This is the first guest post from Evarist Bartolo, Shadow Minister for Education and a lecturer in communications at the University of Malta. More than 30 years ago, he taught one of Malta Inside Out’s founders, Alex Grech, to write and appreciate English literature.

There are at least 500 islands in the Mediterranean. One of them has six inhabitants: four men and two women. The youngest is a 42-year old man; the oldest is a woman, twice his age.

Throughout the last 23 centuries pirates, hermits, prisoners of war, exiled knights, farmers and tourists have settled the island. Some 80 years ago, one of the German prisoners of World War I held there, built a water mill driven by a rat. Apart from rats, bats and wild rabbits, most of the inhabitants there have been pigs.

2,500 years ago, the navigator Scillace called it ‘Lampas’. Cluverius called it ‘Hephaestia’. 1,800 years ago Ptolemy referred to it as ‘Chemmona’. ‘Kineni’ in Greek means nearest to and Comino lies nearest to Malta. The Arabs called it ‘Kemmuna’ perhaps a corruption of the Greek word, or a reference to the plant of ‘kemmun’ (cumin) which covered large areas of the island at the time.

In 1285, Abulafia, one of the earliest Cabalists and born in Saragossa in 1240, arrived on Comino to live there for three years during which he compiled his “Sefer ha-Ot” (The Book of the Sign).

Five years before he found refuge in Comino, Abulafia went to Rome to convert Pope Nicholas III to the ideal that Moslems, Jews and Christians could live together in harmony, instead of persecuting one another. He fled to Comino after being flung into prison for four weeks in Rome and then having to leave Palermo hastily as his teachings were considered too dangerous and he was going to be stoned by the people.

While Abulafia lived in a cave at one end of the island, at the other end pirates sheltered in the bays and caves which were excellent hiding places for them for many centuries. We know of at least two local hermits who lived there for some time. A small Catholic community must have lived there over 600 years ago, big enough to sustain a medieval chapel.

The island was probably abandoned when the raids by corsairs became frequent, as the inhabitants had no fortifications in which to seek refuge. In the 15th century, taxes had been collected by imposing an excise duty on wine imported from Sicily but the money was not used for the tower that had been planned for Comino. In 1533 Grand Master l’Isle Adam also commissioned a plan for a tower on the island but again this project fizzled out.

Grand Master Wignacourt built the existing tower in 1620 and 30 soldiers were stationed there. At this time, knights who had misbehaved in Malta were punished by being sent to Comino.

The island was to serve as a prison camp on a number of occasions. At the end of the French occupation, Comino was used for French prisoners, Maltese who were accused of spying for the French and common criminals.

150 years ago, farmers from Naxxar settled on Comino and started growing crops. The 1881 population census for the Maltese Islands tells us that 20 males and 13 females lived in Comino. Ten years later, the population had increased by 10: 25 males and 18 females. Nearly half of the inhabitants, 17, were children under the age of five.

In 1912, Comino served as a site for an isolation hospital for cholera victims. Soldiers wounded in the war of the Dardanelles were also sent to Comino for treatment. The hospital building still stands there.

Several times during the last 200 years there were several big projects to make use of Comino, including a big pig farm in 1993, when the island was considered ideal to rebuild the Maltese and Gozitan pig industry after African swine fever disease destroyed it.

Comino is a small rock that has seen almost as many twists and turns of fate as its larger sister islands. These days, apart from its six residents, it’s home to one hotel, seasonal staff and tourists, numerous sea craft and a very popular blue lagoon.

Photo: Therese Debono

This is a cake designed to appeal to kids, or the kid in us adults. While Christmas cakes are ice-rink smooth perfection, the prinjolata, which starts appearing in cafés and confectioners in late January and therefore well before carnival, is a mound of mess. Splattered with melted chocolate, pine nuts and glacé cherries glowing neon artificial green and red, the prinjolata is like a kids’ art session crossed with a Betty Crocker Angel Food Cake.

