed the evening stroll. It had been a long day and we didn't get back to Valletta until after half past seven. I was due at Manoel theatre at that time to see the contemporary dance performance of "Being Caravaggio" but by the time I'd raced home for my ticket and back to the theatre I only managed to catch the final half hour of the show. But at least I was alone in the gallery with my walking boots on! And my internal map of Malta now includes a bit of an idea of where the old railway used to run.

Stuck in the lift

2010-05-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

It had to happen. After locking myself out and worrying about getting stuck in the lift, I did. It is not a good place to be stuck. It happened on the sixth floor after thinking about things for a while on the seventh. I was on my way home from Manoel theatre and the enjoyment I always get from walking back at night through St George square kept me from even having a twinge of anxiety when I got into the lift. Another person got in on the same floor and he got out alright on the fifth but the ancient mechanism must have got confused between the fifth and the seventh and decided to split the difference and shut down on the sixth. I shocked myself with my initial surge of panic. Luckily, the light stayed on so I was able to look at the array of buttons and realise that the only way of letting people know I was stuck was to ring the bell. So I did - twice and for a long time.

After a while, I heard male voices talking in Maltese. When they realised it was the English woman trapped inside they asked "Are you alright?"

"No, I'm not alright, I'm stuck in a lift."

There were strange scrabbling and scratching noises outside that seemed to go on for a long time. After a while when it became obvious that the feeble scratching wasn't going to make a difference and we had worked out that I was on the sixth floor and the liftman would not come until Monday (it was Saturday night), I suggested they go upstairs and fetch my neighbour because he had experience of getting women out of lifts since his daughter had met a similar fate a few weeks before. I have a lot of confidence in my neighbour. He says very little and persists in working through possible solutions until he manages to solve whatever the problem might be.

Sure enough, after a little bit of grunting and banging, the fingers of two hands appeared on the edge of the lift door. Another two hands were inserted higher up and there was a lot of heaving to make a two inch gap but then no more. So I added my hands to the collective effort and pulled from my side. It gave enough for my neighbour to wedge himself in the partly open door and hold it open long enough for me to jump over him and into the arms of the two young men who had heard the initial bell ringing and come out to help. I was saved!

I tell myself that walking up and down seven flights of stairs is good exercise. Even after the lift man came on Monday morning and fixed it, I had determined that I was going to carry on using the stairs but my resolve has waned as people gently told me in passing that the lift was fixed now. I guess I have to live with an unpredictable lift and trust my neighbour.

The photo is of graffiti in the old prison museum in Rabat, Gozo. The technique is different from Australian Aboriginal hand painting which uses blown paint to outline the hand. On the soft globigerina limestone used in Malta and Gozo, it is easy to scratch the outline into the wall. But the idea of affirming identity by outlining your own hand is perhaps universal. Maybe I'll suggest that everyone who gets stuck in the lift should leave their handprint.

On hearing Robin Robertson

2010-05-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

Last night I heard a poet read

He read of drink and sex and death

He read of Aberdeen

Grandfather came from Aberdeen

His Maltese wife birthed not four seals

But she who mothered me

Grandfather's bones lie with his wife

In a Maltese charnel house

My mother lies in a Scottish grave

Atop her ain true love

The poet's words dug up the dead

And flung their bones into my days

He flashed his words and stopped my blood

With rags of torn lost love

Haunting words removed from joy

Jarred by the ring of a mobile phone

Delivered stark in lectern light

Finished with wine and brittle chat

But I didn't stay for that

You know you're home when...

2010-04-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

Spring has arrived in Malta and I am into barefoot mode. The sun in the mornings has moved round enough to shine on my front windows for a few hours and the warmth wakes me up like a hibernating tortoise. But it also means that I can't read the screen on my laptop where it is set up by the window. I have to put a sun hat on to stop my glasses going too dark!

To really be at home somewhere, you have to spend several seasons there and learn to deal with the different conditions. Last week was windy and I just had my back courtyard windows open. On Wednesday afternoon when I got back from my lace class in Marsaxlokk, I called round to my neighbour to give her some old magazines from the newspaper. We chatted about her grandsons. The wind blew the door shut. We both stared in complete silence as we contemplated the implications of being outside the door in my socks (it was still cool then) without a key. This eventuality had crossed my mind before and I thought I must do something in preparation but of course I hadn't taken any action. We dismissed some of the wilder solutions like abseiling down from the roof. Solutions from another world such as phoning a locksmith were dismissed by my neighbour. It seems that in Malta, locksmiths don't sit on the phone in the afternoons waiting for distress calls from old ladies. In the end, my neighbour woke up her husband who was having his afternoon nap and he spent an hour and a half forcing my lock. My door now looks bedraggled but I can still lock it by turning the bolt into the top and bottom of the door rather than into the side which is stuffed. I have learnt always to have a key with me if I poke my head out of the door and I will make arrangements for a spare key to be left somewhere.

The photo is of a front door in Birkirkara that is completely covered in squashed Heineken beer cans. I may have to find a similar solution for my front door.

Last night the International Fireworks festival started on Grand Harbour. I watched from the roof. Like band clubs, fireworks in Malta are competitive. The fireworks are made at local village factories by volunteers and every year someone is killed in an explosion somewhere. At the festival, the displays are set up on barges moored off Kalkara. There were five of them last night with at least one overseas guest display. Everyone gathered along the bastions or came in boats to watch. I have never seen fireworks so close up and it was stunning. I took up a glass of wine and felt my brain exploding with the noise, the bursting patterns of light and the smoke. After the second barge finished, I noticed flame starting in the stern and sure enough, there was a long pause in proceedings as small boats investigated and a tug was dispatched to pump water onto the blaze.

Today the lift is out of action again. Last night, my neighbour's daughter got stuck in it. Awful thought that I will have to deal with!

In Cuba

2010-04-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

The small boats are gathering in the harbour to escort the pope across Grand Harbour from Kalkara creek. He is scheduled to meet Malta's young people at the Valletta waterfront during the next hour. I will go up onto my roof to see what I can. All of Malta it seems has turned out to catch a glimpse of the pontiff as he rides in his popemobile through the streets, or appears in balconies or on specially constructed stages.

I just wanted to get this post started - I have been promising it for months! Malta's weekend fete for the pope has got me thinking about it. When Fidel Castro ousted the dictator Batista to move his country towards post-colonial independence, he recognised the importance of the catholic religion for Cuban people and he did not try to use force to eradicate the church. It makes Cuba into a fascinating island of contrasts where church and state are separate and warily tolerated. In Havana, we even stayed in a hotel run by nuns in their convent. The photo is a street scene in Havana.

Thursday. I've just got back from the lunchtime concert at St Catherine of Italy. This evening I'll go down to Valletta Waterfront for the University Wind Ensemble playing at Sagrestia Vault. Sometimes my life becomes too crowded to fit in my writing.

But Cuba has become part of my life now. I am reading a fat book called "In conversation with Fidel" by Ignacio Ramonet. Ramonet suggests that Cuba cannot be dismissed as a quaint anomaly, an outdated and fading remnant of a communist era. Today, old man Castro remains an inspiring leader of radical resistance to globalisation. In this scenario, identification with a unique local culture is enriched and empowered by an awareness of the interconnection of all local contexts in a global network. I would like to think that old people in general may be part of the radical resistance to globalisation. Malta is my new base, my beloved and respected "local", yet I remain connected to and concerned about the global forces that shape our lives. In a small way, perhaps I can use the freedom of privileged old age to make life a little better for some of the other people who share this globe at this point in time.

One of the ways we tried to do this when the Brisbane Combined Unions choir started planning our trip with the Australian Union Singers to the International Choral Festival in Santiago in Cuba was to invite everyone to carry with them small gifts like toiletries, educational and medical supplies. We were advised that giving individual gifts was frowned upon but that we could donate to organisations who would distribute among their networks. In fact it wasn't as easy as this. When we arrived, we gathered all the gifts together, made a list of everything and tried to locate the appropriate bodies to receive the considerable piles of items. We would have liked to sing in a hospital and a school as a marker of our gifts, but it just became too complicated to coordinate such a process. After a lot of democratic debate on our part about what we should do, we just ended up giving everything to the organisers of the festival, together with the list of items in the hope that they would be able to distribute appropriately. I realised then how real is the issue of re-distribution of resources. We were trying to act in an immediate context transferring a tiny amount of resources from one local to another and we couldn't really negotiate a satisfying way to do it. That experience must be magnified enormously by the huge amounts of aid being shuttled around the globe between governments and NGOs.

So many levels to discover in Cuba! Perhaps that is why I have put off writing this blog. At the tourist level, Havana is fascinating and deserves weeks of wandering the streets and visiting the galleries and monuments; Santiago's history as a birthplace of the revolution merits more time than we were able to give and the countryside, the sea and mountains call me back; the old cars and buses and motorbikes are iconic; there really is music all the time in the streets and bars. Mohitos, the national drink with rum and mint, became a daily ritual and that reminds me that the mint I am growing in a pot on my kitchen windowsill is now prolific and if I get some rum and look up the mohito recipe, I could resurrect that ritual from time to time!

The focus for us, of course, was the music. For eight days in Santiago we fitted in the tourist visits to the beach and to the sights around our daily rehearsals and performances. Our hotel was right in the centre and overlooked the busy central square. From the rooftop terrace where we had breakfast, we looked across at the bell tower of the cathedral and beyond that to the river. The hotel management found us a room to use as our base and here we met every day to rehearse and plan our schedule. Sometimes it was very hot but everyone managed to keep their shirts on both literally and metaphorically. Our performances were well received although they were very different to the Cuban presentations. In Cuba, the choirs are professional with choristers selected at a young age to make music their lives. The choirs sang beautiful, polyphonic music and presented themselves in formal costumes. Our choir are all volunteers who sing rousing tales about social justice. We are used to singing with gusto outdoors at rallies and on picket lines. So it was not a surprise when the founder director of the festival, a man in his 80s who taught us a song and conducted us when we sang at the music school, said to our base section that we would sing more beautifully if we sang more softly!

On a personal level, Cuba will always be spending three days with my sister and my nephew. My sister travelled from California and my nephew from New York to meet us in Santiago. It was difficult for them to get there because of the USA embargo on its citizens visiting Cuba so they came via Mexico. They had never met my choir before yet they agreed not only to come to Cuba but also to act as interpreter/MC and official photographer for the choir. My sister has been learning Spanish for a few years and my nephew would like to be a full-time photographer. Cuba has become a memorable node in my global network and I will treasure the memory of my sister standing on stage in front of a huge Spanish-speaking audience and daring to address them in their own language, of my nephew flashing his camera with great joy as we nervously undertook our first sound check. Today my nephew has his first exhibition in a NY gallery and I am so glad to have a link with his achievement in another part of the globe. I hope he continues to flash his camera all over the world!

"Communicating Poverty"

2010-04-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

The conference, "Communicating Poverty", was held in the plush surroundings of the Excelsior Hotel in Floriana, looking out on the maxi yachts moored at Manoel Island. The project, Media Engagement in Development Issues and Promotion (MEDIP), was a collaborative project between Malta, Hungary, Cyprus, Estonia, Slovenia and Romania, all recent members of EU. It was about media coverage of issues of poverty. As one delegate put it, "How do you make poverty sexy?"

I went along on Saturday because I had been to a previous conference last year in St George's bay where I heard for the first time of the EU millennium goals addressing issues of poverty. I was interested in what appeared to be one project's outcome in the lead-up to the target year of 2015. The objective of the MEDIP project is to enhance the contribution of the participating six new EU member states towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The strategy is to sensitise journalists and the media to these goals. I haven't yet seen today's papers but I found nothing about the conference in Sunday's papers although I had previously found out that it was happening from an advertisement in the print media. I discovered that part of the project included a training workshop for mainstream media held in Malta in March last year. With hindsight, I think I may have noticed a change in the language used by the media to report on issues of poverty. For example, most articles use the term "irregular" rather than "illegal" to report on the people who are currently in Malta without standard documentation.

The conference was organised in two similar sessions each starting with a lecture presentation. This was followed by the screening of one of the 30 minute documentaries made by contributing countries after a trip to Uganda, and the session finished up with a panel discussion. Each of the six participating states has made a video focussing on different millennium goals. Malta's contribution looked at maternal health in Uganda and the other video screened was made by Hungary and examined issues of gender equality. Discussion centred on positive versus negative coverage. Poverty is grey, grinding and long-term rather than dramatic, sudden and emotional. It is difficult to portray the factual information in a way that creates hope and dignity for the people involved as well as maintaining interest by a Western audience already distanced by geography and experience.

One of the ways forward is for the media to help bridge this distance between audience and the people involved. The MEDIP project sought to achieve this geographically by taking the media to the issue in Uganda to make the videos. Another bridge is to enable a Western audience in examining their own experience to reveal how it impacts on global poverty. A good example cited at the conference was the British TV series where young fashion-conscious people were transported to one of the sites in India where their garments were made. They were required to live the life of a worker in that situation and the subsequent excellent documentary was about that experience.

Poverty as a global issue was discussed at the conference but in terms of avoiding the trap of competitive poverty where people seek to claim greater poverty than their neighbour. There wasn't time, although it was hinted at, to discuss how Western behaviour contributes to global poverty.

Another way to bridge the experience gap is to tap in to the stories of people who have come to Malta from other lands seeking to escape poverty. Academic, Teresa Hanley, emphasised this bridging point in her talk but again there wasn't time to discuss further. It was also touched upon in the introductory lecture by Mr Bouratsis, a director of EuropeAid, when he pointed out that EU sends a lot of aid outside of Europe because their policy is not to close off to the rest of the world. The EU is not a fortress protected in times of internal hardship from seeing how that hardship is linked to the wider world.

The photo that heads up this post was taken yesterday when I went on the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts tour of Birkirkara. It is one of the carriages from the train that ran briefly from Mdina to Valletta at the turn of C20 until 1930s. It went bankrupt reportedly because they collected the fares at the end of the trip when the train arrived in Valletta so people used to get off at the stop before and walk in! Ironically, the conference finished with a sumptuous buffet lunch with multiple courses and wine. I felt guilty about enjoying such a free lunch at a conference on poverty so this article is my contribution!

Living in Valletta

2010-04-09T01:14:00.000-07:00

My current life takes over from my past. Yesterday I went to a conference called 'The historic city: a reference model for urban sustainable development policies' hosted by the International committee on Historic Towns and Villages. It was held in the Auberge de Provence which is now the archaeology museum in Republic street. The photo shows the PM, the chair of Heritage Malta and the president of CIVVIH (from right to left) dwarfed by the magnificent painting in the hall that we were in.

I stayed for the whole day sitting through rather dull presentations where people put up big chunks of text (sometimes from their own publications) and proceeded to read the words out loud. But I thought a lot about where I have come from and where I am now. Most of the participants were architects and town planners who have now started to talk about the fourth pillar of sustainability - culture (alongside heritage, economic and social). Community cultural development in Australia adopted this idea as a cornerstone of praxis many years ago yet there were no representatives of this area or of community arts at the conference. In fact, there were very few Maltese people in general even though the president of CIVVIH is Maltese.

The significance of the social in sustaining the vibrancy of cities was also discussed. The general trend of people moving out of the historic parts of cities and the subsequent gentrification was raised. In Valletta the population has dropped from something like 25,000 at the time of the knights to a mere 6,500 now. I felt privileged to be one of that small band of people tal belt (from Valletta). I started to think about how I might link my past work in community cultural development with my current life in this historic city. It is curious that my last two posts on this site have been about my growing love for my adopted home.

The other idea that came up often and resonated with me was the proposition that conservation is about the past and sustainability is about thinking of the future whilst living now. This is the continuing theme of my life today as I learn how to live well in old age. I'm off now for coffee with a friend!

Home again and writing

2010-04-06T01:49:00.000-07:00

Easter has been solitary and reflective. The mood was set on Maundy Thursday when I went to the lunchtime concert at St Catherine of Italy - beautiful songs accompanied by piano for the stations of the cross. But the readings in between each piece gave the performance meaning for me. The performers had carefully chosen poems and writing about some of the horrors that we have perpetrated on each other during the past century. In the past week, I have picked up from two different sources the proposition that Malta's history has been about service. In the past it has been the service of other people's power struggles. Malta's independent future now lies in the service of peace. It is a seductive idea for an old woman who has chosen this small central turning point of the Mediterranean as my home.

The Good Friday procession was interrupted by an island-wide power cut. The final station had just passed me in my position at the top of the hill in St Paul's street. The rhythmic creaking of the carrying poles was stopped as the penitents in their light brown robes reached the top and put down their heavy load on the resting stays. When the power went off, there was literally an electric pause as everyone tried to work out what had suddenly happened to plunge us all into darkness. I walked down along the side of the procession to head to my flat to make dinner, but when I realised the power was off I decided I couldn't face the many flights of steps with lift and lights out of action. I wandered through the Valletta streets where people had started to light candles and put on car headlamps to help the procession get moving again. At the restaurants I passed anxious workers standing in the doorways trying to get an idea of how long the cut might last. Of course, they could not cook food. I ended up in upper Valletta in the cafe at St James Cavalier. They were the only place in Valletta to have power, probably because they have their back to Castille where the PM's office is. I went in for seafood risotto washed down with half a bottle of Maltese wine and finished off with hot chocolate.

