February 2015 Blog
Monday 9th to Sunday 15th February 2015
Monday I worked full on and finished the W3C CSS3 course. I didn’t get out, except for a visit to buy fruit and veg and to buy some more cough medicine for Sam. She is still a bit under the weather. The weather was very windy – a force 8 – and it felt cold out. Vegetable soup for dinner.
Tuesday I woke up with Sam’s bug – sneezing, coughing and a sore throat. That didn’t slow me down though! I took the bus to Birkirkira, not very pleasant as someone on the bus had life-changing flatulence! Birkirkira is a large town near Valetta with a mostly local population and lots of big shops. It was quiet as today was a public holiday, so it was a good time to explore and get my bearings. I bussed on to Valetta, had a coffee at the Coffee Garden and wandered around soaking up the atmosphere. The fiesta preparations are in full swing now with decorations, grandstands, stages and the like all being set up. The fiesta lasts for three days over this coming weekend and I bet it will be bedlam! For dinner Sam had left over soup (I had some for lunch) and I had vegetable and rice pilaf.
Wednesday we went to Golden Bay to meet Sam’s art class friend Lesley and her husband Robin for a coffee. Afterwards they drove us round the area south of Golden Bay which we hadn’t explored before. We stopped for lunch at somewhere called the Hungry Wolf. Sam had corned beef patties with salad; I had baked macaroni. We thought we would be gone for a couple of hours at most; in the end, we were gone for over six! I now officially have a streaming cold, which is a bit annoying! Dinner was peanut butter and jelly on toast – I feel like I’m 12 again!
Thursday I went hunting for new hiking shoes or boots without success. In the Coffee Garden in Valetta a pigeon walked in, looked around disdainfully and walked out again. Pretty risky if you ask me; he’ll probably end up on the menu. It was quite a warm day but still some woman got on the bus wearing a full length fur coat. Sam is still struggling with her bug and spent much of the day laid up in bed. Day Nurse is helping to suppress my cold but neither of us felt like shopping or cooking so it was bacon butties with chips for dinner!
Friday we went to Scotts supermarket which was dead quiet as usual. They seem to have more staff than customers. We always go on weekday mornings, so maybe that’s not a popular time for most people. Anyway, they had our favourite Goodfella’s pizzas so that was dinner sorted!
Saturday was unusually grey; the clouds shrouded the sky from left to right and front to back. I can’t recall another such colourless day since we arrived in Malta. The sea was listless, impatient for the blues and greens that feed its pride. The breeze seemed to have lost its motivation, sluggish and unenthusiastic at best. Even paradise suffers the prosaic occasionally but we are fortified by its transience; its fleeting appearance is merely a burr upon our Sunday best. But still I wandered out, coat zipped to the neck, cap pulled tight and sunglasses flush against my cheeks. Tourist Street, normally a hive of activity, was hushed, the light spit of rain enough to deter all but the keenest. I went into a shoe shop, still on the hunt for hiking shoes, but the lady there took one look at my feet and declared she had nothing in my size. I bought a bottle of wine (more of that later) then went to Miracles for a large cappuccino. Miracles undoubtedly serves the best cappuccinos in town – piping hot, strong and naturally sweet.
For dinner I made chicken tikka Makhani. I cut chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and marinated them for 24 hours in ginger, garlic, spices, lemon, garlic and yoghurt. When we were ready to eat I baked them in the oven until cooked and slightly charred on the outside. I made a curry sauce with ginger, chillies, garlic, spices, onions, tomatoes, tamarind and coconut milk. The result? Too much garlic! It tasted fantastic, though, a bit like very good chicken tikka masala.
I mentioned earlier that I bought a bottle of wine. We only drink on Saturdays so I wanted to choose something special. And to go with our Indian food I wanted white wine. So I chose Domaine Louis Moreau 2013 Chablis, cost EUROs 11.60, about £9.00. That’s much more than we would normally spend, but it was Valentine’s Day, so what the heck. Anyway, it was very disappointing. It lacked the crispness that distinguishes good Chablis and I won’t be buying it again. I should have splashed out EUROs 17.50 and bought the Premier Cru!
One good consequence of disappointing weather is that I stay in more and therefore work more. I made good progress today learning jQuery (a computer language used in websites). I should be fully proficient in that within a few days; that will mark roughly the half way mark in my programming studies.
