Kemm hi injoranta! Who is this self-proclaimed heritage expert, Francesca Meilaq?
Just look at this – it’s unbelievable. For the past several months, a woman called Francesca Meilaq, who signs herself off as a heritage expert who lives and presumably works in London, has been policing the internet to defend FAA and attack the promoters of the St John’s museum project. She passes herself off as the last word in tapestries and museology, and has been busy rubbishing everyone else. Read the exchange beneath the post ‘Neatly summed up’, and you’ll find links to some of her missives there.
Yet the more she writes, the more she reveals that she knows nothing at all about the subject. And this when she’s one of Astrid’s main advisers. No wonder it’s been ignorance and misinformation all the way. Here Ms Meilaq is, arguing that tapestries should not be housed in an underground museum because of the damage caused by breath. She actually draws a direct comparison with the tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. During her extensive research, she has never heard of controlled display environments. Has this woman even been to a museum of anything other than paintings?
Francesca Meilaq (on 20/9/08)
People used to travel from all over the world to see the various tombs in the Valley of The Kings in Egypt but due to the vast number of people entering them it was found that the moisture from their breath and perspiration was causing damage to the painted walls. What effect would the same thing have on precious tapestries in an underground chamber?
You don’t need to go all the way to the Valley of the Kings, Ms Meilaq. The same thing happened at our own Hypogeum. She then goes on to reveal even greater ignorance by claiming that the best place for the tapestries is hanging in the nave – exposed to light, air, pollution, smoke from candles, and the breath and finger-prints of millions of visitors, to say nothing of the stresses and strains caused by hanging in the normal manner textiles made from natural fibres several centuries ago.
Francesca Meilaq (on 20/9/08)
The place for these tapestries to hang is along the main nave of the church. As for the UV light causing damage to the tapestries this can be dealt with by the application of UV filters on the windows. This filtration would have the effect of removing harmful UV but would not diminish the look of the windows themselves.
Incredible – and to think that this is one of the people advising FAA. But leave this crass ignorance aside. The really telling clue that Francesca Meilaq is clueless is this: she calls the St John’s tapestries ‘Gobelins’. What would you think of a self-proclaimed heritage expert who, in the course of a diatribe about how much she knows, refers to Caravaggio’s depiction of The Beheading of St John as a Rubens? Exactly.
The St John’s tapestries, Ms Meilaq, were not made at the Gobelins Manufactory. They were not even made in France. If you were a man, I’d call you a tosser.
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Francesca Meilaq is our dog’s mother. His name used to be Gigi Meilaq before he changed it to Gigi McCain, then to Gigi Cane when McCain lost his presidency bid. This is all true, really.
Kevin Ellul Bonici: Is it raining again in Brussels or has someone poisoned your tazza tat-te?
kev – I really think you’re losing it
Does anyone actually know Francesca Meilaq? Can they tell us something about her. Or is it a fake name?
[Daphne – It’s not a fake name. She’s a real person, with a very real grudge.]
@Corinne Mallia – it might just be the website. But Gigi Cane (Italian for ‘dog’, not the British cane) says his mum knows the goblins well and they told her all about their flaming tapestries.
[Daphne – Kev’s not been taking his medication again, I see.]
Ms Meilaq posts on the hate site too.
Incidentally, another poster is that racist medical doctor who is also a regular on vivamalta and il-pjazza (and I’m sure on timesofmalta too, though I haven’t yet recognised her trademark venom). One thing is certain: ‘they’ swarm to the hate site like blowflies to a carcass.
[Daphne – The racist medical doctor posts here, too, using the name Sybil. Hadn’t you noticed? As for the rest, tell me about it. They’re stalkers, pure and simple, and they don’t even see the warning signs of dangerous obsession. Having had long and unpleasant experience with a variety of stalkers and obsessives over the last couple of decades, I can spot the signs a mile off. One of the people who run the site was enthusing about how she/he finds me “fascinating”. That’s enough to let off an air-raid warning in my head. It’s the kind of fascination that leads to the object of that fascination having to call for police protection from time to time. In other words, it’s sick, and the people who are sick don’t realise the extent of it.]
@Antoine Vella (and Daphne, too) – why do you have to label a person ‘racist’ to make your point. Now, I don’t know this person, but for all I know his concerns may be other than race per se. You are not helping the issue by calling these people racists. It stereotypes the argument, not just the person. Everyone should be free to air their opinions without being labelled ‘enemy of the people’ for doing so. Calling someone ‘stupid’ is name calling; but calling someone racist is labelling in just the same way the nazis and the soviets did.