At 9.30, the power was still off but I was sufficiently fortified to face the climb up to my flat using the tiny torch on my key ring to light the way.

The rest of Easter I have spent getting back into my writing, unpacking the last of my boxes from Australia and setting up my office space with all my reference books around me. On Sunday, I also went to the Adoloratto cemetery to see if I could find the two plots where my grandparents were buried. I had been given two plot numbers by a very helpful government employee suggested by a friend (thanks, Reno) but it was quite difficult to work out where they were. The cemetery is beautiful, set on a hillside with lots of established trees and the amazing baroque tombs and chapels in the private sections. I wandered vaguely, using the sun to head in a Westerly direction which was where the government plots were located as indicated by the numbers that I was carrying scribbled on a piece of paper. After a while I realised that some of the terrace walls had letters on them and then at the back of the cemetery I noticed that the grave sites had multiple marble plaques on each and these seemed to be temporary. The plots had numbers on them and I eventually found my grandparents in the same row, but not side by side. As in most rocky lands with limited space, Malta routinely clears government graves every ten years and places the remains in a charnel. I couldn't identify the charnel house but I will return during office hours and try to find out more about what I can do to commemorate the place where my ancestors are buried.

The photo that heads the post is of an ancient apiary carved into the garigue at Xemxija that I visited with Ramblers Malta in January. The smaller holes are for the bees to store their honey. The larger hole is where the beekeeper went in to collect it. It seems that the more I write, the more I have to write. Now I have lined up for my next posts the venture in Cuba last year, my trips to UK and Liguria in Italy last month and the visit by my brother last week. Until my next post...

From my window

2010-04-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

The twin breakwaters of Grand Harbour embrace me like the arms of a final lover.

I feel the pulse of Valletta snuggled at my back, breathing softly in my ear.

He speaks to me, this city built by gentlemen for gentlemen,

this city of straight masculine lines and defensive bastions,

this city of baroque excess.

I am the soft, rounded shapes of the goddess temples,

more ancient than the knights' city,

trampled by the knights' religion,

reborn in Valletta chapels as virgin mother and martyred saint.

Yet his soft breathing enchants me and his encircling arms merge with my own arms.

Red and green candles flicker in my hands,

guiding ships to the safe harbour that has become my own haven.

Cheesemaking and other NZ delights

2010-03-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

I still haven't got back into blog routine. It's already over a month since my last post. When everyday life is rich and full, it is difficult to sit down and write about it. Yet the discipline of finding time to write each day is valuable for me and so I want to maintain the blog. Right now I am watching four new grey patrol boats recently arrived in Malta from Australia to join the border protection programme. They shot out of Marsamxetto in a straight line, made a large circle and now they're heading back in.

In this post I'll sketch out the start of my trip back to Malta in November last year. The photo that heads the post shows camembert taken out of the brine and standing for 24 hours before going into the cool cabinet. We made them in a cheese-making workshop run by my cousin Vicky. My red-headed cousins live on the east coast of the south island of New Zealand and I called in to see them when I found that my plane trip to Cuba stopped over in Auckland. It was easy to arrange a flight from there to Christchurch and a flight back via Wellington so I could also visit my dark-haired, slightly greying cousin, John. There are cheap internal NZ flights available online that Vicky put me on to. At first I had considered taking the train journey from Auckland down to Wellington, across on the ferry and then along the coast to Christchurch. I had enjoyed that trip once before, but discovered that it no longer ran and would have taken too long anyway.

Vicky and one of her daughters drove up from Oamarau to meet me at Christchurch. The trip takes several hours so it was a long day for them and I was very grateful not to have to worry about finding somewhere to stay in Christchurch and then catching the bus. Vicky offers her house as a B & B called the Red Shed and it's a great place to visit. All her family have thrived in the New Zealand culture where craft and bush skills are valued. There is always an atmosphere of support at Vicky's for the various creative projects and adventurous endeavours that everyone gets into. Whilst I was there we made brie and camembert, tried our hand at decoupage on large objects like tables and chairs and learnt how to make giant twig balls. I also watched Vicky's son as he put his young dog through its training for hunting and tracking. We had a potluck supper where everyone brought a dish not only cooked themselves but also grown or caught themselves. We had delicious white bait fritters made from fish caught in the local river and eggs laid by home chickens, all kinds of home-grown vegetables in salads and pies and baked, and delicious chutneys and cheeses. I was only there for two full days and I felt I had become part of a happy, creative community. I am so glad that I can use electronic media now to keep in touch with all the exciting things that continue to happen in their part of the world.

On my way back to Auckland, I stayed overnight in Wellington, that lovely city on the South coast of the North Island on the channel between the two halves of New Zealand. My cousin John and his wife welcomed me into their busy lives as academics and community figures and at the University I was helped to track down some more information about my mother's side of the family who had gone to New Zealand some generations before my mother was born in Malta.

In my next post, I'll get on to our great trip to sing at the International Choral Festival in Cuba.

Icing on the cake

2010-02-10T07:27:00.000-08:00

This is the icing from the cake my aunt-in-law (is there such a relationship?) made for me when I visited my relatives in NSW to say farewell before I left Australia. I keep promising to get onto my journey to Malta via New Zealand and Cuba but when I sit down to start there are more things to say about leaving Australia.

My sailing boat came into my life 15 years ago. It was my birthday present to myself when I turned 50. It is a classic 22ft open cockpit yacht built in 1948 so not much younger than me. I fell in love with its beautiful lines although in many ways it is an impractical boat to sail on Moreton Bay. It has a fixed keel so it is sometimes difficult to get it out at low tide through the shifting channel in the mangrove and mud Tingalpa creek where I kept it moored. And without a cabin, it is adventurous to stay out overnight.

I sailed single-handed, learnt about the tides and worked out how to stay out overnight sleeping under the boom tent. I saw in the millennium anchored in the Broadwater at the Gold Coast to watch the fireworks. On the way back, I called into Horseshoe Bay at Peel Island and was standing in the water close to the beach as a pod of dolphins were herding fish into the shallows for their breakfast.

The sailing became more challenging as I became older and less agile, but it was breaking my wrist that pushed me to bring my boat out of the water and put it on a cradle at the front of my house. It took on a new life as a local landmark and I set up the timber mast as a flagpole for my Eureka flag. I had pangs of guilt from time to time as I watched it deteriorating. My boat pined to be back on the bay.

Last year, when I was living for half the year in Marsaxlokk, someone started making enquiries of my Australian neighbours about what was to happen with my boat. So when I returned to make arrangements for coming to live in Malta, I just had to make a few phone calls and my boat had a new home. Her new owner is manager of East Coast marina and he is now working on restoring the boat and sailing her once again on Moreton Bay. It is a huge job he has taken on because we only just caught her in time before she had deteriorated too much. But he knows what he is doing and has the skills and resources to make it happen so when I visit Australia again later this year she should be back in her element, sailing on the bay. That makes me feel good.

Here in Malta, today is the feast of St Paul shipwrecked. I went walking with Ramblers Malta from Mellieha Parish church down through the fertile valley to the bay and then back along the cliffs. We passed the hotel where Malta Environment and Planning Agency have just approved extensions that will spread out over the surrounding fields in a protected zone. The decision has pushed the Ramblers into more active protest and they are planning to challenge in the courts. The invidious creep of over-development in the North of the island is reaching a critical point from which there will be no return. I will be taking part in the protest rally to be held in Valletta on 6th March.

Unpacking my life

2010-02-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

These are the 37 boxes that I packed up in Australia six months ago and I am now unpacking in my flat in Valletta. I tried to be ruthless with my life stories but still I have too much to fit into my flat. The books will have to stay in boxes for a while. I unpack slowly, finding a place for each memory as it comes out of the box. I group things differently from before.

Today has been sunny and warmer than the past week. Walking down Merchants street to get the paper, two people greeted me with "bonju" and a wave. I stopped to chat to my neighbour who was pushing her grandson in a stroller and she introduced me to three other women from my block of flats. The woman in the tiny newsagent cellar told me I am now a Beltija, which means a woman from Valletta.

Gathering the threads

2010-01-28T02:13:00.000-08:00

My life will catch up with me tomorrow afternoon. Thirty-seven boxes will be loaded into our tiny lift and deposited in my flat. The ship arrived in Malta over two weeks ago but the processes of getting my past back into my present have been complicated. In general, the transfer of my meagre collection from Australia has been without drama. It seems, however, that the transfer of funds is not so simple and that is why my possessions have languished in a bonded store for over a week. I'm not sure how I will feel when I start unpacking.

Last year, I was back in Australia for six months and all of that time, I was preparing to leave. I had decided to come and live in Malta and my return to Australia was about making that happen. Decisions about the detail hadn't been made when my friend, Lou, met me at Brisbane airport with my little car that he had been looking after. It was good to be back.

The first decision that had to be made was about my beautiful house on the bank of a mangrove creek. I had lived there for almost 20 years and there was a lot of myself built into the extensions and renovations I had made. Yet it was easy to decide to sell - the creative work was finished, it was good and I was ready to start my next piece. The process of selling was also easy once I had negotiated the uncertainties of the current economic climate by having the house independently valued. When I put it on the market, it sold within three days. The Real Estate people have a special name for it which I've forgotten - something like a heart sale, meaning that the buyer falls in love with the house. I was glad I could reject the other offer from a guy who didn't understand my house at all.

After that, I spent an interesting few months camping out in the house as the sale processes went through. I sorted through all my possessions and put my life into piles. There were treasured things like my collection of framed community theatre posters and the scale model of Bluenose, the first Americas cup contender, that needed to go to particular people. That pile was fairly easy as I had already thought about that for when I die. There were things that particular friends could make use of such as my fridge, my chopping block on wheels and my car. There were all the things, particularly books and lifetime memories, that I couldn't bring myself to dump and that is what will arrive here this afternoon. And all the rest went into a garage sale when my cousins came down from Mt Tamborine to help me. The night before the sale, I invited all my friends and neighbours to come to a party and choose a memento of me from the books and ear-rings that hadn't made it into the pile for Malta. Then after the garage sale, everything that was left went to the charity shop. I felt almost euphoric during that whole process, but my last night in an empty house was strange and sad. My plan was to spend the last day before settlement in the house so that I could go through and clean it lovingly before handing her (does a house take on the gender of its owner?) on. But my choir was singing at a peace rally on that day so everything became a bit rushed and I couldn't linger as I had hoped. In the end, I was racing to load all my final bits into my car and get the keys to the Estate Agent so I couldn't indulge the tears that were pricking my eyes.

After the house was sold, I felt different about being in Australia. It was as though now I was really a visitor. I did all the practical things like settle on my flat in Malta and arrange a loan on a small rental unit in Redlandshire so I would still have a foot on the ground. In the last few months I was house-sitting for friends, rehearsing every week with my choir ready for our exciting trip to sing at the International choral festival in Cuba and making my farewells with friends and relatives. But in my heart I was already on the way. In my next post I'll tell the story of my journey from Australia to Malta via New Zealand and Cuba.

The photo that heads up this post is of the waves crashing over Sliema front near the Fortizza. We have had a lot of big winds in the past weeks and when it is from the North or East the waves break magnificently over the North/East facing side of the island. My flat looks out on the Grand Harbour entrance and the waves cascade over the breakwater.

Hope for 2010

2010-01-05T01:48:00.000-08:00

My first post for another year. It's now almost two years since I started the blog and looking back I am so glad that my niece, Sholeh, got me started. I now have a record of my travels in 2008/09 and as I settle back in Malta, I'll start documenting again my experiences day to day as well as putting up some summaries of packing up in Australia and shipping out to Malta via Cuba. The photo is of weathered rock in a fort we visited in Santiago de Chile.

I'm watching the red Round-the-Harbour launch come in through the gap in the breakwater from Sliema and now the big traditional luzzu that also does the trip. They are both crowded with tourists so there may be a cruise liner in. I have the computer set up at the living room window so I can watch the busy life of Grand Harbour. I love getting to know the moods of this small piece of the Mediterranean that can tell so much of the story of the lands that surround it. Every day, as the winds shift, the sea takes on a different colour. Today, the wind is from the South East and the sea is calm, rippled grey. Some high cloud gradually works its way across the sky and the wheeling pigeons flash white against it.

My shipment of the pared down remnants of my life will arrive here after 12th January. It will be strange to unpack all that memorabilia sorted and packed in another world, another life on the other side of the globe. In my next post I'll start telling the story of that process.

Malta or Cuba?

2009-12-14T05:53:00.000-08:00

The photo is not Malta but Cuba! What gives the same feel is the age of the buses (and cars in Cuba) and the abundance of churches. But I'm now back in Malta and settling into my flat in Valletta. I don't have internet access at home yet so this is by way of a promise to restart writing on my blog as soon as I get set up.

Sydney and Illawara

2009-06-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

The weekend after I returned to Australia, I flew down to Sydney with my choir. We met up with Union choirs from around Australia, sang together all day on Saturday at Redfern Community centre and gave a concert on Saturday night at Marickville Portuguese club. It was a great weekend, we sang our hearts out and had a meeting on Sunday morning about our planned trip to Cuba in November.

I was billetted in Glebe with another choir member and we were really looked after by our hosts, one of whom is a member of Sydney Trade Union choir - many thanks! Glebe is a great place to live - it is one of the few places in Australia where you can walk each day to get your fresh vegetables and bread - the kind of village atmosphere that is drawing me back to Malta. My cousin Pete lives just round the corner from our billet so I was able to walk round and check out the renovations he is undertaking to his terrace house that has great views over the centre of Sydney.

After the meeting on Sunday, I jumped on a train and went down to Dapto to visit my aunt and uncle who live near Shell Harbour. We have a thunderstorm coming up so will post and add later.

I'm now camping out in my house in Thorneside and I'm so pleased that my new wireless connection just seems to work everywhere! I'll finish the story of my trip to Illawara. The photo that heads the post was taken outside the Dapto railway station where I had arranged for my uncle to pick me up when I got off the train. But the meeting did not go smoothly! The trip down from Sydney passes through some lovely country and I always enjoy it. I phoned as we were leaving Sydney to let my aunt know what train I was on and settled in to enjoy the ride. We passed the oldest National park in Australia, came down from the heavily wooded mountains with lovely glimpses of the villages nestled along the coastline and when we were travelling along the flat, there was an announcement saying that the next stop would be Dapto. I got up and took my small case to wait at the door. The train stopped and I grappled with the door which seemed to be reluctant to open. When it did open, I leapt out and watched the train pull away. The station seemed very small. When I trundled my little case outside, I realised it was the wrong station - Kembla Grange where the train only stops when there are races on at the track! I was bushed! I phoned my aunt but just got the answering machine. Maybe I can walk, I thought. There was a junk yard across the road and I spotted two men talking so I trundled my trolley over to ask which way to go.

"Too far to walk, mate," said one.

"Wait while I talk to the boss and I'll give you a lift," said the other. I dismissed the little flashes of Wolfe Creek, the horror movie, and waited. After a while, we got into an old, rather grubby car and set off. The man was an unemployed truck driver who had been in Australia for about 35 years from one of the middle European countries - the same length of time as me. He talked non-stop about finding work and how it was easy for him because he was active in looking in the right places. When we got to Dapto, I offered to give him some money for the fuel but he wouldn't take it saying that he hoped one day someone would do the same for him.

There was no sign of my uncle outside the somewhat bigger Dapto train station, so I phoned and left another message on the answering machine. After another half hour during which I inspected the war memorial and advised a hurrying young woman that the Sydney trains seemed to be running without any necessity to catch buses because of track work, I started to wonder about my uncle. I phoned again. This time I managed to catch him as he got back from his first trip to pick me up from a train that had already thrown me out at an unscheduled stop.

"Where are you? Stay where you are and I'll be there." His Scottish tones had never sounded so sweet!

The rest of my stay was completely stress-free. We had a family dinner to celebrate my uncle's 79th birthday, visited the Illawara fly, an excellent tree top walk at the top of the mountain range with stunning views out to the coast,walked in Black Butt forest in the mornings, had meals with my cousins and with my aunt and uncle's friends and visited a pet shop owned by a man from Malta who was happy to talk about his beloved island for an hour. When the time came to fly back to Brisbane, my uncle drove me all the way to Sydney airport - perhaps he no longer trusted my ability to manage the train!

I really enjoyed the few days I had with my family in Illawara and hope that I can continue to spend time with them when I move to Malta.

Australia again

2009-06-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

I've been back in Queensland for three weeks and have neglected the blog because I didn't have internet access at the place I'm staying in Mt Cotton. But I want to keep the blog going even if I post less frequently so this is by way of promising an update very soon. The photo was taken from the Illawara Fly, a treetop walk in the range behind my aunt and uncle's place at Shell Harbour.

Singapore

2009-05-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

This is the new Orchid Road centre in Singapore. My hotel is round the corner in Scotts Road. This area is all shopping centres and hotels but that's fine for me at the moment because I'm into recovery mode.

