Sincerely, Loree

It's been a while. My resolution to share something once a week has been a miserable fail. The thing is, I seem to prefer spending my evenings reading rather than writing because I am usually tired and reading is a more passive activity, but when I'm writing I actually have to think. And then there's the urgent need to get the thoughts about my most recent read on paper, which takes up quite a bit of my time; coupled with the niggling feeling of inadequacy that raises its head every time I read a mind-blowing book. How can I ever compare? I know I don't need to. Because comparisons are odious and all that. But I don't seem to be able to stop myself. So, every so often, I start writing a post with the intention of finishing it and actually pressing the 'Publish' button. But, more often than not, I don't and it languishes in my 'Unpublished Posts' folder for ever.

Spring is here, a season I enjoy. My husband and I have made plans for a trip to celebrate our 20th anniversary that is coming up in June. I hope to share more about our trip later. We're also hoping to go on a family vacation in summer, preferably to a place that won't be too hot, like Ireland or Scotland, but we haven't really decided yet.

Easter Dessert

With Easter round the corner I've been looking for some easy but stunning cake recipes. We recently visited Guido's Spice Corner in Valletta. It is a tiny shop that sells a variety of spices, herbal teas and, more importantly for me, edible rose petals. I was really excited at the prospect of using them to decorate my Easter dessert. Novel items like edible flowers were hard to come by until fairly recently, so this is the first time I am using rose petals. I'm thinking of making one of the two cakes below and I hope they taste as good as they look.

Raspberries and cream cake with rose petals

Persian Love cake

Spring Walks

Spring Cleaning

On the outskirts of the village of Qrendi, beneath a chapel dedicated to St  Matthew, is a circular depression in the ground. It is known as ‘Il-Maqluba’ which roughly translates to ‘the overturned'. This natural depression is said to have been formed in 1343 after a particularly severe winter, possibly accompanied by an earthquake. Il-Maqluba was formed by the collapse of the underlying limestone strata. In geological terms, this is known as a doline or sinkhole. The sinkhole itself is 15 metres deep and has a perimeter of 300 metres. It supports a variety of trees such as bay laurel, sandarac gum, carob and hawthorne and other endemic vegetation The sinkhole collects water from the surrounding fields and country-side which accounts for the lush vegetation growing inside it even during the height of summer. That is the scientific explanation for the sinkhole and a possible theory about how it was formed.

But there is, of course, is a more colourful story, the legend recounted by word of mouth from one generation to the next. It is said that a small village of evil people lived right over the area where the depression is today. A pious lady who lived where the chapel of St Matthew is now situated repeatedly warned her neighbours to change their evil ways – to no avail. As a result, God decreed that the ground beneath the village would collapse, sparing no one except the good woman. Angels were then sent to dispose of the hamlet by dumping it at sea. According to this legend this is how the small island of Filfla, a few miles off the south-west coast of Malta, originated. I suppose that this one of those instances when the legend is so much more interesting than the truth.

Last week I had a few days off and my son and I paid a visit to the Malta At War Museum. The Malta At War Museum is located in Birgu's Couvre Porte (countergaurd), which forms part of the line of defence on the landward side of town and was built in 1722. The impressive 18th century fortifications were designed by military engineer Charles de Mondion and are worth exploring for their own merit (but preferably on a day when it doesn't feel like you're walking around in a furnace).

The Malta At War museum is dedicated to what I think of as the war on the home front. It is pretty compact and isn't very big on exhibits and artefacts. But there is a wealth of information about life in Malta during WW2 and the daily trials and tribulations of a population that was under constant bombardment from June 1940 until November 1942 and intermittently until the surrender of Italy on September 8th 1943. Coincidentally, Malta had emerged victorious against the armies of Emperor Sulieman on the very same day in 1565. Henceforth, this day became known as Victory Day and is still celebrated as a national holiday.

Many people wonder why such a small island with a total area that is less than 100 square miles was the target of a combined effort by the Regia Aeronautica and the Luftwaffe to bomb or starve it into submission. The answer lies in Malta's strategic position in the centre of the Mediterranean and its proximity to North Africa. From Malta the British air and sea forces could disrupt Axis supplies to North Africa. In fact, the brilliant German general, Erwin Rommel, had warned Hitler that without Malta the Axis powers would lose control of North Africa. It is for this reason that between 16 000 to 17 000 tonnes of bombs were liberally dropped on the island, its inhabitants and its defenders.

But apart from the facts about the battles, the casualties and the military strategies, what I found equally interesting was the information about the daily life of the Maltese: the rations allotted to each person, the diseases they battled, their fear at the sound of an air raid siren and their frantic rush to get to an air raid shelter on time.