Its name comes from prinjol, pine nut, which is similar to the Italian word, pinoli. But pine nuts seem to be just a bit of decoration. The cake itself, which can be a counter-top mountain (as in the St James’ Cavalier café), is made of cream, sponge, citrus peel and biscuits. It has a substantial calorie count with its condensed milk and a bit of a boozy bite to it with its Vermouth content.

My son drools when he sees it. I have to say my stomach turns at its grotesque carnival appearance. But I do admit that it is the epitomé of pre-Lent excess and puts the Protestant Shrove Tuesday pancake in the shade. The prinjolata certainly does use up any fattening ingredients that might be in the store cupboard.

If you feel like giving it a go at home, this seems a good recipe source for it. Decorating it could make for a fun mid-term activity with the kids. If you fancy tasting it, cafés sell it by the slice, and some places have smaller, almost individual-sized plated domes of it for sale. You’ll need a sweet tooth to enjoy it; seeing it is the greater pleasure I think.

Photo: Peter Grima [Know Malta]

Carnival is long-embedded in Maltese folklore. This weekend, you get the chance to experience two different types of carnivals. You can go to Valletta or Rabat, in Gozo, for the organised, structured floats and dance programmes. Or you can head to Nadur, in Gozo, for the ‘alternative’, spontaneous carnival, which kicks off on the 12th February, and draws to a close on the 16th.

Around 10 years ago, the Nadur carnival was a well-kept secret. A little gem of a carnival, its charm stemmed from the silence of masked crowds in the streets of the village. The game was about disguise: grotesque masks or badly-daubed make-up, wigs, costumes from sheets or sack cloth, makeshift, disorganised parades often accompanied by farm-stock and carts. In the general attempt to avoid being recognised, the carnival often became associated with the absurd and often the bizarre: cryptic placards, coded messages to friends and foes. A silent carnival, a veritable masked street ball.

Things change. As the event’s reputation grew online and by word of mouth, it became the carnival to go to for a new generation of Maltese, possibly bored with the traditional fare served in Valletta and attracted to the edginess of the Nadur festival. The new influx of visitors was also a shot in the arm for anyone in the Gozo tourism and hospitality sector in the winter shoulder months. From a purely ‘Nadur’ affair, the carnival has become a very Maltese occasion. This weekend, boatloads of young Maltese will cross for the annual pilgrimage of masked fun, or a vulgar, alcohol-fuelled rave party, depending on which side of the debate you happen to be.

And as for debates about the carnival, they have raged and ebbed over the past twelve months. Although the carnival has a history of revellers dressing up as priests or nuns, last year Malta’s Archbishop Paul Cremona and Gozo’s Bishop Marco Grech issued a statement about the need to ‘recognise and respect religious and civil rights’. As things stand, the law does not allow people to wear ‘any ecclesiastical habits or vestments’ without permission as this constitutes ‘offending public order’. Malta’s laws also prohibit the use of words or gestures that vilify the Roman Catholic Church.

Soon after last year’s carnival, a 26-year-old was given a one month jail term suspended for 18 months after he pleaded guilty to dressing up as Jesus Christ during the carnival celebrations. Six people who dressed as nuns were acquitted after the court found the simple fact of dressing up as a nun, even if at carnival time, did not, on its own, amount to vilification.

The public backlash was not long in coming. A Facebook group was set up to encourage people to dress up as Jesus at this year’s Nadur carnival – it currently has more than 600 members. Last week, the Sunday Times confirmed that the Nadur local council and police were requesting to vet the lyrics of rock bands playing at the carnival ‘to eliminate offensive or vulgar language’. The furious online backlash from bloggers and pundits forced the police to swiftly issue a statement retracting their request.

Comedy or tragedy? Malta’s own version of growing up pains, of old power systems slowly coming to terms with the sign of the times? You only have to scan the content of this site about the carnival to get a sense that change is irreversable, and not necessarily for the better.

Whichever way you look at it, the Nadur carnival hovers somewhere between the past and the future.

More on the carnival on the Nadur Council site, on Facebook and on Flickr.