On the seven hour overnight flight from Dubai I passed out in the aisle and when I came round a large Russian woman was yelling at me and fighting the Singapore airlines cabin staff over where to put the blood pressure cuff on my limp wrist. The combination of Dubai heat, Egypt belly and cabin pressure had got to me. The up side was that I scored a row of seats to lie down for the rest of the trip.

So I spent yesterday in my hotel room sorting myself out although I did manage to cross the road to a shopping centre and have a manicure and pedicure. Today I've ventured further afield and ordered myself two silk suits to be made up for me to pick up tomorrow afternoon before I fly out. I've always wanted to do that in Singapore! I also had a full body lymphatic massage and that made me feel great!

The other thing I did today was walk down to the Botanic gardens. It's a lovely area at one end of Orchard Road and it has won several International awards as a great urban jungle. I spent a few hours wandering through the ginger garden, the rainforest, and beside the lakes.

Tomorrow I'll go and get my hair cut after my late check out and before picking up my tailoring and hope that the flight to Brisbane will be gentle on me.

Dubai

2009-05-12T01:45:00.000-07:00

Just to touch base and promise later posts on my trip to Oman - Muscat and Salalah - as well as something about Dubai. I'm back in Dubai arriving late last night and am catching up on internet stuff before my flight to Singapore this afternoon. I'll edit my previous post with the last bit about Mt Sinai. I've put up a photo of Rameses here taken in Luxor because my guide here in Dubai pointed with pride at the Raffles hotel (same chain as the famous Raffles in Singapore where I am heading next) which is built like a pyramid with massive Rameses statues at the entrance. Dubai is like a collection point for all the icons of the world!

Mt Sinai

2009-05-03T04:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched the dawn from the top of Mt Sinai and today I am writing this in Cairo International airport on my way to Zurich for an overnight stop before carrying on to Dubai and Oman. Life is full of miracles!

At first I misunderstood the guide's briefing about my trip to the mountain and I waited in the hotel lobby at 10.00 am rather than 10.00 pm. Once I'd worked that out, I spent the day trying to get as much rest as I could because it seemed I would be climbing a mountain all night! When the minivan arrived for me, the first thing they explained was how to put the seats down so I could rest! So I dozed most of the two and a half hour trip.

I think they've just called my flight so I'll finish when I can.

Just a move from one waiting area to another! But this one is much quieter and I still have wireless!

So I arrived at a carpark after midnight. There was a bus with many tourists sitting inside, several minivans, Bedouin men hanging around the inevitable street market. I got out and Bishay my guide directed me to the toilet saying it would be 2 Egyptian pounds. I'm off again - boarding this time.

So now I'm in Dubai where I have wireless access in my room. I'll write about Dubai and the gentle rain in Zurich in my next post, but for now I need to finish off the story of Mt Sinai.

The guide who was to lead me up the mountain arrived and Bishay handed me a torch and pointed me in the right direction. The mountain guide asked me if I wanted a camel, but I said no, I wanted to walk if it wasn't too difficult. We set off at a cracking pace and I had to concentrate on my feet in the little circle of light from the torch to make sure I didn't stumble on the uneven path. Every so often I would hear strange grunts and a camel would be lead past on silent feet. Each time, the camel was offered. There didn't seem to be anyone else on the mountain at this time of the morning and when we stopped at the little rest shops on the way, there was no-one apart from the man behind the tea counter. By the second stop, a camel driver who was more persuasive than the others sold me his camel by saying I had only come a quarter of the way and things got very steep at the top.

I have never been on a camel before, but my training at getting on my brother-in-law's motor bike in California stood me in good stead. The rhythm made it a bit more uncomfortable and there was nowhere to rest your feet, but once I'd got the hang of it I was able to look up at the stars and the eerie mountains round about. It was great not to have to stare down at my feet. The camel driver and my mountain guide walked ahead chatting quietly and I drank in the craggy mountains that occasionally glowed white like smoke. I didn't think too much about the possibility of the camel stepping over the edge or crushing my leg against the rocks on the other side.

We arrived at the top camel station and the guide explained that it got too difficult for the camel from here on as it was continuous steps for about 40 minutes. The camel did the classic kneel and I got off stiffly. We set off and the camel driver was right! We were also quite high up now too so I told myself that it was the thin air that was making me breathe so heavily. We stopped regularly and eventually we made it to a hut that was near the summit. Here we went in and I accepted the offer of tea. There were big piles of blankets all down one side and the usual carpet-covered benches all round. My guide promptly settled in a corner and went to sleep so I figured that I should do the same but I refused their offer of a blanket and got out my jacket and bedouin scarf. After dozing for a while, the hut started filling up with people so I had to sit up and there was a constant sales patter for blankets and hot drinks.

The tiredness made me impatient with the hordes of Russian tourists who were piling in and who have a different way of dealing with close proximity than I do. My guide continued to sleep on under his blanket so I got up and went outside. The sky was beginning to pale and there was a constant stream of people heading on up the path. Just as I was starting to feel anxious, my guide appeared and said "We go?"

I thought it was just a few more steps but it turned out to be quite a bit further and the mountain was filling up with people. My guide found us a spot just before the summit and pointed towards the slightly reddening horizon. I found myself a seat on a ledge and pulled my jacket collar up against the cold. The guide disappeared and I settled down to watch the dawn. Or so I thought. A Russian woman came and sat on the rock in front of me and before I knew it I was jammed in between a whole tribe of tourists who proceeded to get out their breakfast and scatter paper and bread crusts all over Mt Sinai. On a different mountain, it would have become the story of the feeding of the five thousand!

I sat there bristling and almost missed the first red curve of the sun as it came up over the craggy mountain tops. People clapped and there was a lot of noise! No self-focussed communing with nature on this mountain top!

Coming down, I was again offered camels but was determined to walk now that it was downhill and in daylight. It was a good decision because the landscape is dramatic and I felt good striding out now that I could see where my feet were treading. The thousands who were on the summit got spread out on the zig-zag path and it didn't feel like a mall on late night shopping.

Towards the bottom where St Catherine's monastery blends into the red-brown mountains, there were occasional small children selling quartz thunder eggs and I got conned into paying 5 Egyptian pounds for a small, inferior quality egg for my uncle in Wollengong who is a prospector. The young man didn't have change so we eventually came up with a complicated arrangement whereby I would take the egg and give the money to my guide later who would then bring it to the seller. I figured that it was only two and a half pees!

The monastery is fascinating in its own right. Reputed to be the oldest monastery in the world. I have to go as my pick up is here to take me to the airport to fly to Muscat.

Finishing in Dubai after my trip to Oman. The Monastery at the base of Mt Sinai has a large blackberry bush reputed to be the burning bush as seen by Moses. It also has St Catherine's knuckle bone and a room full of the skulls of ancient monks. When I got to that bit there were two Americans in front taking photos through the bars and taking so long that an enormous queue built up behind me so I glanced in and left. Somehow relics don't work for me. But the monastery is interesting and adds to a picture of the roots of Christianity in the same soil as Islam.

Felucca

2009-05-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

The photo is of Ali Khan's tomb taken through the rigging of our felucca at Aswan. The guide woke me up at 12.30 the night before to tell me to put my clock forward (I had already done it) and to get the 10.15 ferry from the hotel and he would meet me at 10.30 to take me on our felucca ride. When I got on the ferry in good time, a young couple already on board looked familiar. It turned out that Marcelle and Jez were also from Malta and were going on the same trip with me.

The felucca we went on was one of the smaller, older boats and it was great to watch how the young man handled it. At first there wasn't much wind, but once we cut across the river, we were heading down with the current and the wind behind so we went at quite a clip. We passed the botanic gardens set up by Lord Kitchener and Elephantine Island where they used to have camel and elephant markets. It was magic. Lots of other feluccas to watch and people enjoying the Nile river. Some people were swimming and I wondered about the increase in the snail-borne disease my brother had told me had increased in prevalence since the building of the high dam.

We rounded an island a little upstream from the hotel we had stayed at and then the boatman put the centre board down as we started to tack up river against the current. The wind had come up nicely so it was still easy sailing. We passed the Old Cataract hotel where Agatha Christie had stayed when she was writing Death on the Nile.

The boatman got out his cloth and spread out his necklaces and trinkets. I didn't really want to buy anything but admired the way he kept sailing so competently whilst he was doing it, so I got a little necklace for 10 Egyptian pounds. When we got back to the jetty, he deftly sorted the sail and guided the boat back between the other feluccas to a good spot to scramble off across other boats. As I got up to leave, another 20 pounds fell out of my pocket so I decided that the god of the Nile was telling me the boatman deserved a tip and I tucked it under his cloth. I love how the river is such a part of daily life here.

Sharm el Sheik

2009-05-01T04:05:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, somewhere on the Nile, I reached that point in traveling where I loose track of what's happening and everything blurs together into the immediate. It happened in Libya and in Ireland. It happens when I am continuously moving rather than based in one place. I will have to settle to complete writing up the story of the trip from Aswan to Luxor and then to here in Sinai.

I don't much like Sharm el Sheik. It has no reason for being, apart from the throngs of tourists who crowd the lounges on the beach or stroll in their bikinis through the restaurants and cafes that line the esplanade. But the Red Sea remains and the stunning mountains rise out of the desert all around.

The first day here, I went snorkeling. There was a misunderstanding about time, but I got picked up as arranged and the only other person in the minibus was a charming young woman from Tunisia who was working at the embassy in Malta. So I wasn't prepared for the sheer numbers of people who were lining the jetties to get onto the boats taking us to the National Park. Fortunately we had a smaller boat so there was only about 20 people with us but we still had to shuffle in queues to board our cruiser.

All the boats headed out in the same direction and our guide explained that we would have three stops for snorkeling - two in the National Park area and one in the bay on the way back. The scenery of mountains and desert running down to the sea is stunning. The photo is of our third stop where there was also two submarines taking tourists along the edge of the reef.

But the first two stops made it worthwhile. There were one or two other boats anchored up when we arrived at our first spot. Our guide had prepared us as best he could on the trip out but there were still several people who had never snorkeled before. I was one of the first in and turned in time to see my Tunisian traveling companion loose her mask as she jumped in. The guide was busy helping others to stop hyper-ventilating so I dived down and saved the mask just as it was sinking below the level of my ear drum tolerance! I remembered the excitement of diving down to touch bottom in the middle of St Georges bay in Malta when I was a child.

Unlike the Great Barrier reef, the Red Sea reefs are close to shore so we were able to swim easily along the edge of the reef and then go ashore on the sandy beach to rest. The guide worked very hard to keep us together as he was rightly concerned about loosing some of us.

There were very different levels of ability in the group and also several other groups swimming on the same reef and crossing our path from time to time. But we saw an eagle ray almost straight away and once we had found the edge of the reef, we were able to work our way along. At first I thought it was similar to the Australian reef and it is, but it differs in the quantity and colour of the fish which left me quiet with the beauty of it.

The second reef was even more stunning. It was in more shallow water than the first and the shoals of sparkling fish drifted around massive purple corals whilst pairs of angel fish hid in holes and crevasses. I went willingly into this other world, only vaguely keeping one ear open for the whistle of our guide to keep us together. By the time it was time to go back to the boat, we had drifted some way away and several other boats and groups had arrived. The woman from Tunisia was tired and the guide had to help her on the swim back. As we swam across, yet another boat arrived and kept sounding his horn because he wanted to cut across where we were swimming. There is no doubt there is an accident waiting to happen around this magnificent reef, but fortunately it didn't happen that day.

I didn't go in for the third dive because surprisingly I was cold and we had just eaten our excellent lunch. The site looked even more exploited than the first two that were protected by National Park status. But I feel very glad that I have been able to see some of the Red Sea reef before we loose it to global warming or over exploitation. Tonight I go to St Catherine's monastery and climb Mt Sinai to see the dawn.

Hotel garden

2009-04-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

I am so glad I have today free to explore this magic place. Is it OK to indulge this kind of luxurious enjoyment from time to time? At breakfast, I look out on the feluccas sailing lazily up the Nile. I had the huge swimming pool to myself. And when I went for an exploratory walk towards one end of the island, a delightful old man who reminded me strongly of the Haitian men who used to find their way to Bahamas when I worked there invited me for a tour of the hotel garden. He showed me with pride the peas and onions and strawberries and I sampled the peas and strawberries. Mangos and grapes are just starting to fruit. As we went round I accumulated a little posy of basil, mint, roses, eau-de-cologne.

At the end of the garden, we came out on a basalt outcrop where I took the photo that heads the post. There were lots of birds - small finches, egrets and a fan-tailed bird that I keep wanting to call a rufus something. I have to look it up in my bird book when I get back to Australia. Now in the heat of the day, I've set myself up in the lobby where there is free wireless. In a moment I'll go and have another swim.

Tomorrow we go on a felucca trip and a tour somewhere but for now I am being indulgent!

Aswan

2009-04-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

The journey to the airport yesterday evening was easy if I concentrated on what the guide was saying rather than on the scary roads! We passed by a massive mosque and citadel which is an exact replica of another mosque somewhere. Mosque building is quite complex and although they may all look the same, each country has it's own distinctive details.

At the airport, I was handed back down the line to the tall man who had met me off the plane from Malta. He hurried me through procedures and left me with my boarding card at a security gate. The domestic terminal in Cairo is as chaotic as it was when I flew up to Luxor last year. I had plenty of time before the flight to Aswan and decided to finish my water in the outer hall before going through security. Things got more and more crowded so I figured it was time to go through but when I had put my things through the scanner, the guard spotted my boarding card and told me to wait for another hour outside! He reversed the machine so I could get back my gear. By then, all the seats outside had been taken so I sat on the floor and read my book with French tourists going to Alexandria clamouring all around me. Things calmed down after an hour or so and boarding was on time and painless.

The plane was crowded - small, older women twittering in a language I didn't recognise. The one next to me was Christian (she crossed herself on take-off) and she asked the air steward if she could keep her cup and saucer as a souvenir which she carefully put away in her sick bag and stored it in her copious cabin baggage. I had an impression of judgement from them all and they seemed to be accompanied by young men speaking the same language who acted like they owned the plane and the stewards indulged them. When I started to feel tired and withdrawn, I stood up to get my book out of the locker and the woman sitting behind cowered in her seat and put her hand protectively over her cup as though I was going to contaminate it.

The heat was the first impression on arrival in Aswan although it was after 11.00 pm by this time. There was no guide with my name on a board to meet me, but by the time I had picked up my yellow Sicilian suitcase (already showing signs of battery and dirt smears) I spotted a young man with the board of the travel company in Malta. The guides here seem more casual than in Cairo and no-one offered to carry my bags so I trundled myself out to the waiting car. We drove on excellent new roads with very little traffic. I was expecting to drive straight to the hotel, but after a while we pulled up at a landing on the banks of the Nile and got onto a boat with a Nubian boatman. There is a complete Nubian village up here and the community hold onto their own language.

A magical mid-night cruise up the Nile and we landed at the hotel which is on an island. By this time, I was enchanted by the lights and the massive reception area of the hotel. My room also looked fine - spacious and with a balcony. But when I woke up in the morning and looked out of the window, I was really captivated. The photo is taken from my balcony!

Memphis

2009-04-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

I finished the previous post in a rush and forgot to mention Memphis. We called in here after Saqqara. It is the original city of a united Egypt and home of the famous massive statue of Rameses 2 now lying down in a special museum with a walkway round it so you can look down on it from all angles. It must have been so imposing when it was standing with the classic left foot forward pose. Mustfa told me that the left foot forward symbolised the side of the heart.

The photo is of the Sphinx of Memphis with the market behind. This was 19th Dynasty, 1341-1200BC

Saqqara and Memphis

2009-04-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

Already my last afternoon in Cairo is nearly over and I still haven't completed my tourist descriptions! I started Tuesday morning with a walk down the road to see if I could cut across to the Nile. I couldn't! The busy road is chaotic and dirty, homeless people sleep on old sofas at the side - one has set himself up with a fireplace in front of him. Horses are tethered and dogs also sleep on the pavement. There is some kind of butcher's place on an open second floor and a man is doing something to a huge hanging half carcass. Other men are manipulating the second half of the carcass out of a truck onto their shoulders. It looks clean and still has its organs inside.

Tuesday's tourist venture is to visit the oldest pyramid in the world at Saqqara. This is the famous stepped pyramid created for King Zoser by the architect, Imhotp. This is the first time the pyramid shape was created. It is in six enormous tiers and there were workers renovating the lower tier. The entrance has 42 columns with 42 statues of King Zoser in the niches. These were all robbed except one that was re-incorporated into a later building on site.

Once through the entrance colonnade we came into a huge open couryard. Mustfa told me that once every 30 years there was a big festival and King Zoser had to prove his strength by putting on heavy clothes including the massive double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt and dance/run around the courtyard that also represented the extent of upper and lower Egypt. The pyramid had many false doors to confuse tomb raiders.

We then walked over to the tomb and pyramid of King Titi and his servant, Mereruka. The tomb has very clear hieroglyphs engraved into the rock showing Titi's cartouche and telling the story of his glorious achievements. Mereruka's temple depicts his work as a tax collector.