‘Obsessed, sick stalkers’ Daphne? What delusions!
[Daphne – Kevin, the person in question, who is a woman and not a man, is actually a dictionary-definition racist. Not anti-immigration, not concerned about illegal immigrants. No, just a plain old racist who thinks that blacks, Arabs and Muslims are inferior to white Christians, or even to wops and dagoes like us (because she doesn’t realise that we’re wops and dagoes). She has no problem admitting it herself, and there have been ideological battles over earlier posts on the subject of Islam or whatever. So it is not an assumption. In addition, habituees of vivamalta are by definition racist, because it is a racist site and a gathering-point for racists. So unless you are a troll or somebody commenting in protest, then there is only one reason why you would want to be in a discussion there. It’s Norman Lowell’s site, for pity’s sake.
I am not deluded as to the obsessed sick stalkers, Kevin. I have had several. You may wish to speak to your contacts at Police HQ, if you still have some. For some reason that I can’t understand, I trigger off fixations in certain people. Some of them find an outlet for their love/hate ‘fascination’ – as they describe it – in setting up and running a site dedicated exclusively to discussing me negatively. This alone should point to an absence of normal psychology, temporary or permanent. Others use less technological means. Or maybe you think it’s normal to track the every move and gesture of a newspaper columnist and then get into a huddle to dissect it?]
I am thoroughly convinced that Ms. Meilaq and Mr. Catania would make a lovely couple. The misinformed joined with the misguided. Pure bliss.
The tapestries should be shown to the cathedral visitors. I think that they’d undergo more permanent damage in an underground chamber due to humidity and moss (moffa) than with light. As if there will be beams of light focused on them in such a dimly lit cathedral. Uwejja hallina! As for fingerprints and breaths, it is simple. Hang them out of reach.
[Daphne – Injorant iehor li jifhem f’kollox. Alla jbierak. Gej bil-moffa. Turi kemm zort muzewijiet barra minn Malta. The People have spoken. Dnub li l-‘people’ ma jaghlqux halqhom xi kultant.]
“Some of them find an outlet for their love/hate ‘fascination’ – as they describe it – in setting up and running a site dedicated exclusively to discussing me negatively. This alone should point to an absence of normal psychology, temporary or permanent.”
I bet you don’t even see the irony in your own words do you dear? Doesn’t this smack a bit of hypocrisy considering the fact that you yourself have a fixation on Astrid Vella and FAA? Oh and by the way just to put your mind at rest you never stole any boy friends from me. You flatter yourself that you ever had such an ability. No dear, unfortunately for you any boys I dated had taste not to mention eyes in their head.
By the way I don’t advise anyone, FAA included. I have opinions, which I sometimes air but only on my terms. I don’t get into petty little arguments with petty little people. You always were a vindictive person Daphne that is why you weren’t very much liked. You always gave the impression of being the type of person who would run a key along someone’s car if they disagreed with you.
[Daphne – I think I have another obsessive psycho on my hands, to add to the collection. Going by the way you talk, you are definitely a blast from my past, and you’ve probably been skulking in the shadows for years, waiting to pounce. I didn’t steal your boyfriend (because he had eyes in his head; so did all of mine, sugar – but then if you were so damned attractive, why did my existence blacken yours?). I DEFINITELY didn’t run a key along your car, or anyone else’s for that matter. It’s not the sort of thing that would occur to me. On the other hand, I have had my car gouged right along the side several times, by a knife and a screwdriver. Was that you, by any chance? I’m a hot-tempered person, not a sneaky, underhand one. I’m more likely to put a crowbar through your windscreen while you’re watching. Whatever your problem is, get treatment – because you’ve proved to me beyond doubt that it has absolutely nothing to do with the museum. You’ve got it in for somebody on the cathedral foundation board – no prizes for guessing who – and you’ve also got it in for me. And before long, I am going to work out why. Meanwhile, get that help -anger and jealousy harboured for so many years will affect your physical as well as your mental health. I really wasn’t to blame for anything I got that you felt you deserved instead. And I’m certainly not to blame for the way your life turned out, however it turned out, but I don’t think it met with your expectations, somehow.]
Who IS this woman ? God I’d love to see her pic. Come on D. Only fair. Some of us want to “see” what we missed in our younger days. And by the way, Kev, didn’t I tell you to be a good little boy and obey the missus. You’re out of your league here.
[Daphne – Believe me, I haven’t a clue who she is. She seems to have been lurking in the background of my younger days, bearing a grudge about something – probably some kind of nerd I never noticed. Brrrrrr…..psycho.]
