On my way

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.