Lunch was in an outdoor restaurant and consisted of a personalised smoking BBQ. As we came in, a woman was working at a traditional oven and a little girl sat by the toilets with a goat. Clearly set up for tourists but charming still. Then a quick visit to old Cairo and the hanging church of St Mary built over a Roman tower. In the entrance courtyard, there are lovely mosaics showing the journey of the Holy family into Egypt and Mustfa told me something of the history of the early Coptic Christians. We also went to the crypt of the Holy Family under St Sergius church where they had lived. Mustfa, who is Muslim, clearly appreciated this peaceful place and was happy to light candles before we wandered back through the bazaar to the bus.

I spent the evening in the roof top restaurant after a dip in the pool and made the mistake of having a pizza for dinner that kept me awake in the middle of the night and left me feeling a bit seedy today. But I must go now because my guide is due to return and take me to the airport for my flight to Aswan.

Giza, perfume, papyrus and museums

2009-04-22T06:12:00.000-07:00

Monday was a holiday here in Cairo. When I went down for a rather boring breakfast, I was intrigued by the bread twists that appeared to have a painted hard-boiled egg in the centre. Later, the guide explained to me that the streets were less chaotic because of the holiday that marks the end of winter. That evening, I read in the English addition of the Egyptian Gazette that traditionally people paint eggs and go for picnics in the park. I can remember doing this as a small girl in Malta.

For my tour, I had a driver, my guide, Mostfa, and a mini bus to myself. We headed out for Giza, one of the three cities that make up the huge conglomeration of Cairo. My first glimpse of the great pyramid of Cheops came as we were driving along the busy road leading to the tourist mecca. Even in the setting of a congested metropolis it is impressive. The first glimpse is of two complete pyramids, the second and smaller still with a smooth finish on its apex. The massive free-standing structures were made by placing huge quarried slabs on top of each other, progressively moving in towards the apex. Mostfa quoted statistics about numbers of blocks and workers which were too huge for me to understand. At the side of the Cheops pyramid, he archaeologists found a huge pit with a boat in it. This was the vessel for the sun to make its daily journey across the pyramid. Now it is in a specially built museum next to the pyramid to preserve it and, I suspect, to extract more money from the tourists.

When we arrived at the car park there were already several tourist buses lined up. There are three intact pyramids on this site, but many more have collapsed. It looks stunning from the desert viewing point despite the number of visitors. There are lots of camels and horses for hire and glimpses of them riding through the desert add to the Lawrence of Arabia feel. We walk around the base of the Cheops pyramid and I went down into the chamber of one of the lesser queens. At first I was on my own carefully picking my way down the very steep chute with metal struts and wooden handrails to stop you from sliding. The chamber of course is long empty, robbed by fortune hunters who have become the stuff of legends and Hollywood movies. This tomb was hewn out of the rock rather than constructed around the sarcophagus as happened in more important tombs. Even so, most tombs, apart from Tutenkhamen, have been raided.

I had a few moments to find the small side chamber where the mummy was placed before I was literally descended upon by a busload of French tourists. I started to panic a little as I waited at the side of the long chute whilst assorted sized people picked their way down. As the small chamber filled up, I yelled up the shaft to stop and let me out so they would have more room at the bottom.

Perhaps to help me overcome the smell of fear in a crowded space, Mustfa then took me to the government perfume factory. He emphasised that this was entirely educational and I shouldn't feel pressured to buy. Since I never wear perfume, I thought this was unlikely anyway, even when he told me that he had seen Nicole Kidman at the factory and thought she was incredibly beautiful. As soon as I walked in, I was taken to watch the glass-blower making the bottles. It was a sure way to get me wanting to take something away with me. I love the concentration of a craftsman working and felt privileged to share the moment when a fellow human being makes something of beauty.

Once a beautiful small bottle was sitting on the work bench, a delightful young woman claimed me and took me into a room surrounded by mirrored shelves with bottles of essence and glass containers all around. She sat me down at a low table and asked if I wanted coffee. I half-heartedly explained that I didn't use perfume so wouldn't know what I was smelling. She smilingly gave me a list to tick off and began to explain to me the power of aromatherapy. I was fascinated and came away with four sturdy bottles of essence or oil - frankincence, myrrh, heliotrope essences and sandalwood oil - four lovely small bottles that I will use later to give small gifts to people when I get back, and two candle holder oil burners. It was a tourist experience that will remain with me.

Next we went to the papyrus factory where I learnt that the papyrus plant has a triangular stem which is one of the reasons it holds a special place in Egyptian culture. The papyrus plant is the symbol of Lower Egypt whilst the lotus plant is Upper Egypt's plant. Both plants are carved on Egyptian columns and help to distinguish local architecture from the Graeco-Roman constructions found particularly around Alexandria. In the process of making paper, the outer skin is removed from the stems and the pith is sliced. At this stage, as my demonstrator showed quite clearly, the slices are easily broken but once it is hammered and pressed to remove water it becomes stronger. It is then soaked for several days to remove the sugar. The strips are then woven and placed between two pieces of carpet to be pressed in the sun for several more days. The longer it is left, the darker it becomes. The final product is very strong and was used for beds and chairs as well as a surface for writing and painting.

Again, I bought two small pieces - one showing the papyrus plant and lotus plant and another of a tree with birds that I think represents the family. Someone wrote my cartouche on this one.

After lunch which was buffet style with interesting salads and vegetables and very sweet desserts, we finished off the day with a trip to the museum. This is huge and the Tutenkhamen room is amazing. There were several mummy cases each originally placed within the other like Russian dolls, and four sarcophagus on the same principle. I also went round the animal embalming room but I was getting too full of experiences to take much in. I determined to return today to see more but as you can see, today has become a day of recording rather than experiencing.

On the way back to the hotel, I asked Mustfa to stop and let me buy some water and fruit for dinner. Even though hotel prices are cheap by European standards, I still resent paying 7 Egyptian pounds for a small bottle of water when I can buy a large bottle outside for 2! Back in my hotel room, I heard the call to prayer and when I looked out of the window over the rooftops there were nine kites flying, pigeons wheeling and the two Giza pyramids showed reddish in the sunset haze.

Cairo

2009-04-22T05:33:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in the hotel lobby overlooking a chaotic street that is an impenetrable block back from the Nile. The photo is a view from my hotel room on the ninth floor. The room looks out over the rooftops of endless, unfinished, brick apartment blocks. This used to be agricultural land and the residents are poor farmers. The apartments are expensive and people move in before they can afford to finish the outside. The rooftops become scrap yards with makeshift wooden shanties, public laundries and goat pens. When the morning haze lifts, I can see two of the pyramids at Giza rising above the highrise apartment buildings.

On Monday and Tuesday, I did the tourist things including visiting these pyramids and I will write about this in my next posts. My trip over from Malta was smooth. When I walked back through the Marsaxlokk market on Sunday after my previous post, my slight anxiety about getting everything sorted and put into boxes to leave with my landlord kept me from enjoying the feeling of nostalgia about my last visit as a resident of Marsaxlokk. But everything went like clockwork and then I was in the Cairo airport looking at my name on a card held up by a tall Egyptian. After Malta, it is a shock to find myself in a land of large people!

After my four week stay in Alexandria last year, there was a familiarity about the chaos of Cairo streets and the check-in process whereby the male guide sat me down in the lobby and dealt with the male receptionist. My room was spacious with a small sitting area. When I arrived there was a lot of noise coming from the pool bar area that is one flight up on the roof. My heart sank at the sound of disco music and young laughter and I wondered about asking for a change of room. But I switched on the TV, found a station with Egyptian pop music, found my earplugs as a precaution, and by the time I went to bed, silence had fallen!

Now at the end of my stay, I have worked out the wireless system in the lobby and am settled at a table looking out on the busy street life. My guide will be here at 6.00 to take me to the airport for my flight to Aswan so I have a good slab of time to catch up with all my internet business. Life is sweet.

Farewell to Marsaxlokk

2009-04-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in the cafe on the front at Marsaxlokk. The weather has been glorious and as I walked past the fishing boats with my laptop one of the fishermen mending his nets offered me a boat trip. There was a big post-Easter feast here on Wednesday and boat trips were part of the fair atmosphere all along the front together with tombola and horse cart rides. The feast of St Gregory dates back centuries and originated as a thanks-giving pilgrimage but there are various ideas about what people were giving thanks for. It could be for the ending of the Great Siege in 1565 or the release from the plague of 1519 or even further back to protection from a heavy storm in 1343. Now it is a general thanksgiving at the end of winter and some brave people have their first dip of the year in the harbour.

I missed most of the day's activities on Wednesday as I had to take two cases over to be stored at my cousin's place in Sliema. I am overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have accumulated in the six months I have been here and it looks like I will have things scattered all over Malta whilst I am away in Australia. Today I'm still sorting things out in the flat and will be leaving three boxes with my landlord as well as my pushbike. Yesterday we went up to Valletta to sort out the final payments on my water and electricity. The office was crowded and we had to wait with a queue number for an hour or so. Joseph, my landlord, gave me a lovely little candle holder as a going away present and it will be one of the first things to decorate my new flat in Valletta when I return.

I stayed on in Valletta to go to a lunch time concert at Manoel theatre. There is a Dutch orchestra visiting this week for the String Festival and their bass clarinet player gave a challenging performance of pieces from 20th century composers. The instrument makes a rich range of sound and my favourite piece had the tones of didgeridoo with the feel of jazz.

Afterwards, Valletta was glowing in the sun as I strolled round the bastions overlooking Grand Harbour on my way to meet someone who already lives in the block of flats that I am moving into in January. Olive briefed me well about the etiquette associated with living harmoniously in such a large block of flats and I am glad that she will be a neighbour when I return.

On the previous Saturday, Valletta was colder when I visited with my cousin and her daughter. We came across from Birgu by dhaighsa (I made a mental note not to ask for the harbour cruise rather than the direct crossing again - it costs twice as much and doesn't go much further than going straight across the harbour from Birgu). But the walk up from the Customs house drop-off is always interesting and we cut across to one of the band clubs on Republic street because Helen wanted to try rabbit and chips. I then left them to explore and walked down to Fort St Elmo where Heritage Malta were offering member tours of the re-opened War Museum.

Sunday, we planned to stroll through the market at Marsaxlokk and then jump on the double decker bus for the South tour. I still haven't made it to the Limestone Heritage and I thought this might be my chance but it wasn't to be. Perhaps because of the weather which was threatening rain, the bus never showed up so we changed to plan B and got the ordinary bus up to Tarxien and went to the temple. I enjoyed having visitors and it was fun to test out some of the things I have learnt about Malta this time.

Some friends have just dropped in to the cafe so I'll post this and hope I can find a cafe once I am traveling.

Easter in Malta

2009-04-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

The weather has turned cold again and on Easter Monday we are having rain and wind here in Marsaxlokk. Yesterday the boats were tossing on their moorings and the tourists at the market were complaining because it is warmer in England than Malta at the moment.

I have had my cousin, Jennifer, and her daughter, Helen, visiting me from Luton and we have enjoyed three full days. The photo that heads the post was taken at the Good Friday procession in Zejtun. My good neighbours, who live in the flat below me, had given me the best places to go on the different days of Easter. Zejtun is well known for the stunning costumes and the breadth of the Christ story told through the procession so we walked up through the valley from Marsaxlokk and arrived at the church soon after the parade had started to emerge. We were able to locate the church by the sound of the clackers from the steeple. On Good Friday, the bells are not used.

The square and street outside the church were packed and after getting our bearings from one side of the church door where we could just see the plumes of the Roman centurions over the heads of the crowd we decided to walk around the band to the other side. The pavement was so full that we were struggling to find our way through. We paused momentarily opposite the church doors and bought a pastizzi and then decided to cut off down a side street and see if we could find a better spot further down the processional route.

As you can see from the photo of the garden of Gethsemane, we found a great spot and were able to see the procession from the beginning. It must have taken two hours for everyone to pass us and the costumes were very beautiful and represented a whole range of biblical characters. The children were particularly delightful and as with carnival they gradually shifted from looking pious and shy at the beginning to mischievous and bold as the procession wound on. One small boy lead a shoat and the little girl at his side had a cage with white doves.

The people carrying the heavy statues have a different technique from the bearers in Catania for the feast of St Agatha and adopt a rhythmic, wide-spaced stride that they coordinate with each other. They have no padding on their shoulders for the poles and it was clear that some of the carriers were very tired even by the time they reached our point in the route. The white robed figures were occasionally spelled by stand-ins from the crowd.

We had a bit of a challenge to find the bus stop after the parade had passed because Zejtun was closed to traffic but eventually we tracked it down and found a bus for the short trip back to Marsaxlokk.

For the rest of the weekend we explored Birgu, Valletta and Tarxien and I'll write about that in my next post. This might be the last day I have internet access at home so my next post might be from the cafe on the front at Marsaxlokk where I used to post from when I first arrived.

Sliema

2009-04-05T04:20:00.000-07:00

I called my previous post Living in Malta because I was going to write something about how my view of the world has shifted since I made the decision to base myself here. But writing about the San Gwann area lead me in a different direction. We'll see what happens in this post.

Most of the things I am doing just now are related to my return to Malta in 2010. Both the conference at Dragonara and the workshop in Sliema that I'll write about here are associated with finding some part-time work when I come to live in my flat in Valletta.

Malta Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language advertised a seminar/workshop to be held at IELS in Sliema. There are many English language schools in Malta and they each identify themselves with a series of letters like this. I found it was quite confusing when people at the workshop introduced themselves and said where they worked with a string of letters. Maybe I have just got out of the ways of the paid workforce!

The seminar was offering several different workshops from which we all chose two. I put my name down for a session lead by Daniel Xerri called 'Using Literature in the EFL Classroom' and another by Jean Sciberras titled 'Using songs in the classroom.'

The literature class was theoretical with some activities thrown in and I found it very useful. I used a short story by a Greek author writing about Alexandria when I was there studying for my TEFL qualification. The class had worked well but I felt I could have linked it more strongly to language acquisition and this is what the workshop offered.

I expected the song workshop to be about singing but found it focussed on using popular song lyrics to help with language acquisition. The session was run as though it was a TEFL class.

The seminar was a very good way of starting to feel my way into the sector. When it concluded at lunchtime, I had arranged to meet my cousin in a popular Sliema cafe just around the corner on the front. This is the regular Saturday morning haunt for Doris and at first I couldn't spot her in the crowd. She was squashed in around a tiny circular table with several other women friends. When I squeezed in to join them, it became clear that this was the place to be to catch up with Sliema gossip. As I tucked into my fruit tart for lunch, Doris was greeted by several other women as they strolled through the pavement cafe and everyone stopped for a chat.

The party broke up around 2.30 (Doris had been there since 11.00am) and I walked across the road to wait for the ferry across the harbour to Valletta. It was another lovely day and I sat up on the bow for the short trip across Marsamxetto. Walking up from the landing, I felt that the Valletta streets were starting to feel like home territory.

The photo that heads the post was taken from the Sliema promenade when I walked around from Spinola the previous day.

Living in Malta

2009-04-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

The photo is of the rockpool at Paceville where I taught myself to swim when I was six years old. It is almost the only thing in this area that still looks the same. I was there on Friday when I went to a conference at Dragonara on the point between my rockpool and St George's Bay. You can see what is now Dragonara Casino in the background.

I caught the bus from Valletta to San Gwann but arrived late for the conference because I got on the bus that went for a trip around the village rather than going down into Paceville so I stayed on for the ride and then walked from the top end of Paceville.

The conference was about the Further and Higher Education Strategy 2020 and launched a report commissioned by the government. When I arrived, the large conference room at the Westin Dragonara was full with men in grey suits. I found myself a space on the back row after picking up my conference bag that contained the report. I missed the opening but was there to hear Mr Jacques Sciberras go through the report, Professor Juanito Camilleri, Rector of the University of Malta, critique the report mostly in terms of action and Dr Dominic Orr speaking from the perspective of EU students.

On the way out to morning tea, I overheard one of the few women who were there bashing the ear of a male colleague about how the private sector, where she located herself, could not afford to implement the strategies recommended in the report. I suspect that most of the women there were from the private sector but I have no way of knowing because a gender break-down is noticeably missing from the report.

It was a beautiful day, and after sampling the white bread tuna sandwiches with crusts cut off I decided to slip away from the second session which promised a full series of speakers from the sector. I set off to walk around the shoreline to Sliema and that is where I came across my rock pool.

I wasn't sure if I would be able to walk around the rocks any longer because of all the development so I asked a woman who was walking her dog. She explained to me how I would have to walk around the marina and I might have to go through the Hilton hotel if a gate wasn't open but I should be able to get onto Spinola promenade.

Walking over the rocks I noticed a lot of fossils that I was not aware of as a child and the square tower where strange men used to hang out is still there. There used to be a rubble road going round the coast with a fortified wall that had strange tunnels running through underneath that were just big enough for a small child to crawl through but this road is now closed off and I'm not sure what is going on there now.

