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.

When was this ever about standard of living? It’s about the ability to understand what you read. Which the Maltese can’t.

If they get their impression of the Maltese from our online newspapers, you can’t blame them, can you?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.]