Photo: Courtesy of OBS1

I’ve been meaning to make it to the summer solstice at Mnajdra Temples for the past two years. But, I just can’t manage to get out of bed (at around 04.30) to get there in time – and I am a bare 10 minutes’ drive away. I am just too comatose in the summer heat. So, perhaps I’ll fare better at seeing the first shafts of winter’s sunrise hit the temple’s inner sanctum. But, it’s pretty nippy in the air over night now and my duvet, not will power, might win.

If you’re at all into prehistory, mysticism or ancient cults or just fancy a more unusual start to your Christmas week – well armed with a flask of hot coffee – then do try to make Heritage Malta’s guided tours of Mnajdra, Sunday 20th and Monday 21st December, meeting at Hagar Qim temple at 06.15.

But, you’ll have to be quick, which is why we’re giving you a week’s notice; only 40 people will be allowed access to the event on each of the days, in order to ‘enhance the visitor experience’.

A bit of background from the experts
The unique setting of the Mnajdra Temples at Qrendi, overlooking the coast, gives them a special charm not to be found in any other of the large-scale megalithic buildings of the Maltese Islands, many of which lie in more urban areas or inland.

Sunrise on the first day of each season underlines the relationship between the temples and celestial bodies. Although it is not known for certain whether these orientations were intentional, they are so systematic that this is very probable. In prehistoric agricultural societies, observation of the motion of the stars, the moon and sun could have been related to the changing seasons and times of planting and harvesting crops.

On these days, the first rays of the sun light up the edge of a megalith found to the right of the central doorway connecting the first pair of chamber to the inner chamber of the Lower Mnajdra Temple.

Event Tickets & Further Info
Tickets are €15 for the general public and €10 for Heritage Malta members and are strictly on a first-come-first-served basis. You can buy tickets from any Heritage Malta site as well as the Heritage Malta head office, Old University Buildings, Merchants Street, Valletta. Tel: +356 22 954 000. On the mornings, participants meet at Hagar Qim Temple at 6.15 hrs.

For further information, see the Heritage Malta website.

On 29^th October, the Rector of the University of Malta banned the publication of Ir-Realta’, a student magazine, and reported the editor, as well as the writer of a piece within its covers, to the police.  The ban triggered a national debate about censorship and freedom of expression:  our view was (and remains) that this was yet another side-effect of the smallness of the nation.  On the 4^th December, the Rector wrote in a national newspaper to explain his decision and students held protests on the University campus on the same day.

Andrew Galea, a University student and writer, wades into the debate with his personal opinion on the matter.

Isn’t it fair to say that people expressing opinions in public should do so responsibly?  And that they should disseminate their messages having considered their audiences carefully?

So far, these question have been lacking in discussions on the censorship of Alex Vella Gera’s  ‘Li Tkisser Sewwi’, published in the student magazine Ir-Realta’. The debate should not be focusing on the piece’s literary worth – that is purely subjective – but rather on the propriety of publishing so graphic a story in a freely-accessible journal.  It worries me that no one seems to have picked up on this.

There are specific reasons why films are age classified.  And it doesn’t take a background in psychology to appreciate the effect of so vivid and colourful a story as ‘Li Tkisser Sewwi’ on young minds.  This is why such material is legally designated in most countries as unsuitable for dissemination to those below the age of 18.

The argument of the editor of Ir-Realta’, for whom I have a tremendous respect, is that he has ‘never seen a child roaming about university campus’.  I find his argument falls short.  If, by child, he means primary or middle school students, then I too have only seen children in the context of school excursions to the university library, or science week on campus, or being walked from the crèche.  However, he appears to exclude the prospective sixth form students and occasional secondary student, who are usually below the age of 18. Quite apart from this though, I believe that Ir-Realta’ is distributed at Junior College.

However, this is more than an issue of age classification, because, in any case, the appropriate classification for such an article can be disputed; some might say 18, some 16.  The point is more that no effort at all was made to give readers advance warning of the nature of the story in the now infamous Issue 8.

