Sliema and the doggy lovers

In Greece, thousands upon thousands of citizens are out on the streets protesting against austerity measures that the economic crisis has brought into effect. In Spain, unemployment is at record levels and unrest is brewing. In North Africa, there’s blood in the streets and gunfire in the air.

Here, people are incensed to the point of thinking that the time is right for a palace revolution (honourable mention to the first comment with the correct rock reference) because Transport Malta raised its fees for various services from piddling to slightly less piddling.

I use that simply as an example, a lead-in, if you will, to a column this week that is going to annoy many people and probably lose me a few friends. I will be annoying people from Sliema, my home town, and doggy lovers, to name but a few. It is a fact, though, that while many of our neighbours are going through pretty horrendous experiences, here what a former politician thinks about divorce (like anyone should give a toss) trumps the fact that the country is not in completely bad shape every time.

Sliema, since various developers, aided and abetted by sundry Socialist ministers, has gone from a pleasant, if unremarkable, dormitory suburb, to concrete and cement hell. Truth be told, it was never more than a pleasant, dormitory suburb, blessed with a seafront that attracted, and still attracts, anyone with a couple of cents to rub together and turn into a place to lay one’s head with a view. Sliema never had much of a soul, in the way most villages have a soul, and it has long lost, pretty much, any semblance of community living, if it ever had any.

About the only place anyone not from Sliema (even those like me who moved away years ago) would go to is the Ferries and the horrendous parking and access problems have long rendered a trip there something to think twice about attempting, except with a motorbike. With The Point having sprouted just down the road, it’s even less fun trying to get there or park there, though there’s oodles of parking at the new place, to which I have never been and have no wish to.

An effort to make the Ferries a more attractive place was concluded a few days ago and, by all accounts (I haven’t been yet), it’s worked nicely and Bizazza Street is looking good. I seem to remember the business community getting all hot under the collar because traffic was diverted away from there but the business community gets all hot under the collar every time its loquacious leader thinks it should, so the fact that it was getting all hot under the collar because Arriva wanted its buses to pass through there (a reasonable enough position, since it had been told they would) and even more recently getting hot in the same place because a few dozen parking spaces have been removed to allow buses to get through on the diversion route, is less than impressive.

Anyway, the whole point of having a state-of-the-art public transport system is to get people to and from a place without having to provide parking for them, so said business community should clam up and be thankful that they might actually have some customers for their shop assistants to ignore. I, for one, never head towards Sliema, or most anywhere else, for that matter, in a car imagining I’m going to park on the street and for free, so a bit less of this bleating and blathering would be quite nice.

Or we could have a referendum about it, I suppose.

I was, like anyone else with a heart, moved quite close to tears by the pictures of that cute doggy which went through a terrible experience but lately I’ve started to wonder whether we haven’t gone a touch overboard about the story.

It goes almost without saying that animals should be treated humanely and cared for and that anyone who does not do so should be punished.

An owner who wants to dispose of his property, however, has every right to do so as long as there’s no cruelty involved: this is not euthanasia and unless we all thrust our hands deep into our pockets to set up animal sanctuaries (where even rats and pigeons should find a home until such time as they shuffle off this moral coil) we can’t throw up our hands in horror if someone decides to kill his pet, cute and cuddly as the pet may or may not be.

So, while the dog-shooter and burier went about it completely the wrong way, and apparently broke a few laws in the process, it might very well be that his motives were not completely out of line with his rights as an animal owner, annoying as this may be for animal lovers, who are baying for the guy’s blood still.

After the excesses of the weekend before, last weekend was relatively low-key. A meal to celebrate the ancestor’s birthday at Chez Philippe was as good as Liza and her mates always make it and we re-visited Del Borgo in Birgu for a glass of wine or six with friends, which was good fun and reminded us that this is one of the good wine bars. On Tuesday, we went to Valletta for the music festival in Merchants Street and a good time was had by all, especially the French community, who went wild at the show that Matthieu Chedid put on.

I know, rock, French, those words don’t often find themselves in the same sentence but this was good stuff, along with Ira Losco and the Xirka Rock Band. The pizza and wine we had at Luciano’s were a great accompaniment. Valletta can be quite a destination and these outdoor events are the way to go. Roofless theatre anyone?

imbocca@gmail.com

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