August 2016 - Week 2

Floats lining up for the big parade

Friday 12th to Sunday 21st August 2016

Friday I returned home from our IOM/UK trip, all three suitcases intact. Apart from a quick dash to the local shop to buy milk, I stayed in and rested, recovering from my 3.50am start. Pizza and beer for dinner. Ideal as Sam won’t be home for a few more days yet.

Saturday I went for a short stroll but I need to re-accustom myself to Malta’s August heat. The sun doesn’t take prisoners and the hot outside air leaves few places to hide. Humidity stalks the energetic. What I am trying to say in my own not-very-poetic way is that you can’t fight hot weather. In winter you can bundle up against the cold. In summer all you can do is embrace the heat, accept it and, thank God, remember it is so much better than the alternative. For dinner I made bacon with Lyonnaise potatoes; fantastic, I haven’t had those for ages.

Sunday I caught up on lots of work. In the evening I went to Bayside, an open air bar/restaurant for a glass of sangria and watched the world go by. As its name suggests, Bayside is by the water, so the sea breezes keep you cool. It’s very touristy but there is nothing wrong with that now and then. For dinner I went to Benjawan for some pretty tasty Thai food; mixed starters, chicken and coconut soup and Pad Thai noodles. For dessert I went to Congusto and had choco mint and snickers ice creams. I’m not starving while Sam is away!

Monday was a big public holiday – the Ascension of Mary. So, most shops were shut except for minimarkets and tourist shops. I resorted to my usual backstop; pizza and beer!

Tuesday Sam came home on the late flight from Newcastle that got in after 9pm. I had made jambalaya for dinner so she had a bowlful while I sought out a rare-as-hen’s-teeth car parking space. We sat outside on the terrace until nearly midnight catching up.

Wednesday I rescued the car, shopped at Trollees and made Piri-piri chicken with sweet potatoes for dinner.

Thursday after a bit of food shopping I drove to Golden Bay. On the way I passed a bus pulled in to the side of the road with its hazard lights flashing. A passenger was sat at the side of the road clutching a bunch of cloths or tissues to his nose and mouth so I’m guessing there had been some kind of accident on board. Golden Bay itself was packed with tourists so I abandoned my plans to have coffee there and drove on to Xemxija Café instead, where I treated myself to an excellent cappuccino and a not bad slice of carrot cake.

We are now in the absolute height of our tourist season. The roads are clogged with coaches and hire cars, the buses are standing room only and the beaches and tourist attractions are overrun with tourists shoulder-to-shoulder. It will only be another month or so though until things start to quieten down again.

For dinner I made a delicious new vegan dish; sweet peppers, onions and chickpeas with tomatoes, flavoured with paprika and smoked paprika. I loved it but Sam wasn’t so keen. I think we have established that although I love it, she is no fan of smoked paprika.

After dinner I went walk about. We live in a mostly residential town. There are though a number of holiday flats and a couple of hotels – the St Paul’s Hotel and Gillieru being the ones of note. As I passed the St Paul’s Hotel its main gates were open leading on to a large open terrace. It was full with 150+ people listening to – and in some cases, dancing to – a country and western band. I have to admit it didn’t sound half bad but boy it was loud. You could hear the music clearly and understand the lyrics from more than a block away. Thank God we don’t live near it! Our whole town is laid out mostly to blocks and virtually every block has at least one – and sometimes several – bars. Piped music, live bands, karaoke, you name it; it’s all here and it’s loud! Thank goodness we live well away from all that on the 4th floor of a seafront apartment block.

Friday morning I left Sam in peace to make her business calls. I went to Pash on St Paul’s Bay high street to try to get a cappuccino. As always at Pash, the service was awful. There were three members of staff; one was on the phone to a friend, one was endlessly rearranging the cake display and the other just wandered around studiously ignoring everyone. I gave up waiting along with the other customers and we went across the road to the Donut Factory instead. Their ambiance isn’t great but the room is air conditioned and the cappuccinos good.

All this week is like a Maltese public holiday. Last night about a dozen very large floats arrived and parked below us on the promenade. This evening they set off, apparently intending to drive all the way to Marsascala. A few dance troupes joined the parade and there was a cacophony of noise as every float blared out a different song.

For dinner we went downstairs to Portobello Pizzeria and had excellent diavola pizzas.

Saturday morning Sam was still bogged down with work so I wandered over to Eat Etna and had a fantastic cappuccino and a cannoli. I don’t remember ever having had a cannoli before. They always look heavy but not a bit of it. It was light, delicious, packed full of cinnamon and had the crispiest pastry you could imagine. One of our great benefits of living in Malta is our seemingly endless choice of excellent cafes.

In the afternoon we worked and broke the back of a backlog of work after our recent trip away.

Sam was actually feeling a little off colour. So, our plans to go out to dinner were rearranged at the last minute. She stayed in, ate frozen Indian starters and went to bed early. I went to a Spanish bar, drank sangria, then went to House of Spice for an outstanding Biryani. Boo, you may shout, stay at home and nurse your wife, but the truth is we had hardly any food in the flat and Sam preferred to be left to her own devices and in any event there was little I could do to ease her mild symptoms.

And I enjoyed my solitude. Not because of the sangria or the biryani, but because I am completely captivated by the book I started earlier today – Jane Austen’s Persuasion. I’ve read it before of course, but not for a long time, and I’d forgotten what an amazingly well written book it is. It is telling to think that every relationship she wrote about 200 years ago is as relevant today as it was then. Only the language seems to have changed (and not always for the better).

Don’t you wish you could have met Jane Austen? Sat with her for a while and listened to her observations about the world around her? Asked her where she got her ideas from? Who inspired her characters? If I could go back in time and choose five people to spend an hour with, I reckon she and Charlotte Bronte would be in my top five. And if I were washed up on a dessert Island with only five books to hand I would want them to be, IN THIS ORDER, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Rebecca and Birdsong. Okay, I know that’s nine, but who’s really going to begrudge a castaway a few extra books?

Sunday we worked nearly all day again. We really have now caught up on our backlog of work. In the evening Sam went with a friend to an artisan fair at the Palazzo Parisio in Naxxar followed by dinner at Luna. I made some calls, watched some TV and raided the last pizza from our now nearly-empty freezer. Tomorrow we aim to get to a supermarket and get back onto a decent diet!