Scaffolding is going up all along the outer faces of the central bastion and adjacent walls of the Floriana land-front, pending much-needed repairs. These are necessarily largely in St Philip garden, adjacent to the Argotti garden.

Immediately next to some of these is the tanaille (wall set in ditch, protecting the foot of main wall) where repairs are needed much more urgently. The tanaille is largely cut out of the living rock, partly built up.

A low wall is built on the edge opposite the parapet, the space between having been filled with soil and planted with trees and shrubs; others are self-planted.

These have now reached sufficient size for their roots to cause significant damage.

The parapet is largely dismantled at a couple of places. Worse, at one end, a large section of the rock has been split off, leaving a gap of two or more centimetres. This rock will fall any time soon, crushing anyone and anything underneath and also shattering itself.

Could it be supported now and the vegetation completely removed? This being done, the reinsertion of this segment of rock, and other restoration work, could proceed as and when convenient.