Daphne,
My money’s on you kid. Go get her. Crowbars at 10 paces. Should be a walkover.
kev,
I can assure you, after 2 months at Vivamalta you become a racist whether you like it or not.
You haven’t been sniffing the VM lately? because confusion is one side effect.
Kev – The fact that Corinne and I are sisters does not make our surnames interchangeable.
kitty’s got claws
@Daphne – Let us say a person believes in white supremacy (whatever that may mean, exactly). He has every right to such an opinion without being treated like ‘the enemy of the state’. An opinion is shaped by one’s experiences – nothing more to add there. The question is whether to allow such opinions to be publicly revealed as opposed to being kept a secret (to be acted upon secretly). True, they’re allowed – so far, and to an extent. But try to understand the nuance here – I am not saying you should not confront these arguments, but that this labelling is fascistic – it leads to serious erosion of freedom of expression, such as the introduction of ‘hate crimes’, which, once enacted, having no real parameters, are forever subject to the interpretation of the day.
As for stalkers, sometimes there is more fantasy involved than stalking, but I’m not saying you had no reason to be preoccupied. On the other hand, the ‘fixation’ you speak of is nothing but a reflection of your – let’s say ‘style’. It elicits reactions which you wrongly interpret as obsessive behaviour. Although, to be frank, the people behind the website with no name must somehow greatly admire you. Closet admirers, perhaps. It’s even more than flattery, if you ask me. But it is what celebrities experience, Daphne – and that’s the way they’re treating you, dummies or not.
@ Mrs Mallia – certainly not, surnames are unlike husbands.
Jesus, some people have long memories don’t they? Then again, I was fascinated by how someone at MEPA tore a project of mine apart, simply because we were in the same class and we didn’t get on, in the way that we never really spoke. He had been harbouring that chip on his shoulder for 20 years. Even now, I can’t understand how some people harbour grudges for so long, for a real or just perceived reason.
It seems these people are all coming out of the woodwork in their middle years. What with white supremacists, ex-policemen bloggng away, a “fatal attraction” psycho who has convinced the FAA that the tapestries were made by some goblins in France, several women who believe that the ghosts of knights in shining armour still roam Valletta’s underground passages looking for a bit of crumpet (along with the legions of rats, cockroaches and oversize cats), studious FAA types who still believe that there is treasure underneath bombed and in-filled sites……..I mean, come on, the list is endlessly amusing. Who needs the sitcoms on TV? This is much more fun than any teledramm.
Give a dog some attention, and he is yours forever. Astrid loves the sound of her own voice and the adulation of her public much more than she loves pseudo-baroque houses in Sliema or Valletta cathedrals. How those members of parliament without spine or substance fell for her rubbish about ‘remains’ one of the things I just cannot fathom. It’s all to do with Gonzi-bashing at the end of the day. They behave like spoilt children. Face it guys, you are passe, no one wants you to be ministers. Now leave us in peace.
[John Meilak – ….humidity and moss (moffa) than with light…….]
Moffa = mould
You don’t need to know who I am, because I don’t form part of your world any more, living in a fishpond, depending on political contacts to get you places and win contracts, and trying to pull others down so that you’ll look good. You don’t even realise how demeaning that is, resorting to dragging in your whole family tree in order to impress, which reveals that you feel inadequate as ‘only a Vella’ – instead of being confident about being judged on your own merits, you need some long-dead ancestors to prop you up. No, I have made it on my own merit in the real world, where you wouldn’t survive a week!
[Daphne – Were you ever part of my world? I really can’t remember you, though you do provide an object lesson in how dangerous it is to ignore the dorks lurking in the shadows of one’s life. You know, I was speculating the other day that you are almost certainly somebody who didn’t get a job you felt you deserved, and who is still bearing a deep, burning grudge about it. I am almost 100% sure this is the case, that you feel you are a victim who has been treated unfairly, rightly or wrongly. I would say, going by your psychology, that the basis for rejecting you was correct. People sometimes sense there’s something not quite right about a person, even though the credentials on paper may be perfect. That’s why people are interviewed and not accepted simply on the basis of their CV. I don’t have to ‘drag in my whole family tree’ to impress. I did so to point out that I didn’t marry my husband for his surname or for his family, because I didn’t need to – not that I am the sort to do that, in any case. Nor do I need to impress in other ways. For better or worse, I was a household name already at the age of 25, and it is I, not my ancestors or my extended family, who produce what I produce. I am obviously judged on my own merits: I’ve had a 20-year career before even mentioning my family. As for not surviving in the real world – I think it quite obvious that I am the sort of person who would survive in a jungle. You, on the other hand, couldn’t even survive in Malta. I find it interesting that you used your EU passport to get a job in London – doing what, I wonder: working in some anonymous pool where no one knows your name? – while trying your damnedest to attack some of those to whom you owe that passport in the first place.]
