Life in a Tigné high-rise apartment:

Avarice Towers is surely the most prestigious new high-rise block in the Maltese islands. So… we – that is, the family and I – just had to have an apartment there. And here we are, happily, if precariously, ensconced on the 94th floor in our three-bedroom condo, with views out over Reggio Calabria and beyond.

And yes, thanks for asking, we’re settling in nicely, even if the kids say they do miss the garden back in the old place – and the wife complains that it does nothing for her vertigo. But as I keep telling her: “If you think the whole block sways in the wind, don’t go out on the balcony.” I never do.

Oh don’t worry, she’ll get used to it. She’d better, we’ve sunk every penny we have into buying the place. But we do get parking in the basement, plus a lift from the car park right up to our front door.

The lift, incidentally, is state-of-the-art, it even has a bookshelf in each cubicle. I’ll admit it does take a bit of time to go from basement to the 94th floor, but at least you can read while you travel. Although the titles might disturb some people… Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind are two tomes that might give you some idea of the travelling time.

There is also a DVD player in each compartment. Yesterday I watched two episodes of The Wire as I chugged upwards after work.

However, our apartment itself makes the journey well worthwhile – and the wife, despite her vertigo thing, will, I’m sure, soon get used to living in the clouds.

One aspect of sky-high-rise living I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the higher you go… the thinner the air

I must admit that being on the flight path and in the position of actually looking down on passing airliners did take a bit of getting used to, but people have been looking down on Air Malta for quite some time, we are more privileged than most.

Oh sure, the wife worries – she is a worrier – about what happens if the lift jams… but I’ve thought of that as well. I’ve invested in a set of parachutes for the whole family. So all we have to do, in case of an elevator malfunction, is strap on the chute, jump out of a window and float gently down to earth.

I’ve noticed that some of my neighbours hardly ever leave their flats. For instance, our next-door neighbour Mrs Bonello, a widow, holds fast to the old ways. She has moved to Avarice Towers from her old apartment, three floors up in Merchants Street, Valletta.

While there she always used to lower a basket on a length of string down to street level, where it would be filled with milk, bread, etc,… at which point she would then haul it back up. She used to do that in her new high-rise, although she emptied Sliema’s hardware stores of string in order to continue doing so.

Until… one morning, while hauling up her basket of groceries, the string broke and sent the full basket crashing to the ground. Well, I’m sure someone must have been very fond of that cat, but you could hardly blame Mrs B for its untimely demise.

But then… every cloud has a silver lining. The basket of goodies not only flattened the unfortunate moggie, it continued on down through the pavement for a distance of three stories, ending up in a heretofore unknown water source that has since been utilised as an emergency well for the whole block.

One aspect of sky-high-rise living I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the higher you go… the thinner the air. We don’t notice it so much on our floor, but people living 100 floors up and above often speak of breathlessness and even fainting spells, up there beyond the clouds.

And here and now I would like to dispel one oft-heard myth that is being repeated around these parts. No, it is not true that the topmost apartments are so high up that gravity is not present. I’ve heard it said that in these flats you can just float out of a window and ostensibly space-walk. Not true! Believe me, if you try to drift out of a window on those upper floors, you will become a roadside pizza, full stop.