Do you know The Burning House game? When you have to say what three things you’d snatch on your way out if your house is on fire? It always makes me anxious even thinking about it. What would I grab?

From the vantage point of the sofa, in a smoke-free house, I’d like to think that the first thing I’d grab would be my old pre-digital photo albums, my bicycle, and my favourite painting.

But I know I won’t.

“Will you hang on one second please, dear firemen, I just have to nip inside to get a painting off the wall. Oh, and do you mind if you drop those hoses and come and help me wheel this bike out please?”

Not.

But in any case, I’d like to tell you about the painting that I potentially want to save. Spring is my much treasured oil-on-canvas. I’ve had it for more than a decade – it has travelled with me, moved innumerable houses with me, hung on several walls, and has always had people staring at it trying to make up their minds whether they like it or dislike it.

It is a Debbie Caruana Dingli piece and therefore features one of her cheeky ‘fat lady’ caricatures. My voluptuous lady has long, fiery, red hair tied up in a ponytail, which is bouncing up in the air with her jump.

Her arms spread wide, her eyes closed, she looks like she is humming contentedly while skipping away in the countryside. Actually, there’s also a bit of sea: so it’s countryside, flowers, sea, sand and dunes.

The landscape and the colours – hues of pink and purple, green, aqua and orange – are all lively and cheery.

I look at this painting on gloomy days and it gives me a sense of hope, of good things to come. It makes me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem Spring: “Nothing is so beautiful as spring / When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush.”

For me the best spring treat is Imġiebaħ. There is countryside, flowers, sea, sand and dunes. The landscape and the colours – hues of pink and purple, green, aqua and orange – make me want to just close my eyes and hum happily that spring is here

But now, finally, after a gruelling winter, I no longer need to look at it. Finally, I can just look out of the window with a huge sigh of relief: the real spring is here.

It’s time to eat ħobż biż-żejt in the garden; to call friends and organise picnics. It’s time to walk on deserted beaches and skip stones; to go to the farmers’ markets and buy bagfuls of ful and spinach.

It’s time to eat a bunch of roast asparagus and artichokes, leaf by leaf; to stuff our mouths with huge juicy strawberries. It’s time to feel the sun on our faces; to leave the windows open to catch the venereal breeze.

Alas in Malta, spring does not mean walking in the countryside and bumping into sheep nursing their little lambs.

In fact, when is the last time you saw a real life lamb?

Sadly, for us it is not the time when we have the opportunity to catch a glimpse of some returning wildlife.

It’s Easter today, and there’s little cute drawings and cuddly toys of chicks and eggs plastered all over… but when is the last time that you saw a real life hen or a chick coming out of its egg?

Spring is the time when I realise how detached from nature we have become and it is perhaps for this reason that I have spent this entire week googling the beautiful Eglu chicken coop – there’s one like it at the Victoria and Albert Museum –  and I am putting it on my wish list, determined to eat eggs that are freshly laid.

But despite this lack of wildlife, Spring is still the time to appreciate the parcels of green spaces that we have left.

It’s perfect to put on our walking boots and head for Buskett and walk up to Dingli Cliffs; then down to the Fawwara trail along the coast, and all the way to Blue Grotto.

Or there’s the Għar Lapsi up to Siġġiewi walk which can lead on to Rabat and Baħrija. Or the Majjistral Nature and History Park and Golden Bay and Riviera.

Or if you’re heading to Gozo for a long weekend, there’s nowhere more peaceful then the sleepy village of Għarb and a rugged walk up the Ta’ Ġurdan lighthouse.

But for me the best spring treat is Imġiebaħ. There is countryside, flowers, sea, sand and dunes. The landscape and the colours – hues of pink and purple, green, aqua and orange – make me want to just close my eyes and hum happily that spring is here.

No fire can ever take that bay away. Happy Easter.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti