A word about Mintoff’s Smellimara

It was a fairly high risk strategy to wheel out Yana Mintoff Bland at the Labour General Conference. On the one hand it makes sense for the party to leap-frog its genealogy back to when it last had some creative energy. Joseph Muscat will also be hoping the Mintoff aura will serve to rope and fold in the lost sheep he so pined after in 2008.

Delimara and Dom Mintoff have meaningfully converged in my mind for as long as I can remember- Mark-Anthony Falzon

But it’s also worth keeping in mind that Dom Mintoff was loved and despised in equal measure. Every devotional shrine had its obverse, every ‘Ma tagħmlu xejn’ song its irreverent counterpart, usually some vulgar ditty. The mongered link between Muscat and Mintoff will be nectar to some, bitter brew to others. Exactly which group Muscat’s middle-class moderates and progressives are likely to be in is anybody’s guess.

I am not terribly interested in the political content of Mintoff Bland’s speech, which in any case seemed to ramble on about some working class or other. I imagine she was politely asked to make sure it matched the second barrel of her surname, by way of damage control.

She did, however, say something that’s worth a little divertissement. That’s when she spoke of Delimara – or as she put it “Smellimara”. “It used to be the most beautiful place in the world”, she added.

She had a point there, even if one might want to make some allowance for childhood nostalgia. I’m not sure about the rest of the world but the place is certainly one of Malta’s finest. It’s also rich in political association.

Delimara and Dom Mintoff have meaningfully converged in my mind for as long as I can remember. It was not a place I was familiar with as a child but I have a hazy recollection of someone pointing out L-Għarix as ‘il-villa ta’ Mintoff’. If my memory serves me well it had felt to me like a cross between a film star’s house in Hollywood and Fafner’s lair. Delimara was also the place I first properly saw Mintoff in the flesh, about eight years ago. It turned out to be a vintage show.

It was him, a retainer, and one or two huge dogs (Great Danes I think). Dom Mintoff was already an old man by then but I was struck by the way he flitted across some nasty-looking rocks. He was wearing an ancient Bridge over the River Kwai-type straw hat which had a sort of eccentric neck flap. At one point he screamed at his man, “Why do you insist on taking this path?”

It was probably the exact route he had taken for 60-odd years. The rocks at Delimara are as peppered with Mintoff legend as they are with fossils. Some years ago a man wrote in to The Times to tell how he had been trying to teach his son to swim the day before. An ‘old man’ who happened to be there shouted at him to tie the boy with a piece of string and throw him in (together with any notions of pedagogy I suppose).

There’s an older story that tells of a particularly savage northeasterly gale and a particularly headstrong swimmer. The day very nearly got ugly and it was one bruised and cut-up Dom Mintoff who ran up the steps of Castille that evening.

Peter’s Pool in Delimara retains some of all that. It’s still the daily meeting place for a small bunch of sun-baked Mintoffjani who go there to swim, brew tea over an open fire, and hang out generally. Most of them are well into their seventies now, a good excuse for them to walk with a stick and a dog or two – just like him. Don’t get these guys started on Dom Mintoff’s greatness and prowess, not unless you’re in the mood for an extended lecture.

Dom Mintoff’s political persona was made in and of three places. The first was the Cottonera of his childhood and later rhetorical excursions, the second Castille (many stories begin ‘Mintoff bagħat ghalija Kastilja’), and the third Delimara.

Delimara is as significant as the other two, if not more so. It’s the place where Mintoff the hardy winter swimmer was made. By ‘made’ I mean manufactured, quite intentionally at times.

For example I’ve heard of – but haven’t managed to watch so far – a little film that apparently did the rounds in the late Seventies. “Mintoff waqt il-ħin tal-mistrieħ” shows him ‘relaxing’ in ways that had by then become legendary – water skiing, horse riding, and of course winter swimming.

The winter swimming is particularly telling. First, it’s still associated in the popular imagination with Dom Mintoff. Every time I happen to mention that I swim in winter, the standard retort is ‘mela bħall-Perit’.

Besides, as Charles Sprawson puts in his fascinating Haunts of the Black Masseur (1992), there is a distinct “Homeric dimension to swimming... once the swimmer hits the water he becomes his own man”. Swimming here means actually doing so, rather than parading a sarong and tattoos on a beach.

There is an element of isolation and detachment about swimming that happened to dovetail with stories of a one-off politician who did things his own way. Winter swimming is even more isolating and invites images of prowess and resolve. Add a northeasterly gale to the equation and the result is profound.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a well-known author who is by no means a Labourite. (But then one can be a Mintoffian, so to say, without being a Labourite.) He told me he once joined Mintoff for a swim in Delimara, many years ago. “Strange place”, he added, “doesn’t look like Malta at all”. A one-off, presumably.

mafalzon@hotmail.com