I walked around the Portomaso marina wall and around the twin harbours, one for luxury speed boats and the other for yachts. The development of apartments here is huge but at least you can walk around and look at the boats. At the far end, a gate was open and I was able to skirt another massive hotel and walk past the restaurants on the edge of Spinola Bay. In the Spinola area, several of the fishing boats have a curious rounded stern that is different from the boats at Marsaxlokk.

After that I decided to follow the promenade around until Sliema where I jumped on a bus to head back to Valletta and Marsaxlokk. My cousin in Sliema wasn't home so we arranged by phone to meet the following day when I was due to go to another workshop this time in Sliema. I'll write about that in my next post.

April in Malta

2009-04-02T04:28:00.000-07:00

I took the photo on the last day of March as I walked the cliff path between Marsaxlokk and Birzebuggia. I haven't been along there for a while and it looks great at this time of year.

I have been caught up in a flurry of new routines and activities. The establishment of our family site has taken more and more of my time as I enjoy feeling connected to the different members of our clan scattered all over the world. A year ago, I could not have imagined that there were so many of us or that we had such an extensive photographic record of our diverse histories and lives. Having the website changes how I think about family support because it means that I no longer have to rely on physical proximity to feel connected to people I love.

This week I also started work on the Queensland Writers' Year of the Novel Online course. It has made me realise that if I want to complete my first novel, I will have to stop playing at being a writer and start to be a bit more disciplined. I want to keep this blog going as I move into the next phase of my life but it will need to drop a little down the list of priorities. As I travel back to Australia, I'll try and post whenever I can. When I get back, I'll review the motivation to continue after my year of travel. I am so glad that I have this record of the journey I've taken and I think it will be a worthwhile project to continue perhaps with a different emphasis.

There are three huge projects for me in the coming year - the novel, my Australian choir's planned trip to Cuba to sing at a choir festival there, and my move to live in Malta. It's going to be a very full year!

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself saying more frequently that something will have to be left until I come back to Malta next year. I decided not to go on the Ramblers' walks or the Arts and Cultural tours or the Geographic expeditions. It's a kind of withdrawal, a preparation for leave-taking. I still go up to Valletta to the concerts at St Catherine's but I usually combine that with walking down to my new flat and exploring around the block where it is located.

There are also two conferences this week both associated with the part-time work in TEFL teaching that I'm hoping to take on when I return. On Friday there is a conference about the Further and Higher Education Strategy 2020 at The Dragonara Resort in St Julian's and on Saturday, a workshop run by Malta TEFL in Sliema.

On Monday, I did make it up to Valletta for the Historical Society's lecture on "Medical aspects of the Great Siege". It was held in the Palazzo Parisio where the Ministry for Foreign Affairs are housed and it was another excellent presentation in the Historical Society's series. The small hall was full to capacity once again and I was glad I got there early to get a front row seat and check out the building which I haven't been into before. The lecturer was a medical doctor and I liked the approach that he took which was to compare the knights preparations for war with the planning strategies needed for any major confrontation such as the 2nd World War.

I'll have to miss the next lectures in the series but I'll be looking out for Historical Society events when I return!

Seaweed and boathouses

2009-03-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

A brief post to promise more later. I seem to be spending a lot of time pottering at home in Marsaxlokk and attending to things to help with my trip back to Australia, the purchase of my flat in Valletta and following up on possibilities for part-time work when I return to Malta next year. I'm also spending a lot of time on a new family website that we've set up. Electronic media open so many doors!

The photo was taken in Gozo at Dahlet Qorrot and shows the boathouses carved out of the globigerina limestone and the seaweed piled up on the rocks around the beach.

A different place

2009-03-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

There has been a subtle change in the way I view the world. I have been busy with arranging fund transfers and all the minutiae of buying property in a new country. I'm also still a bit flat from my cold. But there is something else. I have started to see Malta as my base from which I hope to visit other places in a world that continues to fascinate and entice me. Last week, Australia was my base and I was traveling for a year.

As I have been photocopying documents (I go to the local news agent) and emailing, a couple of other things have been surfacing. Firstly, the planning of my trip to Australia during April/May is more settled with the Egypt leg in place. I still need to sort out six days in Dubai/Oman and three days in Singapore but I'm getting a clearer picture of the possibilities.

The other aspect is that I have started to think about finding some part-time work when I return to Malta at the start of 2010. There is an advertisement for TEFL teachers in the closed immigrant centres and I am looking into that as a way of finding out what employment processes are in place here. I don't want to take on too much as I still like playing with my writing and I've enrolled in an on-line course for a year on the novel with Queensland Writers.

This week I've still managed to fit in some concerts. Thursday's lunchtime at St Catherine's was baroque music for flute and harpsichord and on Sunday a string quartet playing Rossini and a quintet playing Dvorjak. I am so glad that I have discovered late in life the pleasure of classical music!

I stayed on in Valletta on Sunday and went to a concert by the Vallette Clarinet Quartet in the Music Room at St James Cavalier. This was 20th century music including a piece by Maltese composer Charles Camilleri who has only recently died.

The photo is of a fishing boat at rest in Marsaxlokk. I will find ways of continuing to enjoy Marsaxlokk when I am living in Valletta.

A turning point

2009-03-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

The photo is taken off Delimara and shows fishing boats returning to Marsaxlokk.

My cold has kept me at home this week but the sun has been warm so I have spent a lot of time on the roof reading. On Sunday I missed the Ramblers walk. It was to be another circuit of the Valletta bastions but this time continuing through Marsa to the Marsovin winery in Paola for a lunchtime wine-tasting. Some friends in Australia were also having lunch on Sunday, so I missed lunches at both ends of the world!

I also missed a course on Maltese trees to be held at Mosta and an open day at San Pawl Milqi which is built on the site of a Roman villa owned by Publius who welcomed St Paul when he was shipwrecked here in 60AD. To make up for it, I've finished reading a book by the scuba diver, Mark Gatt, called "Pawlus - the shipwreck" that is an interesting collection of historical research, marine archaeological finds and stories related to St Paul.

But I managed to drag my cold to Valletta on two days. On Thursday, I made it to the concert of flute and harpsichord sonatas at St Catherine's and on Tuesday I went up for the signing of our convenium on the purchase of my flat in Valletta! The convenium is like a promise of commitment to buying and selling property here in Malta. It is a process whereby buyer and seller come together to clarify all the details related to the transfer of ownership. I now have six months to make sure that all the necessary steps are taken so that I have a place to live when I return in 2010.

I feel anxious about it all but know that it is a good decision for me. Now the things that I do over the coming year will be informed by my return to Malta at the end of the year. I've made my choice at the fork in the road!

Around and under Valletta

2009-03-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

I've been nursing a cold this week as Malta begins to warm towards Spring. But I didn't want to miss two new perspectives on Valletta. On Wednesday afternoon, Malta Geographic organised a walk around the Valletta bastions starting from Floriana. Then on Thursday evening Din l-Art Helwa were hosting a lecture by Architect Edward Said on Subterranean Valletta.

The photo is of hewn rock on the Grand Harbour side of Valletta. In the bottom right hand corner you can see an arch entrance and I think this might be the entrance to one of the tunnels that Edward Said talked about.

On Wednesday we set off from Floriana and walked down the side of the Hotel Phoenicia. I was surprised to see how quickly we were looking out over Marsamxetto harbour towards Sliema. A huge hotel has been built here but it is below the sight line from the ramparts. At the bottom, we walked past an old bar with a Cisk sign and picked our way along a curious cutting with a terrace of boat sheds. Beyond this area we came onto the globigerina limestone rock ledge at the base of the bastions. We followed the base of the bastion round using steps cut into the rocks in places until we reached the headland where the breakwater for Grand Harbour points a finger to Fort Ricosoli.

The breakwater is separated from the headland by a channel that is deep enough to allow ferry boats through. There used to be a bridge over here to access the breakwater but it was destroyed in a U-boat attack during WW2. Now there is only the rusting remains of the central support and steps up to the old bridge access. There is talk in the papers of EU funds to build another bridge to the breakwater and make it a peace bridge.

Soon after the breakwater we climbed up and over a new footbridge at the base of the ramparts and continued to follow the base of the ramparts on the Grand Harbour side. Here there is a lot of rock hewn areas that seem to be slipways from the time of the knights. There are also old capstans and quays, probably from the British period. A large wooden door at the base of the ramparts has a sign announcing "Boom Defence" and our guide explained that this was where the boom gates across the entrance to Grand Harbour were operated from during WW2.

As we came round at the base of the rampart that now houses the Malta Experience we came to the fisherman's village that I have noted with interest before when I walked along the top of the bastion past the old knights hospital now the Mediterranean Conference centre. Here there is a small group of boat sheds built into the ledges of rock and each one complete with a neat front yard. Small boats winter on the narrow streets and there is a legion of cats sleeping the afternoon away. At the far end along a mini headland covered with sheds, a mural of four different kinds of ship has been painted on the hewn rock.

After the village, we climbed back up to the top of the bastion and walked past the giant bell at the war memorial and down the rampart to Victoria Gate. I have walked this way before coming up from the dhaijsa drop-off at the old fish market. We walked past the wharf where the Sicily ferry comes in and I remembered my landing there in September last year. It seems so long ago!

From here we walked back up the hill to Floriana and strolled through the park at the top of the bastions there, looking over the cruise line terminal to Cottonera. I have walked along here before when I first explored the walk around Grand Harbour to Marsa and then the three cities.

We completed the circuit by cutting across Floriana to go back down the Msida bastion and past the Librerija Pubblika Centrali where I noticed they have a separate Melitensia section that I have made a note to visit again soon. We came out at a car park outside the massive hotel Excelsior that we noticed at the start of the walk. The group broke up here but another rambler showed me a route up through a cutting to the bus terminus.

On Thursday night, the lecture on subterranean Valletta was fascinating. I went up for the lunchtime concert at St Cat's and then spent the afternoon attending to some of the necessary steps for coming to live in Valletta in 2010. I arrived at Din l-Art Helwa office at about 5.30 and already there were people gathering in the small lecture hall. When they started the lecture scheduled for 6.00 the room was full and people were standing in the corridor hoping to hear what was said.

Before the coming of the knights in C16 there were probably cisterns and perhaps catacombs to serve the farming villages and temples on Mt Sceberras. The knights continued the traditional Maltese practice of digging out large wells under a house to service the water requirements for the dwelling but also to provide stone for the building. But they also added a road network of sewage tunnels under the grid system of the city streets. This was at a time when the major cities of Europe were sinking under the streams of sewage running in the streets. The British added pipe connections to this grid of tunnels to make an efficient sewage disposal system and re-direct the sewage outflow to a treatment plant rather than pouring out into Grand Harbour.

The network of underground tunnels, cellars, cisterns, reservoirs, granaries and access tunnels was further added to in WW2 to provide air raid shelters for the residents of Valletta. These later additions are characterised by a zig-zag entrance to prevent bomb blast from penetrating. The system is so extensive that it has not yet been fully explored and researched and even this week, new tunnels have been discovered. Every way I look at it, Malta keeps on revealing hidden depths!

Renovating St Cat's

2009-03-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

The photo is of the cart ruts above Dwejra in Gozo. What ancient need is behind these stone cut tracks that can be found all over Malta and Gozo? They are always the same distance apart so must be man-made. My own feeling is that they are not caused by the erosion of wheels or sledges but were cut into the rock to serve like tram tracks for whatever needed to be transported from one place to another on a regular basis.

I want to do a short post on St Catherine of Italy. The programme for March is now out and it is a celebration of the start of the renovation of the fresco in the cupola. At this time of recession, Bank of Valletta have put up the funds to complete the work and the scaffolding is now in place as well as some curious hanging equipment to measure the climate in the chapel so that the painstaking work of restoring the beautiful grey on grey workmanship can begin. There are several panels around the dome and each one depicts an aspect of the life of St Catherine.

The scaffolding has meant some rearrangement of the seating and the stage area so when the house is full, as it was today, the small round chapel is tightly packed. Today I tried a different location and sat on the front row of the nave. The full St James consort were playing two Haydn concerti - the Piano concerto with Ramona Zammit Formosa and the Trumpet concerto with Sigmund Mifsud - and I felt like I was right in the thick of it! I am so privileged to be able to enjoy these great concerts in such a lovely, small location.

So far this March I've enjoyed flute trio sonatas (one of my favourite instruments) and L'Arte del Recitativo with the powerful soprano Andriano Fenech Yordnova. Next Thursday we have the visiting Valparisio University Concert Band. I think they will have to work out a way of doubling up the scaffolding to be used as tiered seating for the rest of the year's programme!

Dwejra to San Dimitri

2009-03-07T06:52:00.000-08:00

Our final Gozo walk on Sunday morning stretched into a five hour hike over the cliffs at the northern end of Malta's sister island. This part is also rich in natural heritage as well as ancient cultural additions to the landscape. Once again our guide was John Mizzi and his way of expressing this intermingling of culture and nature is "Feel the energy!"

We set off from Dwejra, a tiny village built around a small inland cove that connects to the Mediterranean sea through a tunnel. I visited this area last year when I stayed in Gharb with my brother and his family. He and my niece went out on one of the little boats that take people through the tunnel to explore the caves and natural arches. My brother and I also went snorkeling along the fault line drop-off here. Fungus rock and Crocodile rock are internationally known as scuba-diving sites and Fungus rock was protected by the knights of Malta because of the plant that grows there and is reputed to have medicinal properties.

We climbed up over the globigerina cliffs at the back of the small chapel. Here there are good examples of the enigmatic cart ruts that are found throughout Malta and Gozo. We also noticed that the limestone we were walking over was peppered with fossilised sea shells. When we reached the garigue, there was plenty of Maltese spurge and edible plants for John to demonstrate survival techniques! There was even a small meadow of yellow jonquils.

After walking along the headlands with the sea on our left, we dropped down into a valley with an irrigation stream running quite strongly. The valley ends at a cliff so when there is a big wet season, there is a waterfall into the sea. As we climbed up the globigerina limestone cliffs on the opposite side, John showed us a small cave that he thought was carved out in the bronze age. It was certainly man-made but some of the more sceptical ramblers thought it was more likely to be a fisherman's cave. Malta has such a tradition of re-cycling that my own feeling is that it has been carved thousands of years ago and re-used through the centuries.

We continued on along several headlands, dropping down into the valleys between. At one valley, a small group of ramblers left us to walk up the valley and back to their cars to catch the earlier ferry back to Malta, but most people stayed to continue on to San Dimitri. On several of the headlands along here there are piles and circles of coralline blocks of stone which John thinks are undocumented temples. The photo that heads the post is of one of these sites.

I stumbled on one of these temples when I walked down a country road from Gharb on last year's visit to Gozo. It was this road that we walked up to complete the circle and return to Dwijra. We stopped at a small chapel that I had visited before and John told the tale of a hermit priest who lived by the chapel and had a son who was abducted by pirates. I'm not sure about the rest of the tale but I have made a note to start exploring the myths and legends of Malta and Gozo.

After touching the outskirts of San Dimitri, we walked back out to the cliff edge and completed the circuit walking back along the headlands with the sea on our right. I was dawdling at the rear as we dropped back down into Dwejra and my lift had already started the car and was heading towards me. We had a bit of a race to the ferry and missed the 2.30 but got into the queue for the 3.00 o-clock. I had a lift all the way back to Birkikarra where my hosts offered me tea in their lovely big house and I changed cars to go with another of the ramblers who lives at Marsascala. She dropped me off at Paula to catch the Marsaxlokk bus home. Once again, I felt a surge of happiness at the wonder of the Maltese landscape and the warmth of the Maltese people.

Xaghra plateau and Dahlet Qorrot

2009-03-05T23:30:00.000-08:00

The emphasis on Saturday was on walking! We walked for seven and a half hours with very few breaks and the pace was cracking! But the countryside was dramatic and I was able to get a good set of photos when the trailing edge of the walkers had to wait as the front runners went through a particularly tricky part in single file. There were places where we even had to use a bit of rock climbing.

We set off from closer to the suburbs of Rabat than we had the day before and walked to Xaghra plateau. The village of Xaghra is isolated on the top of the plateau and the whole area is peppered with ancient temples and villages. It also has an interesting recent history and I have read about the story of how the plague was introduced from Malta and the village closed its gates to the rest of Gozo to prevent the disease from spreading. Mary Grech (1991) has written an intriguing tale called "The Stolen Faldetta."

From the plateau, we descended and found ourselves walking in the opposite direction to our walk up the valley from Nuffara the previous day. The reflections in streams and dams were even more startling as it was a lovely sunny day. Two valleys, Wied Bingemma and Wied San Blas join to go down to Ramla Bay.

We crossed the valley and climbed up steeply to walk along the ridge to Nadur where we marched through the lovely square to the public toilets. As people waited their turn, I ducked back to the square and discovered that the area around Nadur has been identified as a European Destination of Excellence as the best emerging rural zone. For some reason, all the flags around the church and the square were at half mast.

When I got back to the toilets, the front walkers had already set off again and those who were still waiting in line, sitting on the pavement, were getting distressed. So there was some whistle-blowing, shouting and use of mobile phones to get the leader to stop and wait for us. Once we were all gathered again, we dropped down into another valley and then up a very steep climb.