I have read most of Ir-Realta’s publications keenly, enjoying intelligent and thought-provoking articles and opinions. However, I was surprised by the unusual inclusion of a story like this.  It is not something I am accustomed to reading in Ir-Realta’, and not something I would necessarily look to the paper to provide.  Given this, it’s not hard therefore to imagine someone putting it down inadvertently on the kitchen table, not having read the piece in question, and then have a younger sibling pick it up and read it.

Bizarrely, those arguing against the banning by the Rector of Issue 8, have drawn comparisons between their case and the censorship of Unifaun theatre’s production ‘Stitching’, written by Anthony Neilson, as well as the arrest of the person who created and projected weird visuals at a party, and a man arrested for impersonating Jesus at a Nadur carnival.

The parallels fail most prominently because of the reasons for the censorship. In the case of ‘Stitching’, we have a play that was not even properly read by the censors, and was thus banned on ignorant, ridiculous grounds.  With regards to the young man sentenced to six months prison with a fine for his visuals of the Pope and then of a naked woman, as well as the man arrested for impersonating Jesus at a Nadur carnival, we have cases of censorship that are at worst akin to fundamentalism and at best just downright humorless.

I would conclude by saying this to those incensed by the perceived censorship of Ir-Realta’ and everyone else jumping on the whole anti-censorship bandwagon:  your right to freedom of expression is indeed sacred, but so too is the right of others to be warned in advance that some of what you say or do may be offensive.  In short, would it have hurt so much to offer an explanation or an age classification sticker with the story?the unsuspecting public – particularly youths.

Photo: Albireo

There are cultures that are finely-tuned with all things spiritual; others that relish the protestant work ethic and treat death as a mild inconvenience. And then there are the Maltese. We love everything about death. Here are five reasons for my assertion:

1. Our churches come into their own during funerals. Statistically, Malta is close behind the Vatican in terms of number of churches per square km. If you live in the shadow of one, like I do in Siggiewi, you soon learn to live with the mournful toll of the 8am or 3pm funeral bell. Funerals are part and parcel of village life. Here, funeral corteges have taken to parking next to the statue of St Nicholas in the middle of the square, so that the pall-bearers can carry the flower-covered coffin up the square and up the stairs of the church. It’s like a Fellini movie every day, to the backdrop of the lady selling fish in the morning and the OAPs outside the band club in the afternoon. Without the regular conveyor belt of mourners and dead people, my village would lose much of its ‘village life’ and pjazza conversation pieces. And the church would lose a tad of its sense of importance, even to those who do not regularly show up for the Sunday service.

2. We love marble plaques.The quality of Maltese driving is such that Maltese roads regularly take their toll. Although the traffic fatality rate per head of population is still in line with other countries, you simply cannot ignore the ubiquitous marble plaques, photographs and candles on the road side. In my childhood, there was a black spot on the Burmarrad road that literally seemed to have run out of wall space for the plaques. I remember closing my eyes and shivering every time my father drove past it. We take a morbid delight in remembering our loved ones where they came to a sudden end. In technicolour shots and weatherproof marble. Unbelievably, we even emigrate with the concept of the plaque. There’s one at a major road intersection on the outskirts of Portsmouth, UK, and the name on it is Maltese.

3. We love obituaries.Yes, every nation has its columns in its national rag. But we also have the morning Radio Malta solemn announcements of the newly-departed, replete with the same screeching violins that used to scare the living daylights out of me as a kid. The only thing that has changed is that the guy who used to read the obits has himself passed away and been replaced by more dulcit female tones. Definitely one to be avoided.

4. We have the Adolorata Cemetery. We choose to locate our national cemetery in Marsa, right in the middle of the most urban part of Malta, home to the giant roundabout and its intersections. A place replete with huge conifers straight out of The Omen, a city of red candles by night and busy trade in flower merchandise by day. The last prayers are said to a dull hum of diesel engines and screeching brakes. I always thought that everybody’s hotel needed to be relocated somewhere more serene and green. Sadly, it’s too late for all of that.