Dear Daphne,
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I owe nothing to anybody.
I know you and your ilk just have to attribute some motive to anyone speaking up against the shortcomings of present-day Malta, to make out that we’re the ones at fault and not any Government authority, but no, I have to disappoint you on that too. My family emigrated while I was still in school, so there’s no burning grudge, no unfair treatment, and not even any political allegiance. All I bear is a compulsion to call a spade a spade and speak up about injustice and environmental degradation, whichever side of the political spectrum it comes from.
And that’s exactly what you can’t stand. If you can’t discredit people because they’re Labour, you try to invent something else. Well I’m sorry Daph; in this case it doesn’t fly!
Cheers!
[Daphne – Really? Then how come you claim to know me and what I’m like? Did I knock you down in the school playground or something? And why do you have such an obsessive interest in the St John’s museum extension? More to the point, why have you fixated on a couple of people, after a lifetime in the UK? And why are you so proud of having ‘made it in England’ – if that is where you have lived since you were in school? Well, what can I say? At least in the UK – if that’s really the case – you’ll have found your market among the zillions of dorks and street-side weirdos. No wonder you feel at home – you can disappear even more quickly than you did here.
Here’s some more of your intelligent analysis, taken this time from a letter you wrote to The Malta Independent: “At a time when all the world is cutting down on air-conditioning and use of energy, we come along with a property that is completely dependent on the use of dehumidifiers, air-conditioners and air-exchangers 24 hours a day, a good percentage of which would be avoided by locating the museum above ground. How can it be that no one is asking what would happen in the case of a power cut (not exactly unknown in Malta)? And don’t give me the generator answer – even the best of generators have been known to fail. All it takes is a six-hour power cut and the tapestries are in serious trouble.An engineer has told me that air-conditioning is not enough; the air has to be changed constantly, which would need air-ducting shafts to be placed along St John’s Square! What about the flood risk? No underground building is ever completely free of such a hazard, is that something the foundation is prepared to risk for the priceless Gobelins tapestries?”
Those Gobelins tapestries again! You don’t even know what they are, and yet you presume to know best how they can be cared for. “An engineer has told me….” – what a way to form an opinion. Well, at least it wasn’t your shoemaker.]
See, there you go again making assumptions and trying to pass them off to your few supporters. I don’t have an obsessive interest in St. John’s, nor was I aware that I had a fixation on anyone. I could ask you why you have a fixation or obsessive interest in Astrid Vella and the FAA but then the answer to that is obvious. Astrid has got your back up because people are listening to her, taking on board the things she has to say and doing something positive for the good of their country.
I mean the nerve of the lady taking the limelight away from Daphne! I can remember when José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission was in Malta there were photographs published of him having lunch with some members of Maltese society. Were you there Daphne? No of course not but I’m sure the photographs really got your back up. Sitting on Mr. Barroso’s right hand side was Astrid Vella and just to rub salt in the wound beside her was Malta Independent columnist Marisa Micallef. Poor Daphne wasn’t invited! I do miss Marisa’s column, as it was always interesting.
We haven’t always lived in the UK as you say but move around quite a bit because of my husband’s job. We spent some time in Washington DC before moving to Paris and now we are in London. We tend to prefer the slower pace of life as in Paris and London so we are now based in London but retain the apartment in Paris as well as a holiday home in Malta. So I’m afraid I have to disappoint you again Daphne but we don’t move amongst the ‘dorks and street-side weirdo’s’ as you call them. Note that the word weirdo’s does have an apostrophe dear.
PS Although I left years ago, you should note that I still have very good contacts there which allow me to keep my ear to the ground.
[Daphne – Fabulous. Another cyber-stalker. You are quite, quite unbalanced, and still riven with envy and resentment, for whatever reason I have yet to discover. Perhaps it’s because you’re forced to move around as an appendage to your husband. The next ‘fact’ you’re going to pop out – and I can feeling it coming – is that you clap and sing at prayer groups.