Finally, I can report that we watched Lost in Translation, a Scarlett Johansson movie. It’s not a new movie but we haven’t seen it before even though it’s got Scarlett Johansson in it. It was weird but very enjoyable. But most important of all, it has Scarlett Johansson in it! The acting was very good, especially from Scarlett Johansson. Scarlett Johansson was quite young in it so I’m guessing it was one of Scarlett Johansson’s earlier movies. I quite like Scarlett Johansson. I think I will look out for more Scarlett Johansson movies. In this movie Scarlett Johansson plays a somewhat dissatisfied young married woman who falls for an older man. As if Scarlett Johansson would be any older man’s fantasy! How silly. I must say though that Scarlett Johansson played her part very well. I believe Scarlett Johansson should be nominated for an Oscar. Actually, I think that Scarlett Johansson should run for President. I think that would do wonders for world peace. All the war mongering men in the world would roll over and beg for mercy. Especially if Scarlett Johansson was in uniform, with a gun and a load of bullets, and it was raining and she was getting wet and the wind was blowing her hair and she’d been running so she was panting and she tripped and her clothes got ripped and………and………and……..
Sunday I woke up and ate my cornflakes. I hate Sundays.
Actually I love Sundays when they are as good as today. Yesterday Mother Nature had waded into the sea and gathered up all the colours and put them in her pocket. Today she scattered them back again; some blue here, a splash of turquoise there, some green over there. Blue sky had reasserted its dominance, banishing the clouds like naughty schoolchildren. They say there are over sixty shades of blue and I reckon I saw them all today.
Since writing the above I have received the sad news that my father has passed away. I have made immediate plans to return the Isle of Man. Under the circumstances, my blog seems rather frivolous and I will suspend it until my return to Malta.
Sunday 1st Sunday 8th February 2015
Sunday I got the bus to Spinola Bay and walked to Sliema Ferries, cutting inland across the peninsular for a change. I took the ferry to Valetta and wandered around the side streets a bit off the beaten track where the locals live. (Valettans? No, that sounds like something from Star Wars!) Back on Republic Street I had a very nice large cappuccino in the Coffee Garden, only EURO 1.55, which is cheap for Valetta. There is a festival looming and the streets of Valetta are being decorated with silk chains (cloth versions of Christmas paper chains) and temporary lights. The Boy Scouts drums and pipes band was marching down Republic Street, police clearing a way for them. As much as I loathe bagpipes it actually sounded pretty good. From the Lower Barakka Gardens I walked along the harbour side to Valetta waterfront. There is a small marina there – Laguna- near the cruise ship terminal. Along the pedestrian walkway there is a row of about 15 outdoor restaurants serving everything from Argentinian beef to veal to Chinese food and, of course, a huge variety of seafood. The restaurants were busy with locals out for Sunday lunch and from what I could see the food all looked pretty good. While I was out Sam went shopping and she prepared an anti-pasta bonanza for dinner – meats, beans , bean paste, olives, aubergines, dates stuffed with mascarpone and wrapped in speck, breads etc. Yum yum!
Monday I sat, and passed, the W3C HTML exam so I am now a certified web developer. W3C is the organisation that oversees world wide web standards; it is the main industry accrediting body so I’m pretty chuffed. There are several more programming languages I want to learn though, so it’s going to be pretty full on over the next couple of months. Anti-pasta for dinner again.
Tuesday there was only one word to describe the weather – gorgeous! Imagine a perfect English summer’s day and you’ll get the idea. I skived off and did a 10 kilometre hike, first along the coast to Ximxija then I cut inland a walked through the valley to Golden Bay. The valley floor is rich farmland packed with emerging crops. Although the route is along the road there is hardly any traffic. At one point the road was flooded for about 500 metres; cars passed through gingerly with water high up their wheel arches. There are uneven brick walls on either side of the road there, so no way of walking past the flood. I had just about resigned myself to turning back when a driver stopped and gave me a lift to the other side. I think such acts of kindness are fairly typical here. I saw two unusual things on my walk. The first was an 8 foot tall giraffe (not a real one) on someone’s terrace in Ximxija. The second was a truck driver who wasn’t on his mobile phone. I took the bus back from Golden Bay – a minibus whose driver was so engrossed talking to his wife that he kept swerving all over the road and even took the wrong route! Beef casserole for dinner tonight and it will be the same tomorrow.