5. We love our black hearses. Until two years ago, you could be on your way to your last your journey in a 1950s number with a number plate RIP007. It took some lobbying to explain to the undertakers that mixing James Bond with eternal peace is not quite a cocktail made in heaven. In 2008, Government’s attempt to break the undertakers’ cartel was met by a nation-wide strike by buses, mini-buses and taxis on the basis that this was ‘the first step at abolishing monopoly in all sectors of public transport.’ To date, the issue remains unresolved. But the ubiquitous ‘RIP’ has now been replaced by the more discrete ‘HRS’. (For an explanation of Maltese number plates, click here).

But, for all our addoration of rituals for the departed, we, the living, can only speculate as to whether they are a grateful dead.

It’s that time of year for festivals. Last weekend was Valletta’s show with its Notte Bianca; this weekend we cross Grand Harbour for the Birgu Festival (Vittoriosa) which runs 9-11 October. Autumn is for festivals what summer is for festas. Yes, there’s a difference – in brief, festas are religious in origin; festivals are more about pageantry and celebrating a locality’s uniqueness, be it in history, crafts, food, traditions or whatever.

The BirguFest isn’t something just dreamed up. It’s a fixed event now, having been around on and off since 1990. For those interested in a blow-by-blow account of how it became one of Malta’s best loved, most attended and colourful festivals, there’s a full history of it on the Birgu Local Council website. So, we’ll keep the background short…

Why the BirguFest?

To quote the local council, “BirguFest is an extravaganza highlighting Birgu’s glorious past and celebrating Malta’s oldest maritime city”. Today, people have a far better understanding of the importance of Birgu in Malta’s history – its landmark, Fort St Angelo, saw off the Saracen’s Great Siege of Malta in 1565. But, until the early ’90s, most of the Three Cities area, including Birgu, was somewhat in the doldrums; run-down, neglected, off the tourist trail and associated with industrial Malta (dockyards). The Birgu festival was born in part from the need to focus attention on the area’s amazing wealth of heritage and to heighten awareness of what the city has to offer locals and visitors. And it has done just that, most successfully; thanks also to an energetic Birgu mayor.

Highlights of BirguFest 2009

The programme is extensive with open-air events, historical reenactments, street theatre, concerts (everything from choral to traditional and ethnic-inspired music), state museums and palaces open to the public beyond regular hours, and historical street scenes replete with hawkers of traditional Maltese foods.

Each day’s programme starts between 09.00 – 09.30 and runs till the early hours. Given the expected crowds, official parking is being organised (so follow the signs – see the Birgu Council website for info). There is lot to entertain families, with kids no doubt appreciating the reenactments that include scenes from the time of the Great Siege, such as life in the Dominican Priory, the Turks discussing battle plans, and the reaction of poor, local folk to impending invasion!

Don’t miss!

Tribali – Malta’s anarchic, ethnically-inspired band has a huge following, so don’t miss this last chance to see them in 2009. The concert is at the Birgu Bastions in Couvre Portre, which will be candlelit for the occasion. Doors open at 7pm and tickets are 12 Euros (in advance), 17 Euros at the door and 25 Euros for VIP tickets which include an after part at D Centre in Birgu. Tickets on sale at all Puma shops or D’Centre in Birgu, or see: www.jaggedhouse.com. For more information call ticket hotline 99017470 or email: dcentrebirgu@gmail.com.

‘Birgu by Candlelight’, on Saturday 10th, 18.30 onwards, promises to be a magical and atmospheric event. Streets are lit as they would have been before electric lights, thanks to Vittoriosa residents doing their bit and positioning candles and lanterns everywhere they can.

The Jackson Pipe Band, from 19.30 on Saturday in various streets. The Jackson family band plays traditional Maltese instruments including a kind of bagpipe. There is a remarkable story behind this family group.

Info

Full programme and background, see: http://www.birgu.gov.mt

Photo: Andrew Galea Debono

Postscript: Birgu or Vittoriosa? Birgu is the local name for the city which the knights named Citta’ Vittoriosa after its role in the victorious defeat of the Saracens at the 1565 Great Siege.

