UPDATED: Are they born with a chip, or is it acquired?
The chippy defensiveness of Mr and Mrs Average Maltese, in self-created confrontation with ‘foreigners’ on the internet, is now legendary.
This morning I looked through the British gardening site gardenaction.co.uk, which has a section on garden nurseries and centres which the site-owners visit on their travels.
While in Malta, they visited Piscopo Garden Centre and wrote a really nice (and accurate) review, encouraging their gardener-readers to visit if they’re here on holiday.
They wrote that they were “surprised to find” for sale many plant varieties usually sold at British garden centres, and also British gardening products like MiracleGro.
What they meant – and this should have been obvious to anybody with an ounce of common sense, some knowledge of trade patterns and of gardening, and no chip – is that, given the vastly different climate and growing conditions of Britain and Malta, it was surprising to find the same plants sold in both countries.
And that it was a surprise to find really British brands like MiracleGro sold as a matter of course off the main shelves as they would be in Britain, when you would never see that in, say, France, Germany or Italy.
British brands are the main sellers in Malta and we take them for granted on our shelves. We forget that this is the result of our trade development as a British colony, and that nowhere else in the world do you visit a supermarket to find HP Sauce, Lyle’s Golden Syrup, Tetley tea, Bovril and Marmite displayed with the same routine prominence that you would in Britain.
It never fails to surprise visitors.
It’s the same with garden centres and the products sold there.
But just look at the reaction from two readers who chanced upon the Piscopo Garden Centre review.
UPDATED: The second one is not as English as the name suggests (and ‘thet’ rather gives the game away in terms of pronunciation). A quick Google search on his emnail address reveals that Mark Carson is actually Mark Caruana from Zurrieq, and his Facebook friends include a whole bunch of Laburisti like Luciano Busuttil, Aaron Farrugia and that sort.
Well, it figures, doesn’t it.
Name: ALICE GRECH
E-mail:
Date posted: May 27, 2011 – 08:19 am
Message: OOOOO WHAT A SURPRISE TO FIND A GARDEN CENTRE IN MALTA !! DO YOU THINK MALTA IS A QUARRY !! ?? YES WE ARE CIVILIZED, OR IS THAT A SURPRISE FOR YOU TOO !!
THANKS BUT NO THANKS FOR YOUR COMMENTS.
Name: Mark Carson
E-mail: [email protected]
Date posted: May 26, 2011 – 08:19 am
Message: “Yes there are garden centres in Malta, much to our surprise!” What do you mean by ‘Yes there are’ and ‘to much to our surprise’? May be you thought that Malta is a sh&*hole in the middle of no where? I felt thet your comments were degrading and disrespectful towards the beautyful country of Malta.
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They could be the ones who consider a garden to be an expanse of tiles with a row of potted washingtonias bordering the pool.
I’ve had foreign businessmen asking me to set up meetings specifically at the local contacts’ houses to enable them to see the garden. It’s the best way to gather an opinion of the latter.
Low maintenance gardens are gardens nonetheless. I have seen beautiful gardens across northern Europe completely tiled with potted plants and firepots; also, a field at the back of one’s house is not necessarily a garden, especially if you do not have the time to take care of it properly.
What I do not understand is the uncontrolable urge the average Maltese have, to have their say about anything that concerns Malta.
[Daphne – If a garden is completely tiled over, Cokky, then it is no longer a garden but a yard (British English definition, not American English, in which a yard is actually a garden). The word ‘yard’ is now completely unknown in Maltese English, precisely because yards are considered to be gardens. I grew up with the vocabulary and the different definition of these spaces, which is why, when people show me out into the ‘garden’, and I find myself in a yard, I am always taken by surprise. The area at the rear of my childhood home was divided into three distinct spaces: the tiled area which we called the yard, the bit with soil and things growing in it, which we called the garden, and the veranda – another word that nobody seems to understand when I use it, even though Malta’s architecture is packed with verandas, which I have ended up calling ‘terraces’ so as to make myself understood and so as not to be made to feel I’m using freaky words.]
If one had to consider a garden as the place where effort and care are rewarded by nature, I’m afraid the low-maintenance type fall rather short. What is sad is how in Malta gardening is considered something best left to pensioners with time on their hands.
Space doesn’t really enter the equation as even the smallest balcony can be made spectacular.
I suppose this is the same mentality which replaced wooden apertures with aluminium, covered facades with plastic emulsion, sandblasted colour from any wall inside and out calling it ‘restoration’ and stripped mature gardens of their trees to make way for the ‘entertainment area’.