We came out at the ta' Tocc garigue which is reputed to be the most beautiful in Gozo. The wild fennel was in bloom and covered the plateau in a lovely soft green. The almond trees were a mass of blossom and the rubble walls were peppered with wild flowers. Below us in the valley, the Nadur fields were neat, well cultivated and the orange groves have bamboo wind breaks around them. We walked along a country road for a while with the valley fields on one side and the garigue on the other and then we left the road to cross the garigue in single file and walk along the ridge towards the sea.

When we descended on the boulder cliffs, the sea looked stunning - a lovely turquoise blue that I am coming to associate with the Mediterranean whatever shore it washes up against. We followed the path that you can see in the photo above so I was able to look up from my feet and admire the headlands as we walked.

After an hour or so of delightful walking, we rounded one of the headlands to find Dahlet (inlet) Qorrot. There was a single luzzu unloading at the small jetty. The tiny inlet has several boathouses carved into the globigerina limestone cliffs on one side, a small beach that is piled high with seaweed at this time of year and a single road curving down the cliffs on the other side. We all sat down on the steps leading down to the beach to wait for the delivery of our pizza or ftira that we had ordered the night before for delivery to this lovely spot.

Everyone was pretty exhausted at this point and stretched out in the sun. I found a shady spot by the boathouses but it was very wet here with water seeping through the limestone so I walked down along the beach front and admired how the seaweed was piled into amazing shapes on the rocks. After a while, everyone got up apparently without discussion and started plodding up the road. When I said nervously that I thought we were going to have lunch at this lovely spot I was told that everyone had decided to walk a little further before lunch. I think the mobiles must have been in use again!

We walked slowly up the road until we came to a hairpin bend with a track leading off the road to go around the headland. Here we all sat down at the edge of the road and a car arrived to unload big boxes of pizza. Now there was the drama of making sure that everybody got what they had ordered. When my vegetarian ftira eventually emerged from the boxes and the crowd, I was startled to see how big it was. A ftira is like a small pizza and it was loaded with topping and olive oil. But I still managed to eat it all!

After lunch we set off down the track and around the headland. By this time, I was starting to think that I had done enough walking for one day and this was reinforced when we again left a small country road and climbed up onto the garigue. There was no track and at one point we had to rock climb to get up a section of the coralline limestone cliff. Things were descending into an every-man-for-himself effort!

We came out again on the country road and plodded along until we reached a cross roads. At this point there was something of a revolution. The plan was to set off down to Ramla bay to our right but a large majority wanted to go straight ahead back to Rabat on the main road. I decided to go along with the majority since my lift was in that group and I thought Rabat must only be half an hour away.

It was another hour and a half before we made it! We got back to our hotel in Xlendi at 5.30 and the group that walked round to Ramla bay were only an hour behind us. My room mate went to sleep before dinner and I ran myself a bath to enjoy a long steep! But it was a great day, I felt pleased that I had managed such a long, fast walk and I came to love Gozo even more.

Nuffara - man who scares

2009-03-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

Our walk on Friday afternoon was lead by John Mizzi who stars in the photo above. John has a website at www.gozo-excursions.com

We set off from the main Gozo city of Rabat to climb the Nuffara plateau. The meaning is man who scares or scarecrow. The countryside looks stunning just now and John's specialties are edible plants and ancient temples so there were plenty of interesting things to see and taste. I enjoyed the fresh new shoots of wild fennel, the lemon taste of the stalks of sorrel and the flowers of several legumes and other plants. In the photo John is demonstrating how to eat wild oats.

The climb up was steep but there were lovely views of the valley and John stopped frequently to demonstrate edibility or show us examples of different kinds of ancient pottery sherds that can be found (and left behind) all across this area. The garigue at the top is stunning and there are girna (gorbelled stone shelters) and ancient rubble walls. I noticed that the hunting hides in Gozo are different from in Malta and are built on a platform with a ladder to reach them.

Looking across the valley we were on the same level as Gigantija temple that I visited last year with the archaeologist, Dr David Trump. It was easy to imagine the people who lived in the ancient rubble stone village that we walked through following the same path that we descended to go across the valley to their temple. We also wondered about the purpose of a large boulder that had been carved into a V shape and the libation holes carved into another massive boulder.

The walk up the valley floor back to Rabat was very wet but presented another interesting side of Gozo landscape. At this time of year the stream is running strongly and the dams were full and formed small lakes that reflected the globigerina limestone cliff edges to the valley. It was a great beginning to our weekend of walking.

A weekend in Gozo

2009-03-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

Gozo is lovely at this time of year. I went over for the weekend with Malta Ramblers and we stayed at the San Andrea hotel in Xlendi. I have avoided the tiny bay of Xlendi before because I heard that it got very crowded and busy with tourists in the summer. At this time of year, the blocks of flats that cover one side of the cliffs surrounding the inlet are still there and the tiny promenade around the beach is still dominated by hotels but the beauty of the valley, the inlet and the small, old village can be enjoyed without the crowds.

We had a very full programme of walks on Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and Sunday morning so there wasn't a lot of time to appreciate the hotel and Xlendi itself but when we were there, the food was excellent, the service great and the sound of the sea on the beach lulled us to sleep. There were over 60 ramblers on the trip and the hotel was booked out with some late comers spilling over into St Patrick's hotel next door.

I travelled over by bus and then used my KartAncjan to get free travel on the ferry across. I picked up with some of the ramblers on the ferry and so found transport to get to the hotel. To keep expenses down, I was sharing with another rambler who was also traveling on her own. Those people who brought over their cars gave lifts to those who didn't so the weekend worked well in getting to the start of each day's walk and it didn't break my budget!

I will do a separate post for each of the walks that we did and I'll add photos as soon as I've transferred from my camera to the computer.

Arms at the Auberge de Castille

2009-02-24T23:13:00.000-08:00

I haven't been inside the auberge de Castille before. It is where parliament sits and it is not usually open to the public. So when I spotted the notice saying that the history society were going to do a lecture in the Ambassadors' room, I figured it was a good opportunity to look inside. The lecture was on the arms and armour of the great siege.

I arrived early and some people were gathering on the steps outside the auberge. Two huge canons are mounted at either side of the door at the top of the steps. Promptly at 6.45 a man in uniform opened the doors and said we could go in. The doors enter directly onto a massive stone stairway and we were directed to take the right wing of these stairs. The Ambassadors' room was set up as a lecture room with two video screens on either side of the speaker's table. The ceiling is more than two stories high and has timber cross beams in a square pattern. There are textile hangings of coats of arms high on the walls and very tall french doors.

The lecture was given by Dr Steven Spiteri who has recently published drawing on his PhD work on the Great Siege. This was the second lecture in a series on this topic. Arms and armour is not really a great love of mine but some of the detail about the organisation of the opposing forces was interesting. The knights were trained to fight as individuals rather than strategically as an army and although firearms were introduced, they were slow and clumsy and had to be supported by more traditional weapons such as the crossbow, sword and pike. Flint-lock muskets were a very slow and vulnerable process and each musketeer had to be protected by two pikesmen.

The cavalry were mostly Maltese noblemen who could afford to provide their own horses and equipment. Combined cavalry and infantry patrols would be sent out from Mdina for reconnaisance and attack of foraging parties from the Turkish camps. The knights fought mostly on foot so they sacrificed their lower body armour in favour of mobility. The knights also provided their own armour and then left it to the armoury when they died. Double-handed swordsmen were paid extra and were kept in reserve for close combat.

In the Turkish camp, the janissaries were the professional infantry and used projectile weapons and swords as individual warriors. They fought on their own terms and were so unruly that the Turks had to disband them in later years to enable a modern army where people took orders. Their armour was designed for mobility and swift attacks, so they were at a disadvantage in siege situations. The Turkish bow was not effective in piercing armour.

Turkish numbers were exaggerated by the reports from the knights and these reports had to be toned down when the knights were trying to persuade other nations to send support. Both the knights and the Turks wore a covering over their armour - robes for the Turks and a tabard with the red and white cross for the knights.

Dr Spiteri closed his talk by wondering why there was such a dearth of artifacts left behind by the Turks. After such a major siege there would certainly have been a great many objects left behind but very little is now left. What happened to them?

The photo was taken on Monday in Carnival Valletta. What story would you tell?

Carnival 2009

2009-02-24T06:18:00.000-08:00

From Friday to today, Tuesday, has been carnival time in Malta! Whenever I have been in Valletta there is an air of excitement with children dressed up, groups of lavishly costumed dancers, extravagant floats and grotesque walking puppets.

I haven't gone out of my way to find carnival. On Friday, I went up to Valletta for an event that was supposed to happen in the library but it was postponed because of carnival and so I caught some of the dancing in Freedom square. The costumes are over the top! Exaggerated shoulders, massive head pieces, huge props and voluminous skirts. It seems that the dancing groups from each village compete vigorously but I suspect that it is not the dancing that distinguishes them (this is mostly a bit like line dancing) but the costumes.

On Saturday, I had to change buses in Valletta to go to il-Majjistral park. The buses were only going as far as Floriana because the bus terminal was being used for the huge floats taking part in the procession that evening. I had to wait for a while at the Floriana granaries and it was great to see all the children dressed in beautiful costumes and shyly walking through with their families. There seem to be stock costumes - red Spanish ladies, pink princesses and hooped court ladies for the girls; Roman soldiers, courtiers, policemen and fantasy heros like spiderman and batman for the boys. Each day since then, I have loved seeing costumed children on the crowded buses. As the weekend wore on, I noticed the children became less shy!

On Sunday, I stayed home but still found carnival. I strolled down to the market in the morning to get my vegetables and fish and found the square set up with chairs in a big circle and a group of dancers standing ready to perform so I slipped into a front row seat to wait for the action. The dancers were waiting for mass to finish in the church before the show started. The sun was shining that day and it was lovely sitting in the warmth!

The first group did belly dancing although they were well covered against the winter weather and perhaps Moorish decadence. The costumes were not so extravagant as in Valletta and the dancing was more varied and interesting. Some teenagers did a medlay around the Beatles songs, particularly 'Mr Postman' and there were a few groups who were dressed in Casino mode with Lady Luck style images. The biggest contingent were the local Marsaxlokk group who burst on with great energy and lots of noise.

Later, at the other end of the market, I caught a large jazz band dressed in clown costumes and all through the afternoon I could hear the bands performing from my flat where I had the front verandah door open for the first time since winter started. I think Carnival celebrates the end of winter - there is certainly a feeling of relief around and anticipation of the coming warmth.

When I went up to Valletta again on Monday, all the massive floats were set up in the buspark outside City gate and I got a great series of photos. The photo that heads the post is of one of the gentler floats. Many are massively grotesque and show gorillas, octopus tentacles encircling the head of the statue of liberty, pirates and assorted figures of horror. There are also beautiful masked figures, animals and musical figures.

Valletta itself was crowded and in the squares down Republic street I found the smaller float figures that are carried by one person walking inside. These are fun and often show delightful welcoming musical figures as well as grotesque devils riding on friendly frogs or Noddy cars. Again the costumed dancers and the jester band players were walking up and down the street or chatting in small groups and the costumed children were showing signs of wear and tear!

I was going to a lecture at the Auberge de Castille which I'll write about in my next post and by the time that finished at about 7.00pm, the rain had started again and it was difficult to get out of City gate because people were trying to find shelter in the arcades. I don't know what impact the rain has had on the floats and it has been raining all day today, the last day of carnival. But Carnival will certainly go down on my calendar for next year.

il-Majjistral

2009-02-24T03:51:00.000-08:00

The culmination of the Maltese Natural Heritage course at University of Malta was a field trip to il-Majjistral nature and history park in the North of the island. The photo shows the stunning evening sun over the garigue as we were walking back to Golden Bay.

At the final Wednesday evening lecture, we were presented with our certificates by Dr Alan Deidun who was the convenor of the course. I have noticed his name now in newspaper articles about the environment, most recently an item on the encroachment of more apartment buildings on Mosta valley. The proposed site for development is remnant garigue with a well-preserved corbelled stone hut.

The girna or corbelled stone hut is a feature of the Maltese rural landscape. il-Majjistral is dotted with them and we actually went into one and were able to examine the construction closely. They are mostly built from coralline limestone with inward sloping rubble walls and a slab roof often supported by a beam probably in a similar fashion to the temple roofs.

We also came across some of the ancient cart ruts that can be found throughout Malta. How these were formed is still debatable but the consistent distance between two ruts shows that they are man-made. They are probably associated with Roman quarries. The question is about wheels or skids, and also whether the cart ruts were carved out beforehand to provide runners or were the result of constant erosion by whatever was dragged over the ground.

I have visited il-Majjistral before with Malta Geographical when we walked through the park from Golden Sands to Mellieha. This time we had an excellent guide, Annalise Falzon, who has contributed to a very good book about the park published in 2008. She is an environmental educator with Nature Trust and she can be booked in advance to lead circular two and a half hour walks around the park. I now have both the book and the booklet on the park so I can start to take visitors there.

As we walked, Analise stopped frequently to point out plants and give them their names. I can now recognise and remember Maltese spurge, Sicilian squill, Mediterranean stonecrop, Maltese sea Chamomile and wolfbane. We also saw three varieties of orchids that are in bloom at the moment. The heather is coming to the end of its flowering season and of course the invasive sorrel that was introduced from South Africa, probably by the British, is everywhere. There were a few large carob trees shaped by the prevailing winds and some invasive acacias planted by hunters who continue to shape the Maltese landscape.

il-Majjistral was almost lost to a proposed golf course but thankfully was saved probably because it was economically unsustainable rather than because of the rich diversity of flora and fauna that the habitat supports. Analise pointed out that any environmental study needs to be undertaken over a full year if not longer because many species are dormant for parts of the year and the landscape is constantly changing depending on the season.

The habitat also varies across the plateau and to the cliff edge. The five layers of deposits that make up Malta show their impact at the cliff face. The upper coralline layer cracks as the blue clay is squeezed out and the upper layer drops so there are two levels close to the sea with the lower level boulder strewn and rugged. This makes it hard to access so many rare plants and animals thrive with more water and soil trapped between rocks enabling trees to grow including olives, figs and some carobs.

There are rock-hewn stairways cut into the cliff face and some tiny rubble walled fields have been cultivated at one time on the lower level. But the stairs are hard to spot to prevent invasive access from the sea. We also went into a rock-cut square cave cut into the top of the cliff face perhaps as a British outpost or even a bomb shelter though I can't imagine why there would have been bombs dropped in this remote place. When we entered the park from Golden Bay, we had walked up through the old cave village that we walked past on my previous visit but these dwelling caves are very different from the cliff edge cave. There has also been a British army post in the valley area and the garigue shows evidence of their presence in several places.

At the conclusion of the lecture on Wednesday, Dr Deidun told us about a course on marine ecology including some diving field trips that he is convening in July. I won't be here for that but I have made a note to enroll if they run it in 2010 when I return to Malta. The more I learn here, the more I discover how complex and deep the world is!

Valletta rings the bell

2009-02-20T04:25:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend at home to try and catch up on domestic matters including my blog. I'm now almost up to date but I still need to write about the Arts and Culture Department's tour of Valletta on Sunday. This week I've also spent a bit of time in Valletta because I'm settling on this historic city as the place where I want to live when I come back to Malta. There is mounting excitement in Valletta this week as people prepare for Carnival that begins tonight and continues until Tuesday. Yesterday when I went to look at some possible places to live, we couldn't get round some of the streets on the perimeter because of the Carnival floats being set up.

The photo is of a bell now in the stairwell of St Paul's oratory museum which was our first visit on the Sunday tour. The museum houses an eclectic collection of artifacts including some beautiful brocade vestments. Our guide was excellent and gave us some interesting snippets of information which I tried to note down but there was too much for me to process. I did gather that one of the sacramental robes displayed in a glass case was made from the wedding dress of one Angelina who was a founder of the Borg-Olivier family dynasty.

There is also a very old sedan chair, probably 17th century but presented to the knights in 1714. It is remarkable for its original condition and for the open windows that give clear views of the occupant presumably for processional purposes.

The museum also houses the base of the statue of St Agatha that can be seen in St Paul's church. Everybody wants a piece of St Agatha!

Like many religious places in Malta, the museum boasts a Pretti painting. This one appears very dark to me without the light source that highlights many of his other paintings. It shows some hero with his foot on the slain body of a vanquished baddie and the guide said it was reminiscent of St George.

The tour was a walking itinerary and it was another wet and windy day so we couldn't really enjoy strolling through Valletta streets and the juggling of different groups took place in foyers rather than outside. Our next port of call was the old Treasury building, the Casino Royale. This was where the knights kept their records but items of value were kept in the library. Each of the different langues (nationalities) of the knights were responsible for a different administrative aspect of the order. There was also a pecking order amongst the nationalities starting with the three French langues at the top and this was probably reflected in the importance of the different administrative responsibilities.

The British took over from the knights (after a brief interlude with Napoleon) and turned the Casino into a packet station. Now it is a very exclusive club but I couldn't find out how you become a member. There was a solitary gentleman sitting in the courtyard reading the newspapers.