A friend of mine recently came over to Malta from Australia to visit family and friends. Being so far away from Malta he tends to get a bit home sick, so when he’s over he eagerly tries to catch up on his Maltese and other local happenings. One day our conversation took a twist when we started reminiscing about old Maltese customs and folklore. Here’s a snippet of the stories that tend to be handed down to us by our parents and grandparents.

As weird as it may seem the evil eye (L-Ghajn) is commonly accepted as ‘a fact’ – even by the Church (according to my mum). The common belief is that a person can place a curse on you just by looking your way. In Malta (and in Italy) it is believed that making the sign of the Qrun (direct translation is a bull’s horn) will deflect such evil. The Qrun is done when you point your index finger and your little finger, and it is considered permissible to do such a sign behind your back to ward off any evil.

Putting a line of salt on the floor behind your front door will prevent the evil eye from entering your house. If you feel your house does have negative energies, you can cleanse it by burning olive tree leaves at midnight on Easter while saying prayers.

To prevent others from cursing you there are other precautionary measures such as spitting on your hair before throwing it away (particularly impractical at the hairdresser’s, I would assume).

When someone dies, the relatives will cover all the mirrors in their house with a black cloth as a sign of respect: looking in the mirror is considered a sign of vanity and disrespectful of the deceased. A tradition I don’t know much about and would really like any insight into is removing handles from the front door when someone passes away. It’s a tradition that I cannot find any literature on and everyone I ask knows about but doesn’t quite understand what it’s for.

On a happier note, whenever there is a marriage in the family or a new baby is born, it is custom to hang a coloured ribbon on the front door’s handle. White is for marriage, pink is for a baby girl and blue for a baby boy. This is a very sweet tradition but unfortunately it’s slowly disappearing from custom.

The Quccija is also related to kids. On a child’s first birthday several objects are placed in front of the child on the floor and the object the child picks up first is said to represent his or her future. Objects include rosary beeds (a religious person), a pen (a writer), a book (a teacher), a thermometer (a doctor), money (business person), a hard-boiled egg (a house full of things) and other items. In case you’re wondering, I chose the egg and I do have photographic proof somewhere!

These traditions should be remembered as they are part of who the Maltese are. While some seem foolish or plain silly, they should be cherished and not swept under the carpet as though we are ashamed of them. I believe these little traditions and customs carry with them a certain sense of magic and romance. They’re legacy, the kind of stories you tell your kids on a Sunday afternoon when it’s raining outside.

In the next next article I’ll write about the Belliegha, the Babaw and the story of the little Turkish kid. In the meantime, if you can remember other myths, do insert these as comments to this article!

Photo: Melanie Hart

It was a summer’s afternoon. I must have been around six years old. I was on the balcony watching life unfolding on our street in Rabat, Gozo, where I grew up.

The Solera soft drink truck was there making home deliveries; the guy with his donkey selling paraffin; the goat herder with some two dozen goats, selling goats’ milk door to door, the milk ringing as it struck the tin cup. Goats pellets littering the street

People milling, talking in the street. Maria, Cikka’s sister, wearing the Ghonnella and setting off somewhere important. Kids playing in the street. People gossiping with their neighbours.

And of course my favorite street fixture, Cikka’s father, sitting there on the pavement in his traditional waist coat, with rolled-up trouser legs, cap and sandles, his chin resting on his walking stick, and his enormous bad-tempered billy goat sitting there at his side like some pet dog. This billy goat, to my six-year-old eyes, was enormous as it stood at around two metres when on its hind legs. Its horns seemed to go on forever.

Well on this particular day, the billy goat was one mightily annoyed cantankerous goat who managed to get away from his old master and went off chasing everything and everyone that got in its way.

I still remember laughing as I saw goats scattering all over the street, herdsman chasing them, the Solera deliveryman scurrying up into his truck, the paraffin vendor torn between controlling his frightened donkey and staying out of the goat’s way. People and children were scurrying to safety, jumping over walls, slamming doors shut and, all the while, there was the old man chasing his billy goat waving his walking stick over his head. Even now as I write and remember the scene I cannot but smile at the event.

