Note to editors: Francesca Meilaq is not a real person

Or rather, she/he is a very real person, with a very real agenda and a very real dangerous fixation – but using a false name and an assumed identity.

Of the six comments that came in to this blog from ‘Francesca Meilaq’, each one had a different IP number. Four comments sent in within the space of around 12 hours had four different IP numbers. Anyone going to those lengths to conceal the point of origin of a comment is not going to be using a real name.

There are several inconsistencies in what this person says about him/herself, and a detectable element of wish fulfillment (“I have flats in London, Paris and Washington and my husband’s job takes me to all three places”; “I work in heritage”; “I don’t need any of you any more in that fishpond”).

The last comment this person sent in, and which I have not uploaded, reveals an unbalanced psychology, with personal threats towards me. She/he describes her/himself as ‘the goddess of Rhamnous’, which means Nemesis, the implacable, avenging goddess of ancient Attica, whose mission it is to seek revenge. This person, or whatever reason – though it will undoubtedly emerge eventually, as these things do – has been monitoring me resentfully for years from the shadows, but what seems to have tipped the balance into psycho behaviour was my criticism of Astrid Vella and her stance against the St John’s museum extension. I don’t think it is so much that this person is defending Mrs Vella as such, but that she/he needed Mrs Vella to help sabotage the project.

It is in this context that this person’s campaign against the St John’s museum extension, which began last summer with letters to various newspapers and comments all over the internet, must be assessed.

Unfortunately, those letters were published unquestioningly by established newspapers, above the authoritative name of ‘Francesca Meilaq, London’, a person describing herself as ‘somebody who works in heritage’. Nobody seemed to know who this person was. Somebody who ‘works in heritage’, unless that work is cleaning the floors, would know that the St John’s tapestries were not made at Les Gobelins, and that the environmentally-controlled conditions in an underground museum (and all the world’s leading museums have vast basement extensions) are nowhere akin to those in the desert tombs of the Valley of the Kings, a comparison this person made.

Because ‘Francesca Meilaq’ was not identified in time as a person of obscure gender and unknown origin with a revenge mission working under an assumed identity, he/she was allowed to cause a great deal of damage by using the voice of authority and posing as a genuinely concerned person. It is now unlikely that this person will use the name Francesca Meilaq again, but unbalanced people with a sick fixation on others do not let go.

So, editors, this is a plea to be a bit more circumspect next time. This person is going to crop up again using another assumed identity and false name.