Not much left to do except loaf around on a Sunday afternoon with some cheap Gavi and even cheaper chit chat. They call it lifestyle.
You’ve forgotten those little black pipes (also known as “irrigation system”) trailing from one pot to the other (and with the pots themselves in a regimented line, rather than placed in a more natural-looking haphazard manner). Oh, and the pots have just got to be plastic, preferably white or black, perhaps with a garden gnome or two next to them. Simply lovely.
To be fair, the opening line did express surprise at the existance of garden centres in Malta, but yes, the reaction by both people quoted here was way over the top.
As much as I agree with you on the general fact that Maltese people get extremely defensive about these things, they are not complaining about the fact that the writer was surprised to find certain brands. They took umbrage to the opening comment about the writer being surprised that there are garden centres in Malta….I’m not quite sure what’s so surprising and sound like a pretty silly comment.
I don’t find the opening line too silly. I rather think it was purposely exaggerated for effect (to rouse interest), particularly since the rest of the article is very praiseful of the garden centre under review.
How embarrassing! It’s bad enough when these nutters air their stupidity locally in their native tongue, but exporting it worldwide is something else altogether. I hope they don’t tarnish us all by association.
http://www.gardenaction.co.uk/garden_centres/piscopo-malta.asp
Sigh. I can’t, for the life of me, think what was so mortally offensive in that. Apart from that, I can’t count the number of times a foreigner on a Maltese comment board says something tongue in cheek, the average Maltese take mortal offence with it, and come out against him or her with metaphorical knives and pitchforks.
Having said that, I don’t totally blame the Maltese for that, as there are some foreigners, usually from Northern Europe like Britain or Germany, that do express themselves condescendingly towards the Maltese. This of course puts the average Ġowi on the defensive to anything foreign people say, even if it is totally harmless.
Germans tend to diligent tourists with pocket guide at the ready, until they marry a Maltese and start driving a car.
British expats, on the other hand, look for roundabouts to practise their Maltese.
Considering very few people actually have a garden in Malta, then yes it is very surprising there are garden centres. Just a fact a life rather than a racist comment.
The next thing you will see is a few Facebook accounts, like:
Tal-BandaMaghqudinKontra GardenAction.
F*xxGardenAction Ukburin.
Sadly, many Maltese are indeed born with a chip on their shoulder.
I giggle when I hear British holidaymakers saying things like: “Here Margaret, you’ll never believe this. They’ve even got Arriva buses like we do in Barnsley!”
The same thing happens when they come across HSBC, Vodafone, BHS, Next, M&S, haggis, Irn Bru, HP sauce, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins and English Country Pride milk.
The truth is – like it or not – today’s Malta is in many ways more British (or Anglicised) than most of Wales.
We share a common history that we should be proud of.
Alhough HP Sauce, Tetley Tea and Bovril are quintessential British products, MiracleGro is not. It is actually an American brand. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company is American but has subsidiaries in Europe and Asia.
It was founded in 1868 in Louisville, Ohio and is the world’s largest marketer of branded lawn and garden products. It is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1991 a subsidiary was established in the U.K. to become part of the European Markerplace.
It is incredible how they can take a well meaning article http://www.gardenaction.co.uk/garden_centres/piscopo-malta.asp
and turn it into something scathing.
To many English, Malta is all sand and beaches. The surprise to the writer of the page was that they found a garden centre that was similar to back home. In their savage response they failed to realise this was actually a positive article.
I’m sooo proud to be Tuvalese.
Has anyone considered the possibility that the British too are born with a chip on the shoulder (or prejudice) when it comes to Malta?
I have lived in the UK and was surprised with the condescending way some English (not Scots or Welsh) look at Malta and the Maltese.
They actually think Malta is a barren land and that we are still living off prostitution as in the ‘good old’ colonal days. In fact Malta’s image as a seraglio for the British Forces stationed here still persists in the minds of the older generation in England.
In my view, the standard of living in Malta is better than that of some English counties that have been devastated by the recession. But the British would never admit that, would they? The British still cling to their old colonial dreams.
If they get their impression of the Maltese from our online newspapers, you can’t blame them, can you?
When was this ever about standard of living? It’s about the ability to understand what you read. Which the Maltese can’t.
Apart from that, most of them only get to the first paragraph or first sentence of an article. Probably those rabid commentators did not read the rest.