We gathered again outside in Republic Street and admired the sun calendar on the front of the building which I hadn't noticed before. As we walked over to the Oratory of the Carmelite church, I chatted to an English woman who now lives in Valletta. Her story parallels my own in many ways and this chance meeting has encouraged me to start looking again at living in Valletta when I return to Malta next year.

We sat for a while in the small oratory that is covered in gold leaf with silver ex-votos in glass cases on the walls. The guide pointed out that the abundance of gold leaf is a modern interpretation of the old style which was much more plain.

Next we walked over to the Auberge d'Aragon. I have been to a lecture here previously. The auberge has survived almost in its original state with a portico added. It was the Grand Drapery, one of the administrative functions of the knights, and there is a list in the portico of all the Grand Drapers! After the knights left, it became the residence of the Anglican archbishop after the cathedral on the opposite side of the little square was completed in 1844.

Associated with the auberge is Our Lady of Pilar, the patron saint of Spain. This church belongs to the State rather than the local parish and has been recently renovated with much gilding. The guide referred briefly to the tension between government and church in relation to St John's co-cathedral. During the time of the British, the co-cathedral was run as State property. I'm not sure how this tension has played out in the recent controversy over the underground extension to St John's.

Our final port of call was the Auberge de Bavaria, a splinter group from Germany who brought the number of langues up to eight rather than seven. Our guide pointed out that the Maltese cross is eight pointed not because of the number of langues which started out as seven, but because of the eight beatitudes. The British langue of the knights became dormant after Henry 8 split off from the Roman Catholic church. It was re-instituted in 1782 when it amalgamated with the Bavarian langue.

After the knights, the auberge became a tenement building until it was requisitioned by the government and transformed into offices. It is now the Lands Department. We had our lunch in the courtyard here and also went down into the basement which has been recently renovated.

Valletta is now an EU listed heritage city. Its old buildings have been recycled for different uses over the centuries and although it now looks a little tired and some parts are run-down, I think it is about to move into another interesting phase of re-cycling. The Opera House and City Gate are to be re-designed, Fort St Elmo at the lower end will be renovated and there will be a ferry service reinstated across Grand Harbour to the 3 cities. I'm looking forward to being part of that process in a small way.

Ghar Lapsi - the making of Malta

2009-02-17T01:17:00.000-08:00

The photo is Filfla, the rock island that split off from the cliffs around Ghar Lapsi. It looks like an aircraft carrier on the horizon which is probably why the British decided to use it for bombing target practice when they were the dominant power. It is now protected and is home to an endemic lizard and many seabirds.

The short course I am doing with the University in their old building in Valletta is called "Maltese Natural Heritage" and offers four lectures on Wednesday evenings and two field trips. Ghar Lapsi was the first of the field trips and was designed to illustrate the excellent lecture on the geological formation of Malta. I missed the second lecture in the series because I was in Catania and I was relying on an email message from the administrator of the course to inform me about directions for the field trip scheduled for the Saturday on the day after I returned. When I checked on Friday night I learnt that I could meet up with two other students outside the Hotel Phoenicia in Valletta and would be picked up for the drive to Ghar Lapsi.

Most of the other students on the course are either in Upper Secondary school or undergraduates. I arrived early at the appointed spot and after a while a young man turned up and I decided he looked like he was going on a field trip so we introduced ourselves. Next a young women arrived but I thought from her shoes and handbag that she wasn't field trip material so we all stood a little separate and waited. Our pick up was late but arrived with another University student full of apologies. I discovered on Wednesday night that this was another of the lecturers on the course whose speciality is fauna. The young woman was also going on the trip so we all crowded into the back seat and set off.

The driver/lecturer seemed very skillful in navigating the back streets of Malta and assured us we would get to the meeting place on time. He shot off down and around Marsa avoiding the main road that was crowded with traffic and somehow found country roads that took us down to Ghar Lapsi from a direction I hadn't been before. He made conversation with the young people by asking them about the courses they were doing but it was hard work for him. We passed a herd of shoats (perhaps the same herd I noticed before on the Ghar Lapsi garigue) and he and the young man in the front seat who was perhaps a postgraduate student talked about how it was a rare sight these days and that was a good thing because they ate everything they found. We did arrive at the meeting place on time.

Ghar Lapsi was chosen because it shows very clearly the sedimentary rock structure as well as quaternary deposits left by river action after Malta emerged from the sea. There is a fault line running all along the base of the cliffs on either side of Ghar Lapsi and in several places we walked along the edge of this fault line. We set off in the opposite direction to the way we had gone with Ramblers Malta. It was a lovely day but very windy as we walked along the edge of the sea with the cliffs high above us and a stretch of rich garigue between us and the cliff. The leader stopped often to point out the key features and at first the track was easy to follow.

I had noticed the caves in the upper cliffs on our previous visit and our leader explained that these were formed by wave action and showed that at one stage the sea had been much higher than it now is. His teaching style was to try and encourage us to read the story that was in the landscape. The edges of the fault line told the slow but violent tale of rock grinding over rock for thousands of years, squashing some rocks into a different form and scratching out lines and half circles on the sheer cliff faces as rock slid or pivoted on rock.

At two points along the walk we crossed ancient river courses where water would pour through the cliffs and leave their deposits as the river flattened out briefly before entering the sea. Here the story to be told is of weather patterns over the years. Boulders are laid down in layers and the size of the boulders in each layer can be distinctly read and tells us how forceful the flow of water was in that year. Fine sediment indicates a long period of stability when large shrubs took root. When the river became active again the shrub was washed out leaving a rhizome root cast that in turn is filled with sediment and writes the story of an ancient shrub.

During periods of draught, the water dries out completely and leaves layers of calcium deposits in the fine sediment so we can read several ages of dry climate. But there are also places where huge boulders have been deposited in a semi-circle into the fine sediment and this tells of a powerful flow of water that carved a path back into the fine sediment.

In these quaternary layers, ancient bones have been found similar to those found at Ghar Dalem and whilst we were there, one of the school students found a rock that showed several different fossils. The inclusion of a sand dollar indicates that the rock had been laid down under the sea, uplifted as part of the cliff when Malta emerged and then washed down the river to be deposited once again in the quaternary sediment. The look on that young man's face told a story of his dreams for a future career!

Our leader also pointed out some of the flora that we encountered along the way including Maltese splurge and sea lavender. That will be the focus of our next field trip this Saturday.

Catania PS

2009-02-16T23:57:00.000-08:00

The photo is of the Italian Red Cross on bikes at the St Agatha procession! They are in University square.

I forgot to mention the first part of our excursion on our last day in Catania. I'm not sure where it was, but I think it was a Carmelite sanctuary. The reason I wanted to say something about it is because the visit brought home to me how my religious beliefs or lack of them puts me on the outer in the Maltese community.

During the week, the priest who was on the tour with us conducted a short mass each morning in the hotel before breakfast. That was no problem for me - I simply stayed in bed a little longer. But for this last visit to the sanctuary, the bus driver had organised for a priest to lead the group in prayer. We were invited to sit down in the pews and he spoke in Italian so I didn't know what was going on. It didn't worry me - I simply sat quietly and contemplated the surroundings.

Outside the sanctuary there are orange trees planted in the square and strange, large stone hands stuck out of the walls presumably to hold banners for special occasions. I learnt from a passer-by that the oranges were not good to eat but were used for medicinal purposes and also made a good marmalade. The bus driver distributed small pictures of St Agatha.

One of the tour group said to me, "you are not a Catholic."

"No"

"That is why you are not interested."

I was startled because I had not considered that I was conveying a lack of interest. I mumbled "It isn't that I'm not interested. I just don't understand."

I have wondered about it since then. It means that part of me will remain a visitor in an island where Catholic faith is a central part of life. In Catania, faith was the core that brought all the tour group together but also linked them to the people of Catania. I can respect and appreciate the community that that faith creates but I can't enter into it at a fundamental level.

Giarre and Catania shopping

2009-02-16T07:02:00.000-08:00

This will be my final post on my five day trip to Catania. The tour had four excursions and I've posted previously about Ragusa and Acireale. The tour to Giarre was on Wednesday and it was a strange afternoon.

Giarre is a seaside town - the photo is of the beach area next to the new marina. Perhaps the EU money that has gone into the new marina will revitalise the town, but the yacht area lay empty when we were there. The bus dropped us off first down at the marina and we were given half an hour to look around. The front has a general air of depression - it looks run-down and sad. Maybe the winter weather didn't help but Giarre added to my impression that Catania is a bit tired.

The bus driver picked us up after we had all rather forlornly wandered down the front and the more adventurous had tried the pebbly beach. He then dropped us off at the top end of town and we were pointed to the main shopping street which seems to be the major other attraction of Giarre. I wandered off down the back streets as usual and became intrigued by the construction methods used here. Everything is slightly crumbling and so I could see how many house walls seemed to be made of rubble that included everything from lava rocks to pieces of tiles and pottery. I started happily clicking away with my camera and it was a rude awakening when I got the message that my memory card was full!

This gave me a project to pursue when I returned to the main shopping street. I called in to a cafe for hot chocolate and started my quest to find another memory stick. It was less difficult than I thought and I found myself in a camera shop where the proprietor rummaged around and found me a suitable (and much larger) stick. I was back in business but it was time to get back on the bus, so Giarre is not down as one of my must return places.

It may have been Giarre where I found some rather nice desert boots to buy. Shopping seemed to be one of the major motivations for our excursions. Visits to two large cut-price retail outlets were included as part of our bus tours. I hate shopping at the best of times so found it hard to discover interest in wandering round shopping malls. Apart from the desert boots, I also bought a bright yellow suitcase that won't get lost on airport carousels but all of my purchases were about trying to find enjoyment in an otherwise meaningless expedition.

Our last excursion was on the way to the airport on Friday. By this time, I had acquired the gastric flu that I brought back to Malta and I had no energy anyway. Spending two hours in a department store drained me of any enthusiasm for Catania! I did manage to rouse myself enough to buy two white Italian towels that I had got to appreciate when we were in Catania last year.

My next post will be about our field trip to Ghar Lapsi with the University's Maltese Natural Heritage course that I am participating in on Wednesday evenings.

More on St Agatha

2009-02-15T06:44:00.000-08:00

After posting yesterday's piece on St Agatha I had a look on Google. There are thousands of sites. I narrowed the range by putting in history but still got far too many so I opened the first one up which was St Agatha's parish church in NSW, Australia. They had a very brief history that told me that Quintianus was a Roman senator and that St Agatha was martyred around 251AD during the persecution of Christians at the time of Emperor Decius. This site seemed to be aimed at young people and St Agatha was held up as a role model for saying no to sex before marriage and also for sticking by your faith commitment.

I followed up by searching for Quintianus and strangely I got an article on Quintinus and Marsaxlokk! It seems that early historians picked up on a history by Quintinus suggesting that there was a temple to Hercules at Tas-Silg (see my previous post) near Marsaxlokk. This idea was perpetuated and sometimes included the temple site at Birzebuggia even suggesting that the two were linked. More recent explorations suggest that neither of these sites was dedicated to Hercules and the Tas-Silg site was actually a temple to Isis. So I went looking for Quintianus and found something else about my home town!

Another site that came up for Quintianus was a Catholic forum site. Here the story of St Agatha is written in old biblical language and added a few more details to the framework I have gleaned so far. It seems that when the "lascivious advances" of senator Quintianus were rejected for the first time, he packed Agatha off to a house of prostitution run by Aphrodisia and her nine daughters. They worked very hard on trying to persuade Agatha that if she took on the senator she would have a life of luxury and comfort. Of course St Agatha chose to be a cult figure for the next two thousand years rather than become a housewife for a lifetime. So Quintianus proceeded with the big stick side of his proposition.

The other thing I found out on the religious saints site was that the saint who visited Agatha in her cell after her breasts were cut off was St Peter and miraculously, after he had left having been told by Agatha that she didn't want anyone but the lord to heal her wounds, "her paps were restored." It also seems that when Agatha was being burnt, Etna started erupting and her veil was used to stop the lava destroying the town.

I took the picture that heads the post on the evening of the third day of St Agatha's feast. I walked down via Etnea before it got dark and enjoyed watching the candle bearers preparing for the final procession. University square was the best spot for this. Most of the candle bearers were men, apart from the two women that I snapped. There is quite a knack to getting the massive candles going and the bearers carry knives to pare the wax and keep the wicks trimmed. The padding is to cushion the shoulder once they get moving and the flaming end sticks out behind them so the hot wax drips to the ground. The whole of the processional route had been covered in sawdust but it still looked to me like a highly risky operation!

As the time for the procession drew closer more and more candle bearers came into the square and got their candles going along the route. As the crowd was also growing it became more and more difficult for them to get through with the heavy load on their shoulder and I began to feel overwhelmed so I escaped from the square and used some backroads to get into piazza duomo where I slipped into the cathedral. There was a service going on and it was packed but people were wandering in and out. One little girl had a massive Minnie Mouse balloon.

When I came out, I threaded my way through the crowded piazza and went through the gate that leads down to the river where there were market stalls set up. As I came through the gate, something happened in one section of the market crowd and there was a sudden surge of people away from whatever it was. I never found out but it worried me enough to turn round and make my way back. I used the back roads again to make my way further down via Etnea where I tried to establish a place on a corner from where I thought I could watch the parade.

As it got darker, the crowd got larger and larger and it became more and more difficult for me to avoid being elbowed or having a cigarette poked in my face. The whistles of the candelore heralded the start of the procession but I only managed to hang on until they had reached my corner and then I gave up. It was no longer fun! I squeezed out of the crowd and headed off through the back roads to my hotel. The procession goes on all night but I was in bed before the end of it had left the cathedral!

St Agatha

2009-02-14T05:09:00.000-08:00

The paintings and statues depict St Agatha as beautiful and curvaceous with blonde hair and blue eyes. She is always serene or gazing ecstatically heavenward even when torturers are standing by waving their enormous nut crackers having just cut off her breast. The only depiction I've seen of her as distressed and powerless is in the dungeons in Mdina, Malta where the life-size model shows her bound and screaming. Yet even after three days of the feast of St Agatha in Catania, I still feel I haven't moved beyond the cult of St Agatha.

The rituals of the three day feast are amazing. The streets of Catania are thronged with residents and visitors, the processional routes are decorated with lights and banners, the churches with statues, candles and flowers. There are fireworks every night and the procession goes on a different route around the city on each of the three days. It is likely that people who know what to expect and what they want to do can organise themselves to be in a good place at a particular time so that they can engage without having to battle the huge crowd. I didn't have this luxury so I found that what I enjoyed most was when I stumbled on the procession by chance and when I walked around the route calling in on the churches during non-processional times.

The first day of the feast, February 3rd, I wandered through the street markets towards Via Etnea and caught the eleven candelore for the first time. The candelore are elaborate candle-shaped constructions carried by a team of six to twelve burly men who wear sacking protection on their heads as they shoulder the carrying poles. The candelore represent the guilds including floriculturalists, fishmongers, greengrocers, butchers, makers of pasta, grocers, bakers and vintners. They are so heavy that the bearers can only move them for short distances at a time and then they stop for a while so everyone in the crowd can walk around and look at them. When it's time to move on, someone blows a whistle so everyone gets out of the way as the bearers bend their knees and take the strain.

I learnt later that this first glimpse was part of the solemn Midday procession when civil, military and religious authorities follow the procession from the church of St Agatha down via Etnea to the Cathedral for "the offering of wax." Although I saw the candelore often over the next two days, this was the only time I saw the costumed trumpeters and mace bearers with suited dignitaries wearing gongs around their necks. There were also white horses and carriages with liveried footmen.

On the afternoon of that first day, we went on the excursion to Acireale so missed the St Agatha's International Cross-country race that takes place from 3.00pm through the old and new streets of the town centre. But after dinner in the evening I managed to catch the fireworks display as I walked down via Etnea towards the piazza Duomo to enjoy the lights.

On February 4th, the procession takes all day to go on the "outside tour"around the outer ring road of the town taking the candelore past the port area and across to piazza Risorgimento and piazza Palestro. We went on our bus tour to Giarre that day which I will write about in my next post. In the morning I wandered the streets, refound Teatro Bellini with the poster that heads my last post and caught the candelore again as they came down via Umberto.

Day three, February 5th, is the big day when the procession goes up and down via Etnea stopping at all the places that are significant for St Agatha. We had no bus trips scheduled today and were organised to have lunch rather than dinner at the hotel so that we could stay in town in the evening. By this time I had found my guide in English with a street map of the processional route and I decided I would spend the morning walking the route and visiting the places on the way.

From our hotel on via XX Settembre it is a short walk to piazza Cavour where Chiesa di Sant'Agata al Borgo is located. In the early days, this square was on the outskirts of the town. The church is devoted to St Agatha and there was a statue of her at the front with flowers and candles. When I slipped in, there were several people sitting quietly and I also sat down. Several people went and stood in front of the statue from time to time and offered flowers or put something in the offering box. A nun spent some time praying and when a young mother with her daughter went up, the nun showed the little girl how to cross herself correctly.