But this type of Malta with these little vignettes of everyday life is slowly disappearing in front of our eyes. So, it is often quite a surprise to me when I’m driving around the island to have to stop for a few minutes as a goat herder moves his goats and sheep from one pasture to another. The tourist divers I am driving around are equally surprised.

When we come across scenes like this that are reminiscent of bygone eras, we’ve a chance to stop and contemplate a time when life was so much simpler, and when our expectations maybe were more about the quality of everyday life and not on what we can gain materially.

Some of our Malta of old still seems to be around: the helpful neighbours that always know your routine and will knock on your door to see that you are OK if you don’t make an appearance.

Summer nights, when neighbours share their pavements, or each others doorsteps talking over the day’s events, or their worries away late into the night.

Guza shouting, for Pietru to get back inside. That blessed shouting.

Yet, even this seems to be on its way out. Younger generations are heading back to the old village cores, but are not interested in sharing their lives with their neighbours.

I once read or was told that the tradition of keeping the key in the lock or the ‘anti-porta’ open is something still being practiced by some of the older, more trusting, generations. Younger ones are busy barricading themselves in their houses.

It would be interesting to see if there is any truth to this.

Lord Byron was a futurologist when he said that Malta was ‘an island of yells, bells and smells’. Because 200 years on, it’s pretty much the same as he described it. And summer is the season that intensifies these infamous attributes of Malta.

We live cheek by jowl, so when we’ve windows ajar hoping to pick up some cooling breeze on sultry summer nights, we get a great deal more of the yells, bells and smells of the island outside our door.

Today, I started my morning at 06.30 in relative peace, except for the whirring of my neighbour’s aircon. By 06.45, the parish church was in full bell ringing mode, already, I might add, having heralded three masses since 04.30 (I’ve grown accustomed to sleeping through those really early bells).

Then, by 07.00, my other neighbour started up a petrol pump to get his well irrigation working so he can water his vast orchard. The fumes and noise disturbed my early morning coffee and reading time in my little patch of garden. A little later on, I heard the fish hawker yelling her wares from the village square (lampuki are now in season, I learned). By the time the sun was beginning to feel a bit warm for comfort, my resident garden cicadas had started up – and boy, aren’t they deafening (though an endearing a sound of summer).

So, Byron, your comments hit the mark even 200 years later. Here’s our Malta InsideOut list of familiar and traditional yells, bells and smells. Feel free to comment and add your own!

Yells (and other noise)

Cicadas – a true sound of summer
Street Hawkers – particularly fishwives with prams
Delivery vans blasting horns; chiefly bakers and gas delivery lorries.
Buses – very throaty roars. Drivers shout to each other from their cabs, apparently engaging in harmless chit chat.
Mobile discos in private cars – bass booming out
Workmen – wolf-whistles, and yelling ‘Ow ‘Chalie’ to each other across the street.

Bells

Parish church clocks which tell the quarter hours, 24/7
Incessant ringing at unidentified times – various lesser saints days, bell ringing practice
Festas and Easter (with Good Friday bells being clattered not rung!).
Petards and fireworks – we’ll include them here as they have religious connections and go with bells. Wherever you live, you get at least your own parish festa noise, plus that of around 3-4 other parishes around!

Smells

Sweet, sickly smell of confectionery, particularly at Valletta’s city gate/bus terminus where the smell of hot tarmac and diesel mingle with it
Sewerage/drains – always some vapour rising somewhere as you walk along.
Buses - diesel fumes spewing out
Stray cat and dog deposits emanating odours
Sea – particularly Salina direction
Fresh bread – nothing beats its steamy, tempting smell or the deeper smell of the burnt crusty bits
Pastizzi
The streets – after a long dry summer, the leached contents of months of garbage bags gives off a real sickly stench – we await the first rains to wash the stains and vapours away. Not long now!

Photo: Walter Lo Cascio