Thank you.

A possible local link could lie in the large building above Pwales, right above the Hal-Mann factory, and now long abandoned, that was evidently constructed and inhabited by a well-off family. The building is known as tal-Baruni Ciantar. His legitimate children are said to have settled in and around the Pwales valley, while those born of his ‘bit on the side’ settled in the little valley on the Mgarr side of the ridge, presumably in the little hamlet that still exists down said valley from the remains of the roman baths.

(Daphne – I have been to most of Sicily, David, and the problems are the same everywhere. It’s one island. I’m not discussing the visual or culinary features, but the way that things which we take for granted, normal comforts, just don’t exist here. I am pointing out that Malta is now far more advanced. Nowhere do you see Sicilians working on laptops as you do in hotels, bars and coffee-shops all over the rest of Europe, because they can’t. There’s no wireless anywhere. Even our homes are wireless in Malta, now, let alone our offices and our coffee-houses. And that’s just one small, small thing. There are noticeably few young people out and about because they’re all leaving to find work in the north…..still, after all these years. There’s a palpable air of poverty wherever you go, except in obvious tourist hot-spots like Taormina. When I was staying in Leonforte a couple of years ago, it really was like going back in time, and not in a good way. The son of the household where we were staying summed it all up in saying ‘Sicily is beautiful, but we have the Mafia.’))

(Daphne – I agree. But would you live and work here? I couldn’t. It’s not just the way things don’t work, but the North African outlook on time and efficiency.)

(Daphne – Millions of people live here, and they have to work. They don’t just sit around eating pasta and drinking wine all day. They become extremely frustrated with their lives; it is after, all, part of the European Union and when even the Malta they looked down on once is striding ahead, it’s understandably upsetting. Yesterday evening, somebody asked me whether young people can work in Malta, or whether they have to leave, like in Sicily. Thinking of a place only in terms of servicing your purposes on holidays is a form of contemporary colonialism, don’t you think?)

(Daphne – It’s got many, many charms, but as I said…only if you don’t have to try and work, then nothing works.)

Indeed, hats off to the British! They really have saved us from ourselves. As I always say, had it not been for them, we would still be living en-masse off agriculture and farming. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but of course, a modern economy cannot survive on agriculture alone.

Let’s not also forget that we’ve made a huge leap forward in the last twenty years (since 1987, that is). The 1987 turn of events was always fundamental to our success and I think, no matter what the Li’l Elves and harbingers of doom foretell, we’re making a pretty good show of ourselves.

(Daphne – Viva r-regina u Eddie! U Austin Gatt….)