From piazza Cavour, I walked down via Etnea to Chiesa di Sant'Agata alla Fornace in piazza Stesicoro. It was here that St Agatha was finally martyred by fire after being held in prison and mutilated. The story is that it was in piazza Stesicoro that Agatha first encountered the flattery of one Quinziano, who I think I heard somewhere else was from Rome but I have no idea what his position was. Agatha resisted and somehow Quinziano was able to torture, imprison and burn her.

There is a cluster of significant sites around piazza Stesicoro each claiming an aspect of St Agatha's story. Two places, the church of Santa Maria dell'Annunziata and also Sant'Agata la Vetere, claim to be the first resting place of St Agatha's first sepulchre as they were both cemetery areas at that time. Also in this square is the church of Madonna del Carmelo, an important sanctuary.

Nearby, in piazza della Borsa, is the sanctuary of Sant'Agata al Carcere where St Agatha was imprisoned. A few people went into the tiny underground space, squeezed past an old timber reliquary, through another door and into what is supposed to be the actual cell with a barred window and an elaborate moorish lamp hanging outside. There is also the footstep of St Agatha miraculously imprinted on a lava slab when she tried to defend herself from her torturers but somehow I missed this. This is where she had her breast cut off and somewhere I saw a painting of a male saint visiting her in this prison to bring her some comfort after the torture.

The last stop in this cluster of holy places is the church of Sant'Agata la Vetere. This was the first cathedral in Catania and St Agatha's burial place. It is too small now to be used in the processions but was significant up until 1094 when the present cathedral site was chosen by the Normans.

After dropping in to all of these sites and spending a few moments sitting and contemplating the steady stream of other visitors, the morning had disappeared so I made my way back through the market squares to the hotel for lunch. I'll write briefly about the evening procession in my next post.

Catania and Malta

2009-02-14T00:26:00.000-08:00

By the third day of wandering the streets of Catania checking out bookshops along the way I managed to track down a S. Agata Guida alla Festa that had English notes and also a DVD about St Agatha that promises English. But there were no books in English and I think I need that to move beneath the beatific and horrific in the story of St Agatha. I even called in to the Biblioteca regionale universitario di Catania and asked if they had anything in English on the saint. They didn't but the woman on the front desk invited me to go in and browse.

I had a great morning wandering down the dusty stacks where I picked up two interesting items about Malta. The first was in a large volume on contemporary architects where I learnt that Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who has been invited to submit designs for the old Opera House site and the City gate in Valletta, is concerned about the reality of building as well as with design. I found this re-assuring.

I also found a very useful potted history of Malta that suggested that Malta has been a powerful indicator of the rise and fall of colonial powers. She has often been in the possession of nations as they emerge into power and of course has been the battleground of nations struggling for supremacy. So Malta's current status as an independent republic and a member of EU carries in its history a larger picture than the rocks that make up the small island.

Today, this small island continues cold and damp but the sun has come out to start drying things out. The prediction is that the temperature will continue to drop to 2 degrees by Monday night and then will start to rise. I shall be happy to feel some more warmth in my bones! I've freed up the weekend to catch up with my writing but I must get out moving in the sun as well.

My next post will focus on St Agatha. The photo is a poster of St Agatha in prison. It is outside the Teatro Bellini. Last time I was in Catania, Carol and I went on a guided tour of this lovely baroque theatre. I wanted to go to a performance here this time but couldn't make the only show that was on - Macbeth in Italian!

Acireale

2009-02-11T06:08:00.000-08:00

More padlocks in Acireale! These are in the Villa Belvedere gardens along with the gold fish. There is also a calendar date garden here, 3 February 2009. How do they manage to change these gardens every day?

This is a brief post about our second day visit to Acireale. In my next post I'll get on to Catania and St Agatha. Acireale is another of the towns around Etna. We just missed the carnival there which is on this week but the decorations were already up in the streets and I walked the triangular route of the procession.

The bus dropped us off at Villa Belvedere gardens which is a great starting point with views out over the sea and adjacent to a neatly manicured Tuscan landscape. There is also a dramatic statue of a woman appealing heavenwards over the prone body of a man with a large rock on his chest.

Acireale has the usual Piazza Duomo as well as Piazzas Garibaldi and Cappuccini and Europa. I also noticed some nicely laid out vegetable shops and home-made produce shops (Nostra produzione). But what I noticed most here were the posters and one in particular for the Festa della democrazia.

In the cathedral, it took me a little while to work out the lines laid diagonally across the floor with star signs running down each side. Eventually I linked it with the small hole in the dome on one side and worked out that it was a sun calendar. Every time I begin to think I've seen it all, something else emerges to startle me about the creativity and energy of people who came before me on this planet!

Ragusa

2009-02-10T04:12:00.000-08:00

So I set the alarm for 4.30 am and the local taxi arrived for me at 5.15. When I had phoned the day before, Franky, the taxi driver told me that he was also going to Catania for the feast of St Agatha but on a later flight. Malta is very much a part of the cult of this saint that I first became interested in when we were traveling down from Rome to Catania in September last year.

The tour group that I was to join at the airport was lead by Paul Cassar from Gozo. We were based in Catania for five days with bus trips organised for four half days. This meant that we had plenty of time to explore Catania at our own pace as well as getting to see a few of the towns around Mt Etna.

Etna is covered in snow at this time of year and forms a stunning backdrop as we drove along the highways of Catania. When we were here in September, the countryside was very dry and brown but now it is lush and green and almost like the Tuscan landscape.

The flight over from Malta takes less than an hour and the plan was to board the coach at the airport and visit Ragusa before checking into our hotel in the afternoon. I was beginning to have doubts as we drove through crowded Catania streets and stopped for coffee and toilet at a strange Catania coffee shop. When we stopped again at a freeway service station at the request of one of the members of the group I started to wonder what I had let myself in for.

In Ragusa, we drove backwards and forwards through heavy traffic over several bridges that traverse a deep gorge running through the centre of the city. The driver kept stopping to ask for directions but eventually we were dropped off at the central cathedral square. We had two and a half hours before we had to be back in the square ready for bus pick-up. The cathedral is massive and I wandered across the square for a quick look inside as a way of getting myself going.

The amazing arches, domes, ceilings, paintings, gilding, statues, candles, relics have all blurred into a generic image for me now and I didn't spend long inside. When I came out, I wandered over to one of the bridges over the gorge and walked across to the other side. I then found back streets that allowed me to wander along the edge of the gorge so I started to recover my pleasure in new places.

The gorge is stunning as is the valley that I discovered on the edge of town. But what I will remember most about Ragusa are the padlocks! I discovered a walking bridge across the gorge, and as I was crossing, looking into the gorge through the iron railings I started to notice padlocks and chains locked onto the bars. For a while, I couldn't work out what they could be for - maybe the people of Ragusa use them to chain up their bikes here. I noticed there were names on some of them and I thought that particular people must have the key to each padlock and at a certain time they come and attach something to the railings. Finally I started to notice that most locks had two names on them, sometimes with words like unity or amor. My hypothesis now is that two people from Ragusa declare their commitment to each other by putting a padlock on the bridge. The photo that heads this post is of a small group of these padlocks but there were hundreds of them across the bridge, and since that first sighting, I have noticed padlocks in Acireale as well.

When I got back to the large piazza at the cathedral I climbed the steps onto the massive verandah in front of the church and settled on the parapet to take photos of the square. There was graffiti along the parapet and there were two padlocks again. Members of the tour group began drifting in and settling on the benches in the piazza. Eventually the bus arrived late and we all got back on board to head to the hotel.

Our package included an evening meal and we were checked in with plenty of time to get ready for dinner. I found myself on a table for six and was to share dinner with the same people for the four evenings. There was an older couple from Valletta who now live in Hamrun and had been coming to Catania for eleven years and a very helpful couple from Ghargur who were traveling with their sister. Victor later told me that he had made an ex voto commitment to St Agatha that if his prayer was answered he would come to Catania and light a candle for her. That was why they were on the tour and they achieved their goal on the final day of the feast.

Apart from the pasta, the dinners were institutional and English! But we shared some good Catanian wine and enjoyed the gossip. Every so often, Vicky, Victor's wife, translated for me when she realised that they had all slipped into Malti. They told me about Malta's national feast of St Paul which is on today and I am going to look out for them when I go up to Valletta now for the procession.

Back from Catania

2009-02-08T23:29:00.000-08:00

This is a promissary note! I'm back from Catania with hundreds of photos and jumbled experiences. I've also had a full weekend with a field trip from Ghar Lapsi and a walking tour of Valletta so I'm still thinking about how I want to post all that. I'm also needing to attend to things like grocery shopping, post office and health centre today so will spend any extra time deciding on photos and posts and will try and catch up during the week.

The photo was taken at the feast of St Agatha in Catania.

Naxxar to Fort Madlena

2009-02-01T08:33:00.000-08:00

The photo is of fire buckets in the entrance of Fort Madlena.

The Malta Ramblers walk yesterday met at the parish church in Naxxar. This was my first visit to Naxxar and the bus seemed to be re-routed because of some hold-up on the outskirts of the town so it was close to 2.00pm when I got to the steps of the church and was greeted by Dr Gunter. I had rushed things a bit leaving Marsaxlokk so hadn't managed to have lunch but I brought some Maltese bread with tomato and tuna with me so I sat on the steps to eat as the large crowd gathered for the walk to Fort Madlena.

Naxxar is another town I have made a note to re-visit. The church is very elaborate from the outside and next to it is Palazzo Parisio and gardens now the home of the Marquis Scicluna family. When we set of walking through the streets of Naxxar we passed interesting old houses, a curious looking tower and an old windmill converted.

Our first stop was Ghargur where we stopped on the steps of another medieval chapel. Dr Gunter pronounced the G in Ghargur and I later learned that this is the anglicised way of pronouncing what should be spoken as Arroor. We walked along a road from where we had a good view down the valley to Bahar ic-Caghaq and along part of the Victoria lines, a British line of fortification that runs across Malta. The Ramblers are planning a 7 hour walk along the length of the Victoria lines later in February and I will try and get my name down for this restricted walk.

We rounded a bend and saw a very large apartment development that runs down a whole side of the valley at Madlena. I learnt from Sylvia who I met some time ago at the Mosta natural environment course that her husband used to ride his bike around these parts when there was nothing there but fields. Just below the apartments, the road curves over an attractive old arched bridge.

We climbed up the Madlena side of the valley and then turned off to the right to double back to Fort Madlena. The countryside is looking great just now and the wild fennel is coming into bloom as well as the almond trees. Dr Gunter had arranged for us to have a guided tour of the fort with one of the volunteers who form part of the St John Rescue Corps. The Corps, under the auspices of the most venerable order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, use the old British fort which is part of the Victoria lines as their Headquarters and Training School. They also help to maintain the fort and have put out an information leaflet for Saturday afternoon visitors.

The fort was built in the late 19th century and was dug into the top of the hill for additional fortification. There are some points as we walked around where I think I could detect some of the layers of rock that were talked about at the Maltese natural heritage course on Wednesday.

It was intended as a heavy-gun fort to guard potential landing points at Salina, St Paul's Bay and Mellieha but the era of invasion by sea was coming to an end, and the cost of firing large guns was so prohibitive that they were rarely used.

The views from the gun emplacements are of course excellent and I noticed several yachts and other small boats taking advantage of the keyhole of sunny weather we were enjoying. I learnt that the stone surrounds of the gun emplacements used to be painted for camouflage, green in the wet season and brown in the dry season.

By the time we had completed the tour of the fort we were running out of time to return to Naxxar by a circular route and so we walked back the way we had come. I was glad to meet up with Sylvia and her husband, Malcolm, again and they were able to give me a lift back to Marsaxlokk so I got home before it was dark and in time to start preparing for my trip to Catania tomorrow.

I have arranged to be picked up at 5.15am to join the Catania group at the airport in the morning so this will be my last post until next weekend.

Together in diversity

2009-01-31T00:31:00.000-08:00

The photo is the centre piece of the mosaic floor at Domus Romana by Mdina gate.

This post is about the National Forum on Intercultural Dialogue that I went to yesterday at St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta. I am starting to appreciate that St James Cavalier is a significant hub of arts and cultural activities in Malta. Sarah Spiteri, the violinist who leads the concert series at St Catherine of Italy, is based at St James Cavalier and indeed features in a short documentary that has been produced there about the EU year of creativity, 2008.

That reminds me that the concert on Thursday was German Baroque for flute and harpsichord with Silvio Zammit on flute and Ramona Zammit Formosa on harpsichord. It was an excellent concert even though both musicians were battling with colds. The court of Frederick the Great enabled many musicians to flourish and we heard pieces by Fred himself, Telemann, CPE Bach, Handel, and JS Bach.

The forum was the summarising event for the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue which was coordinated in Malta by St James Cavalier. It was opened by Dolores Cristina, Minister for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, who, like several other politicians who were present at first, disappeared as soon as she had given her speech. The session before coffee was chaired by Dr Mark Anthony Falzon, Head of Sociology at Uni of Malta. He did a great job of summarising the contributions of Prof. Paul Clough, Head of Anthropology at Uni of Malta who gave an interesting perspective as an Anglo-American-Maltese and Dr Katrine Camilleri, a lawyer with the Jesuit Refugee Services.

Paul Clough spoke about the significance of humour, music and dance in building bridges between cultures. None of the speakers used terms like integration but rather emphasised respect for diversity and the building of links between difference. Paul Clough mentioned two points that have stayed in my mind. One was a personal anecdote about how playing with words to bring out humour can make us feel momentarily more alive.

The other point about age and cultural diversity needs more expansion. Drawing on his own experience as a young adult establishing himself as an academic in Malta, he compared his own experience in building strong links with Maltese people, with that of his parents who tended to stick with people from their own English background. He then generalised to suggest that whilst younger adults enjoy looking out for cultural diversity, older adults seek cultural similarity. My own experience indicates that it is more complex.

As a young woman living in Bahamas I tended to hang out with other English teachers from the Bahamian school where I taught Bahamian children. I remained an ex-pat socialising mostly with other ex-pats. I think the workplace, marital status and the structure of possible links between a local community and a visiting 'foreigner' determines how we relate to a host country rather than age. Certainly in Malta today, older English 'couples' tend to hang out with other older English couples and I think there are plenty of remnants of colonial culture influencing the relationships between older English and Maltese people. But as an older Anglo-Australian returning to Malta and deciding to come and live here more permanently, I find that I am more open than I have ever been to Maltese culture and the Maltese people.

After our coffee break, we divided into four workshops to focus on local communities, education, employment and the arts. I chose the latter which was well facilitated by a young man, Caldon Mercieca from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. Our discussion settled around three areas in terms of how the arts might build bridges between diverse cultures: public art, community art, and artist to artist relationships.

I have to go and hang out my washing and prepare to go walking this afternoon from Naxxar so will publish this and then add some more later.

Sunday afternoon and I've just got back from the Sunday concert at St Catherine of Italy. Today, I was a little late arriving because I stopped in St James Cavalier for coffee, so I missed out on both my front row seat and a programme. The concert focussed on Hayden's flute pieces and I loved it. It started with a solo flute piece by CPE Bach moved through two works for flute, violin and bass and finished with a Hayden flute quartet when Sarah Spiteri joined the group.

I wanted to add a couple of points raised at the forum on Friday. Katrina Camilleri talked about her experience working with refugees in Malta. She quoted from some of the irregular migrants. One said that Malta is like a bus terminal where people are waiting for their future direction to open out. This metaphor is literally played out at the Valletta bus terminal which is always teeming with African migrants who seem to have made the windy circle their social gathering point.

The other aspect that emerged strongly for me is how the experience of the Marsa community and the refugee centre located there is put forward as an example of what can be achieved. In the general forum, a migrant from Africa, who is now settled in Malta and married to a Maltese woman, told us about the 'Clean up Marsa' campaign that he had been involved in together with the refugees who now live in Marsa. That campaign did a lot to raise local awareness and build bridges between cultures. Marsa councillors who had never been to the refugee centre previously have now become regular visitors.

But as well as enabling people to see the positive contributions that can be made by people from diverse cultures, we need to address issues that arise in economic competition. Paul Clough made the point, again drawing from his own experience, that sometimes we explain tension between people as cultural competition when it is actually competition in the job market. Another factor that was touched on at the forum but we all tended to skate away from it is the strong Roman Catholic conviction held by many Maltese that may nurture a social system that is closed to cultural diversity.

The 'Clean up Marsa' campaign was also mentioned by a young man who works at the refugee centre and who attended the arts workshop after the coffee break. He used the campaign as an example of community arts because it had brought people together and had changed the local landscape. He also talked about how he is now working on finding a space for art in Marsa where the work of artists from diverse cultures can be exhibited.

A young woman from the Museum of Archaeology also talked about her vision of opening up the museum space to exhibits from the diverse cultures who have influenced Maltese identity today.

After the arts workshop, the 'stayers' in the forum gathered back in the St James cinema to hear the reports from the four groups and to hear about the launch of a new website that features the diverse cultural organisations currently operating in Malta. This site can be accessed on www.diversemalta.com