POTTED MALTA AND GLUGGED GOZO

 

WINTER 2011

 

I was lucky to meet a gorgeous guy in Malta who was leaving for a new life in America. He invited me to his leaving party on ‘The Black Pearl’ - an ancient wooden schooner…I wrote to him…

 

“I've now arrived back in my warm home after 5 weeks exploring Malta and Gozo and I wanted to thank you for your generous farewell party invitation on the Black Pearl – an ancient wooden galleon. I used to live on a wooden Thames sailing barge, not as big as 'The Pearl', but I'm familiar with blocks and tackle! Trust me I know how lucky I was to experience the boat and the view across to Valletta in the moonlight and your glitterati of guests, the music - which I danced to a lot- the free drinks and foods. It was a very special gift you gave me – and - with a pleasant walk along the harbor side to the main road, I caught the last night bus back to my hostess in St Julian’s ...

 

I stayed with quite a few hosts in Gozo and Malta and also at a great studio in Xlendi - Ulysses, and with Annie at Asti in Valletta. She was amazing! - and to experience an old Valletta guest house was unique too...

 

I found Albert at Il Englez - whose knowledge and grasp of world wisdom, and 'facts', hidden and promoted, was mind blowing, and his cooking superb, and his fresh red orange juice, the best, and I was lucky enough to be eating outside there with a 'La Valette' red wine during the 'St. Pawl Fest' and the statue bearers stopped and rotated it towards an amazing tapestry painting immediately below me – I was able to view it for ages...

 

I stayed with pilots, priests, stock market speculators, students, journalists, environmental professors, computer programmers, musicians and teachers and visited The Hypogeum, Tarxien, Mnajdra and Hagar Qim duat and Gigantia, and most towns and seaside villages in Malta.

 

I loved Victoria and Xlendi in Gozo, and walked all the long way down through the fields and vineyards to Ramla bay sands from Xaghra.

I spent my first night paddling in the sea, near fires, guitars and drums - at a full moon beach party on Golden Bay - Ghajn Tuffiha beach, and went back there one sunny Sunday to see it in daylight and have lunch at the great lido terraced cafe there, and noted one thermal flier up there for over an hour!

 

I hitched many lifts when buses had stopped early. People were so friendly and helpful.

 

I went to a permaculture course at a Franciscan monastery near Marsaskala, that's running a hostel for disadvantaged young people called 'Youth Alive' and teaching them to farm the permaculture way. The course was full of all sorts of people from all over Malta and the module I attended was about global warming. It was given in Maltese, but because all modern words are in English anyway and there's also a lot of Italian/Spanish words in the Maltese language, I understood two thirds of it and got most of it really... Only the Arabic bit was blank for me. They had a wood stove and fed it briquettes made with a 'widget' that compresses waste paper and cardboard and cane stalks (The leaves of which they feed to the animals !!!)

 

I didn't actually have time to meet, but exchanged messages with, a couple in Gozo who have a wood stove and I expressed concern that there were not enough trees for coppicing in Malta and Gozo for people to run these great and carbon neutral, non-gas-toxic ways of being warm in damp, cold winters. But they told me they have no problem getting wood for their stove and I wonder if they are recycling old crates and pallets from the ports?... But more of the briquet gismos Fra Jacoba has on their permaculture farm hostel would be great to use paper and card and also old reeds and vegetation that can’t be eaten!

 

We have to really get to grips with post-peak oil local food security and local, atmospherically safe, energy investment.

 

Currently 'wasted' human waste would make local Bio Gas - please see Dale's Blog at Ecotricity (Nemesis has landed). He has now put sun farms under his wind farms and is making bio gas too. I have all that in my home, and lets save the damage of metals and mining - causing more tsunamis and volcanoes now than planet earth would have without our mining disturbances for the last 200 years or so, and now appearing from the tectonic plate movements we started to cause way back then, and now the leaking toxic pipelines - ripping up planets earth's resources to our demise, all the way from Russia! Yes we need to use some mined resources for the wind, sun and bio gas machinery, but less, and it’s a better 'surface, safe and sound' (see my Rap!) long term investment...