During the worse of the bombardments, between 1940 and 1942, the Maltese passed a lot of their time underground in air raid shelters hewn out of the limestone. At the Malta At War Museum there is a large communal air raid shelter situated several metres underground. Although it felt eerie to be walking in the deserted passageways and through the tiny 'rooms' (each one could not be bigger than 6'x6'x6') where people huddled for shelter, I have to say that this was the highlight of my visit to the museum as I had never been inside an air-raid shelter before. I can only imagine how claustrophobic it must have felt for hundreds of people to be sheltered underground, sometimes for hours on end. 

These underground shelters existed in all the major towns of Malta and there was usually an air-raid warden dedicated to each one. Most people used the communal passageways to shelter in but those that cold afford it dug their own little rooms for more privacy - although doors were not allowed so people installed slatted wooden gates instead. In the one we visited at Birgu the air-raid warden and the parish priest had their own little area and there was even a special area that was designated as the 'birthing room'. I couldn't imagine what it must have felt like for women to give birth under such circumstances and I immediately thought of my two grandmothers who both had two babies each during this time (although, thankfully, they were able to give birth at home). 

For anybody interested in WW2 both the Malta At War Museum and the National War Museum in Valletta are definitely worth a visit.  

I had written about the National War Museum on my old blog here. 

Please check each museum's website for the current opening hours.

Sometimes I feel like a fraud. Both here and on Instagram I share photos of the Malta I love; the unspoilt, quaint Malta that I remember from my childhood. But that Malta is gone and only survives in our memories and in a handful of places. 

The desecration of this island started in the late 70s but, in the past 5 years, it has infiltrated all our towns and villages at a breath-taking speed that is impossible to keep up with. I used to survive by avoiding the ugly places. But now, the 'uglification' of Malta is everywhere. I cannot escape from it but I also cannot bring myself to press the shutter button on my phone or camera to immortalise and share the hideousness with my readers. There are a few pristine places left, like Mdina, Valletta, Birgu, Isla and some town and village cores. But the rest of Malta is subjected to wrecking balls, cranes, dust and debris on a daily basis. Post-war houses are being pulled down everywhere and replaced by soulless concrete apartment blocks several storeys high, because the limestone blocks that were used to build our houses and which gave Malta so much of its character are in very short supply. But these concrete monstrosities stick out like the proverbial sore thumb as concrete will not weather and take on the golden hue that used to characterize our townscapes.

It makes me weep to read that 250 football pitches worth of open space have been built up (and on an island this small, that is an irreversible tragedy) or that a beautiful old house has been 'regenerated' by adding several storeys of modern ugliness on top of it. Admittedly, it did win an award and we're all grateful it wasn't demolished but I can't bring myself to like it. It almost looks like it will crumble under the extra weight.  In the seaside town of Sliema, all the Edwardian and Art Deco-era houses on the promenade have been levelled and replaced by apartments and office blocks. Some might see it as an improvement and proof that Malta is joining the 'modern world' but I beg to differ. I think we've lost our soul. 

Pencil buildings, as they are called, are sprouting up all over the place. I suppose it would be forgivable if there was a sudden population boom. In reality, according to this article from 2013, at least 1/3 of the property on the island is vacant. I can only imagine how much higher that number is today. Moreover, to add insult to injury, property prices have spiralled upwards to ridiculous levels. The irony is that if we sold our home we would only be able to get something equivalent or smaller for the same amount of money. Anything bigger or better would be out of our reach.

Not that I would want to move anywhere. We are blessed to live at the top of a valley in a small military town designed by the British in the late 1800s. Our subdivision is from the early 2000s and, up to now, has escaped  unscathed - as has most of the town. How long this will continue I don't know. 

I'm also not sure why I wrote this except that I needed a place to vent. And to make you all aware that Malta is not the pretty place you will see in tourist brochures and postcards. Not anymore.

If you want to share my pain, you can click here for some visuals and here for a comprehensive article printed in the Times of Malta in March 2021. 

However, if you prefer some glimpses of what I like to call 'disappearing Malta' and which I frequently use as a hashtag on Instagram, please visit or follow these accounts (including mine):

• Sincerely Loree
• Eman Azzopardi Photography
• Rural Malta
• Malta Doors
• VLT 1566
• What I Saw In Valletta
• Lali Corevetti
• Kappa VisionGram
• Michele Agius (micagius)
• Malta.Gozo

 In mid-March we had a public holiday so we decided to spend the morning in Valletta, concentrating on  the area beyond the Grandmaster's Palace. I call this 'the other Valletta'. Unlike the more commercial upper half, between City Gate and the Grandmaster's Palace, the lower half is mainly residential. There are no high-street stores there, just small shops like groceries, ironmongeries, bakeries and so on, catering for the residents' needs. There are a few restaurants, here and there, and some boutique hotels, but it's much quieter and has a very different vibe from upper Valletta.

The Siege Bell War Memorial

The Lower Barrakka Gardens

The Other Valletta

Niches and statues

Balconies and doors

Casa Sotto