Wednesday we went to see the Gozo ferry port at Cirkewwa for the first time; you go via Mellieha to get there. Cirkewwa looks like any other ferry port. We walked a short way looking for coffee. The Riviera Hotel only had American coffee – all others came out of a machine such as you find at motorway stops – yuck – so we passed on that and walked on to the Ramla Bay Hotel but the guests’ breakfast room seemed to be the only place open so we gave up there too. The Riviera seemed okay and clean; the Ramla bay looked pretty awful with mouldy deck chairs and weeds everywhere. The sea around here is gorgeous, as it is all around Malta, and the views across to Comino and Gozo are pretty impressive. However, the area generally felt sad and neglected and the few tourists staying in the hotels emitted a sense of impending doom. It is the first area of Malta I haven’t liked and I wasn’t sorry to leave it. We jumped on a bus back to Mellieha and had good cappuccinos at Debbies Café. We popped into a few shops and called into the photography shop to talk to the owner, Steve, for a while; he is an Englishman who, it turns out, lived in the Isle of Man for three years. Got loads of work done in the afternoon and evening; we didn’t have to cook as we had left over casserole for dinner.
Thursday I received an email from Steve who Sam and I met yesterday in the photography shop in Mellieha. He went home that evening and told his wife about us – it turns out she used to work for Sam in Castletown! Over 7 billion people in the world and still we bump into people we know on our travels; talk about coincidence. We had all the doors and windows open today to keep the flat cool; it was another gorgeous day with warm hazy sunshine. The Brits and tourists were out in their shorts and strappy tops; it really does feel as if spring has come early and summer is just around the corner. I went for two long walks – about 15 kilometres in all. Sam went to her art class in the morning and a stroll on the prom in the afternoon – definitely a day to be out and about. I made a fantastic salmon curry for dinner which we had with rice and lentils.
Friday we signed the contracts for our new flat and then visited the flat again with our new landlord just to double check the refurbishment plans. The building is actually owned by a company called PMS, so I guess we will have to choose very carefully the time of month we make any complaints. On the way home we stopped at Miracles and Sam had a full English breakfast, which they call a belly breakfast! She said it was fantastic and I was pretty envious. Two rashers of bacon, two sausages, two fried eggs, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, toast with butter and coffee, all for EUROs 4.95. Sam was a bit under the weather with a tickly cough, so she spent the rest of the day resting. I worked and made dinner – spaghetti arabiata.
Saturday Sam stayed in bed coughing! I went to Mellieha and walked through the town and down to the sandy beach below (Mellieha is on the crest of a hill). I had planned to explore the nature reserve there but I was too early (9.30); it doesn’t open until 10.30. The weather turned a bit showery so I didn’t stray too far off the beaten track. I bussed to Xemxija and hiked home from there. We were supposed to go out for dinner but Sam wasn’t well enough so we had BBQ chicken pizza for dinner.
Sunday Sam seemed a bit better; it seems she is no longer dying. The trouble is that even with the slightest cold Sam acts like death will descend upon her at any moment. To say she is a pathetic patient is a bit of an understatement. In fact, it’s the biggest understatement since Ernest Shackleton said, “Well chaps, it looks like it may get a bit chilly.”
On my power walk this morning I noticed two cars outside where the owners had fitted t-shirts over the front seats. Either they were worried about the heat or they were somewhat incompetent undercover cops staking out the building. Actually, the insides of cars here get dangerously hot even in winter and you risk third-degree burns just popping to the shops. If we buy a car I think I will tape the phone number of the Mater Dei burns unit to the dashboard. I saw a white Westie wearing a bobbly black woollen coat – it looked like a poodle with a head transplant. What was its owner thinking? I also saw the lady who sells tour tickets to the tourists in Bugibba square. I have sometimes read descriptions of people as having leathery skin and thought that that description is a tad exaggerated. In fact, it seems like the biggest exaggeration since Napoleon Bonaparte said to Josephine on their wedding night, “Hold on to your tiara, you’re in for a big surprise.” I think this woman, though, was conceived in a tannery. Her face reminds me of an old dried up chamois leather I used to clean my car with. I hope that doesn’t sound too unkind. I could have sugar coated it I suppose, and just said she was tanned but that would be the greatest sugar coating since the executioner said to Anne Boleyn, “This may sting a bit.”
I passed a man who stank of women’s perfume. Either he was on his way home from a successful night out or he was very confused. But then no one has been that confused since Mark Thatcher asked, “When he said turn left did he mean his left or my left?”
Oh, by the way, I have been watching Blackadder Goes Forth but I’m not one to let myself be influenced by what I see on TV. The idea of that is just plain silly. In fact, that would be the silliest idea since General Custer said, “Let’s pop round to Sitting Bull’s for a cup of tea.”
We had roast chicken with corn fritters for dinner – haven’t had them for ages.