Gozo may not be a eco-bucolic-mothballed region for much longer. Not if Gozitans can convince, by means fair or foul, a certain giant mole called Progress to dig in their direction and consign their problems of ‘double insularity’ and ‘time standing still’ to the bottom of the sea.

That would indeed be a new dawn for the island. No longer peripheral, it would find itself 10 minutes by car away from one of the most happening places anywhere on earth. From then on the sky’s the limit, as they say.

It strikes me that pro-tunnel Gozitans are not alone in entertaining grand hests for their island. Their neigh-bours too have a long and colourful case history of dreams and plans which we may group collectively under the psychological rubric ‘the navel complex’.

Put simply, this includes those ideas which posit Malta as an actual or potential central point, on one count or other. Popular myth has it that we saved Europe, nay the world, at least twice in our history. Who knows what might have happened had St Angelo fallen to the Ottomans or the island’s airfields to the Axis bombers? The answer is no one really – except us.

As for contemporary examples one is spoilt for choice. Religion is among the more fertile soils. It was not so long ago that we were talking about Malta’s crucial role in ‘re-energising’ Europe into the deeply spiritual continent it once was. And I’m sure I heard a bishop say somewhere that the first thing Pope John Paul II had told him was, “Ah, you’re from Malta ... Malta is very important to us.”

If I may say so without blasphemous implications, that ‘us’ is heavily pregnant. The Pope may have been referring to himself as in the royal ‘we’, or to the papacy as an institution.

Or perhaps he meant his, and our, overlord. That would make Malta very umbilical indeed, and by divine ordination no less. As Angelik Caruana would put it, there’s a special place in Her heart for us.

In fairness, notions of divine selection are a regular characteristic of many ethnic and especially national mythologies. Paradoxically, there really is nothing singular for us in this one.

Which is why we don’t stop there. I’ve now lost count of local proposals for world domination. Joseph Muscat tells us he will make us “the best in Europe” by 2018, and there have been swarms of ‘hubs’ of all sorts dreamed up by Nationalist governments (IT hub, financial hub, and so on).

Add to those the various cunning plans for Malta’s potential role as a key international mediator, a kind of saint of the impossible. It’s even plastered all over the façade of the Presidential palace in Valletta.

One of the latest I’ve heard (from a very respectable source that one) puts us as a ‘centre for open source’, a visionary 316km² which will change the face of global communications for ever. No wonder Norman Lowell can talk of a planetary imperium based in Malta and walk away with a stack of votes.

The upshot of all this, and James Bond junkies will understand me, is that I sometimes dream of men milling around in tracksuits in a giant extinct volcano called Melita (or was it Atlantis?).

Seriously, what’s this about always wanting to be important and in the thick of it? As far as I’m concerned one of the really nice things about living in Malta is that it’s a small island, with all the fringe benefits of that. As Buzzati might put it, I’m perfectly happy in my little outpost, spending my days looking out across the desert and not caring a dune about the Tartars.

The idea that all places have to be central or at least equally important is as charming as a billion Chinese wearing any colour of shirt as long as it’s blue. (I know they no longer do – I did say it doesn’t work.) The EU seems to like it, what with all the talk of regional funds and road networks and schemes to abolish the periphery.

The other day I chanced across two farmers shooting the breeze at Delimara. They were at pains to tell me that “niġu naqra hawn għall-kwiet” (We come here for the peace and quiet). What they were really saying was ‘Please go away and leave us to our peace and quiet’. Ditto to all the budding Blofelds, EU and homegrown, out there.

Had I wanted the centre I’d have moved, or better still tunnelled, to London or New York. As it is I’m quite alright marooned in a small place which wasn’t Atlantis, didn’t save the world, enjoys no privileges with God, is not and will never be a hub of anything, and is unlikely ever to be the champion of open source. I’m open to discussion on the planetary imperium.

I suppose it comes with greying hair. Fact is that as one grows older one learns to love the rhythms, flavours and oddities of particular places. One also learns – or should do so, as I see it – to live with the devastating news that the world minus one is just that.

Wanting to be at the centre of things at all times may sound ambitious and blokey but is actually rather infantile. And highly annoying to the rest of humanity.

In sum, I suspect I’d be rather happy if I were Gozitan and tunnel-less. I’d probably just relax about the countryside, the beaches, and the relatively easy daily routines. Not so lucky on this side of the channel but still, it’s remarkable how far 60 miles of sea can go towards defeating the centre.

The thing with the navel complex is, it’s risky business. Miss the exact spot and you could up in a very un-nice place indeed.

mafalzon@hotmail.com