 

I met musicians and sang in Valetta for four separate hours when the weather was sunny and not windy - bouncing my classical repertoire off the amazing acoustics by Gordino cafe and across from Wembley stores down the street and also outside a church a bit lower down - by the Archeology museum. I sang jazz and Lloyd Webber for diners at a Hotel in Zlendi, where I met Keith Anthony of Noise Studio in Marsalforn and followed up to Otters there with friends from Ghajnsielem the next evening.

 

I ate the best ever Maltese cake - Ministra??? at the family business 'Grandmasters' cafe in Merchant Street, but he'd changed his pastry cook supplier for a not-so-good-one before I left! Shame! and the best big square roll filled with white and red beans and fresh green peppers and olives and tomato and herbs and tuna there for brunch .... Yummy! - what a brilliant Maltese version of a baguette or a panini - both of which have too much bread and not enough filling - for me. - The Maltese have got this one just right - I think! But I can’t remember the Arabic-ish name for it!

 

I asked every butcher in the market hall if they sold Maltese beef and bought beautiful Maltese beef and watched it minced before me to make a Mexican torte for one of my hosts and his guests. Maltese sausages are special and so is the local bacon. - I just wish I could see the pigs free range!? - like I do here on my friend's organic farms here in Shropshire!

 

I LOVED the fresh little goats' cheeses that many corner stores have and had them for breakfast many mornings - with proper bread and Irish butter, and Gozo honey or Carob or Fig jam.

 

I did quite lot of cooking, from cauliflower cheese to bone and vegetable soups and chicken dishes for hosts and insisted on buying local vegetables, whenever I could. - Leeks, carrots, onions, potatoes and salads, but I think the avocados were imported.

I bought beautiful, cozy, soft, brushed Gozo wool jackets - like   cardigans - and a poncho and a bolero with silk also woven into the edging, from Frances (also my mother's name!) at the Gigantia shop - which kept me cozy in those damp limestone caves you throw up on the surface to live in !!! - and will be a memory of my great, great grandmother's home islands for me to treasure - as is my memory of Frances' amazing eyes and now I know where the hazel eyes I have come from! - But mine are not as amazing as hers are!... My son has very, very dark eyes, but also I see Malta in them

 

Several times I had coffee in the Upper and Lower Barraca Gardens - which overlook the harbors from on high and I had two fabulous meals in the Jubilee restaurant cozily tucked away in the heart of Valetta - in Santa Lucia Street. Great relaxing times. And reading my book with a coffee or lasagne and wine at the 283 coffee garden in their comfy leather sofas upstairs - out of the cold - one of the few warm places in Malta this! - was a place of idyllic peace for a while... and I had a great breakfast in the Giovanni cafe near St John's cathedral square... and delicious cakes and coffee in a terraced restaurant with a view over the valleys below, at Rabat/Mdina on my first Sunday...

 

I also bought the almond and orange and walnut and plum tarts from Camilieri in Triq Mercat (I think it is!) and I make organic tarts like that at home here! ...

 

And of course Sicilian virgin cold pressed olive oil for every host I cooked for and for my skin - I couldn't find the Maltese virgin oil!

 

I only drank local wines and oh-so-tasty award winning golden Cisk Beer of course! But boy does it make you burp if you don’t wait for the fizz to whizz away for while! - Never seen such a fizzy beer - except freshly poured homebrew... maybe it’s the same neat energy fizz that makes the Maltese and Gozitans so friendly and bubbly. Maybe it’s the small community connectedness they still have and maybe always will have, due the islands' sizes.

 

Thank you Malta and Gozo for a very special time - re-visiting my Great Grandma's ancestral home and exploring the ancient sites that all Graham Hancock's determined diving and research in his book 'Underworld', had brought to my attention.