Saturday, 5th September 2009
SMELLS AND (VIRTUAL) YELLS
Our colonial masters used to describe Malta as the island of “Yells, Bells and Smells” (or so David Niven would have us believe while mooning the balloon, anyway) and while the bells have subsided, to be replaced by petards in religious observance, yells and smells still plague us.
To be fair, yells have also diminished a bit, though perhaps this is a mere perception, caused by the fact that windows are kept closed more than they used to be in the past, what with air-conditioning and other blights on the environment, so we don’t get to hear the “friendly discussions between neighbours” or between drivers who have come headlight to headlight and think its unmanly to engage reverse.
There are also no hawkers shouting their wares in the streets, though I’d rather we had that on Wednesdays in the Three Villages area than the air-horn some miscreant thinks is an appropriate means of telling the populace she’s around to flog them something at the crack of dawn. Naturally, in our area, the only input we ever see from any of the supposedly-concerned local councils is to restrict parking even more and fine residents for parking anywhere near their homes, so there’s no real hope anyone is going to do anything about this.
But smells, now, there’s another thing. We get plenty of those, for our sins. Walking through any street in Valletta in high summer will reward you with a whiff of canine detritus that is pungent and singularly unappealing. You also tend to get numerous whiffs of the great unwashed economising on deodorant, having previously eschewed the temptation to take a shower, an experience exacerbated in my case by having given up smoking cigars except in the weekend, resulting in my olfactory senses being enhanced.
In the countryside, such as is left to us by the conservationist hunters and trappers, smells abound, though here they are of nature doing her thing and therefore unexceptionable, really. Smells emanating from the exhausts of trucks and buses, and from the backs of restaurants, and from drains also enhance the urban landscape, for your enjoyment.
Smells are not the only pollutant, of course: as I write, a neighbour is jack-hammering away at the plot of land where he’s building, though it’s a relatively civilised time of day, so there’s not much I can – or will – moan about. As opposed to a mate, who has the ineffable pleasure, where he lives in Sliema, of having a major development being erected across the road and contractors who have apparently decided that they are the lords and masters of all they survey, so the neighbours can go and get stuffed.
MEPA, apparently, has been contacted but hasn’t the resources to do anything: if anyone wants to send me an email, I’ll pass on the details and the authorities can extract their finger from where it’s been posteriorly buried and do something.
But getting back to the smells and (virtual) yells, on Friday a smell, generally described as one of gas, spread around Malta, pretty much around the mid-to-North area. Gozo and the South seem to have not been affected, which I can confirm insofar as concerns Gozo.
This being the age of immediate self-gratification, the (virtual) yelling started almost immediately. In the good old days, we’d have had a really heavy bout of “Maltese gemgem” (for the aliens amongst my readers, “gemgem” is an onomatopoeic rendering of the almost sub-audible sound of the Maltese grumbling about things at the cafés and grocers and on their doorsteps) but now, anyone with access to a keyboard can blast his or her whine across the ‘Net, loud enough for all to read.
No sooner had the electronic news portals mentioned the fact that there was a smell around and people were wondering what it was that everyone and his or her sister and brother started shooting off comments about how shameful it was that the Government was leaving everyone in the dark (not literally, for a change)
Not to be outdone, of course, the jolly old Labour Party jumped onto the bandwagon with alacrity, adding its own voice to the chorus of whining and whinging that was playing itself out across the land – to go with the smell, we had the yells.
All we needed was the bells to conjure up the ghost of Niven past.
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Comments
@Mary: I am inclined to agree with you for though Nye Bevan was not a man to mince his words I do not think he would make a gratuitous insult. Also he was not in office at that time.
@Charles; what is the precise nature of the "thing" that British Protestants have towards the Maltese, their priests and the Catholic religion?
When you say British Protestants, remember that they do come in all shapes and sizes
and if you mean the Established Anglican Faith of which the monarch is only the temporal head of the English portion and the High Church section of the Church of England is much more Catholic than the Pope- well then things become complicated.
I might murmur that large families are more indicative of poverty rather than Catholicism and compare Maltese families of today with those of my childhood and even immediately post war before condoms were on sale in supermarkets.
Religion is becoming less significant in Malta just as it has become in Europe in general but it remains a useful stick with which some Maltese beat the Northern Barbarians.
To my mind religion is a personal matter and should not infuence politics.
In 1956\57, during the Integration Round Table Conference, Aneurin Bevan, whose autograph I still have and relish, remarked that ‘Sir Michael Gonzi treats the Maltese like rabbits’, Archbishop Gonzi craftily twisted that to ‘The Maltese breed like rabbits’. It was then rumoured that Mintoff privately remarked that the Maltese breed like rabbits because Gonzi treated us like rabbits.
Thank you for giving me a five minute relief, and a couple of good laughs. Funny as it may be, you left to ponder on the reality of how it is.
That would be George Bernard Shaw.
You too are correct Dr Saliba for I vaguely recollect a poem of Byron
(no colonial master he) which I think is a sort of farewell to
a cursed city of steps - for he was lame as you would well know.
DH Lawrence had some hard things to say about Malta but I
will not repeat them for I am one of the minority of foreigners
that loves Malta warts and all. I am also well aware of the
sensitivity of the Maltese to any adverse comment.
I am concerned about the future of Malta as a
tourist resort and see very few relevant adverts in the
travel agents of Barnsley where, on a clear day, you
can see the townhall.
I am now too frail to make the journey out there but
I have not been back ( at least not to Sliema) since the occasion that
a lady driver angrily waved me back as I was
trying to get across the road at the pedestrian
crossing by the Ferries.
Must stop here for I am whinging now.
Of all the factors against the enjoyment of Malta
the motor car is the worst
You are absolutely right - it was Byron. He must have been really cheesed off with his limp and having to climb up and down the stepped streets of Valletta
As so often from a Maltese source there has to be
a bit of a rant about the Brits (Colonial masters and so on)
and it seems to be something in the Maltese psyche
so I won't go on about it. A current article in MALTAMEDIA (I think) dwells on the subject
of the bells etc. David Niven's short stay in Malta was over eighty years back when
I was a toddler over in Senglea and it wasn't him but Byron, I believe, who
is supposed to have made that observation.
This alien knew about gemgem incidentally but is obliged for translations of the Maltese words employed when the writer runs out of English.
All in all you might gather that I don't think much of Andrew's
current posting - we all have our off-days - and the locals plus the detached national representatives are in no hurry to respond either.