Newspaper columnists do not have supporters, nor do they want them. They have readers. And I am sorry if I am going to sound like one hell of a snob by pointing this out, but only somebody from your sort of background – a background revealed through the clues you let slip – would think that somebody like me is gagging to have lunch with the president of the European Commission, and to have my picture in the newspapers to show everyone else. Only ta’ cacu people think like that. I would have been part of ‘Maltese society’ – as you put it – whatever I did for a living and even if I did nothing, BY BIRTH. But try-hards like you don’t understand this. Nor do you understand the fact that people who are not ta’ cacu conduct their social lives IN PRIVATE, so nobody knows with whom they have lunch, dinner, holidays or assignations.
If you did spend a lot of time in England, as you claim, then it must have been at the market, given that you use the infamous grocer’s apostrophe: apple’s, pear’s and weirdo’s, all wrapped up in some Gobelins tapestries made in Flanders. Hilarious.]
First class interlocution. It doesn’t get any better. Even those who prefer watching mud fights cannot deny the entertainment value of this tit-a-tat.
[Daphne – Yes, I know. From now on, I’ll start having my picture taken at lunch and supper, and make sure it’s in the social pages of First magazine and Sunday Circle, to impress Francesca Meilaq as she gets dragged from Washington to Paris to London courtesy of her ‘husband’, while learning how to spell ‘weirdo’s’ and chatting to random engineers about air-conditioning in Egyptian tombs. I’ve had it up to here with brainless Maltese women. For some reason, I find them so much more offensive than brainless Maltese men – perhaps because they think that ‘intuition’ and ‘native wisdom’ are an adequate substitute for a strong, logical argument. Small wonder I find the company of men so very much more amusing, unless they’re Vince Farrugia with all his bossy, humourless shouting. The average Maltese woman NEVER leaves the schoolyard: “Astrid sat next to Barroso and you didn’t”. Unbelievable. I wouldn’t even be remotely moved if Astrid had shagged Barroso or married him. It’s not like he’s George Clooney, for God’s sake. If I had to hand Ms Meilaq a list of everything (as distinct from everyone) I’ve ever done and everyone I’ve sat next to, she would be on Valium for a year – if she isn’t already.]
merits a category
[Daphne – The only category that springs to mind is Bloody Stupid Bitch, but we’re not going down that road. All I can say is: you can take the girl out of Malta, but you can’t take Malta out of the girl. Boy, would this one be happy playing doubles at the Marsa Club and ‘soshil climink.’]
Francesca Meilaq
What with all the commuting between London, Paris and Washington it’s a wonder that you deign to take an interest in the sewers and tunnels of the fishpond.
Was referring to the exchange rather than the person; some classic lines in there but hey, it’s your blog. BTW, some time ago I met and had a chat with Paul McCartney and a couple of months ago it was Roman Abramovich. Please tell me you’re impressed.
Ah, mention a fishpond and Antwa comes flying straight out of it. Quite the chivalric type, I must say, but rather unnecessarily so.
Francesca Meilaq…No need to point out that it was the “weirdo’s (sic)” that did you in! It amply demonstrated that for all your glitzy (whatever) lifestyle you’re still a wannabe…
By any chance did the directors of the Dom underground museum reject your learned opinions about whateveritisyoubangonabout?
kev
I don’t respond to Francesca (and you) out of chivalry or because it’s necessary but because I enjoy bully-baiting; a delizzju that has sometimes got me into trouble especially when the law was enforced by men like you.
Incidentally, another one whose feathers I like to ruffle is that Tyrell fellow, but unfortunately he never ventures into this blog and the Times website is a minefield for baiters. Only this morning my post was censored because I had told the spiteful little leprechaun to cut his blarney and go hide behind a pot of gold. I should protest and start a petition against this outrage.
“...a delizzju that has sometimes got me into trouble especially when the law was enforced by men like you.”
Men like me cannot be much bothered with half ounces like you, especially so when they have no authority to enforce any laws, but I see what you mean for that’s precisely why I take my numerous breaks here. As to “that Tyrell fellow”, I don’t think you are ruffling any feathers there for he’s clearly choosing to ignore the lady, let alone her noisy chorus.
[Daphne – Actually, he’s not. He’s posting all over the hate site and timesofmalta.com, dodging questions about his role in the No to EU campaign. But then, you have that in common.]
kev
Thankfully, you have no authority to enforce the law at present so I can blow any number of raspberries at you and expect only a weak retort as reaction.
Remember the times however, when you wore a Halloween costume at work and, back then, anyone guilty of an affront to the grandaddy of all bullies, the billy-goat himself, risked being metaphorically run over by the full speeding might of The Force. That is what I meant by “men like you” – I was obviously referring to the past as otherwise I’d have said “weathercocks like you”.
Tyrell is answering me too but his replies are like yours, flatter than the muddy fields of Antrim.