I was born in 1974, the year the Bonellos lost their kiosk. So, like most people my age and younger, I could easily have grown up assuming that the Magic Kiosk was always there. Which is after all what teenagers do best - assume everything started with them and that there was no life before they came along.

Except, every time I made any sort of allusion to the Magic Kiosk, my mother would always come back with Bonello's Kiosk. Now, in the late 80s, there was actually a sweet and/or liquor shop across the road from Magic Kiosk which was called Bonello Store. It may even have been part of the Chocolate Box but I can't be sure of that.

I have a pretty good memory so I remember many of the shops on that part of Tower Road. Conti for instance, located next door to this store, sold me my first pair of goggles. I decided I'd put my mother's insistence with Bonello's Kiosk down to an early onset of dementia.

I felt that somehow she must be mistaking the kiosk with the store across the road but I never really cared to probe further. She was always there to pick me up at the right place anyway, so what did it matter if she liked to think she was picking me up from Bonello's Kiosk and not the Magic one?

But you know what they say about waking up and finding that you've turned into your mother. Something must have rubbed off because over the years I inherited my mother's irritating habit and often caught myself referring to the kiosk by its 'maiden name'.

By this time I was in my twenties and had come to know the story which we are now revisiting and reliving so many years later. In hindsight I feel that in some strange way, my mother's loyalty and insistence with Bonello's Kiosk was and remains her way of keeping the name alive, her unconscious way of supporting what she thought was by far the quaintest and prettiest place in Sliema, where she and her friends drank Sunshine.

Nearly 35 years later the Magic Kiosk is on its last legs and on the way out. It's now my son's turn to wonder. He's positively upset, because there's something about the place that appeals to children. It must be that irresistible word 'magic' coupled with loud, luminous ugliness that is always a winner with children. The viler the ice-cream colour, the more popular it is with the kids! So yes, I think I can safely say that Magic Kiosk did have a certain appeal among the population with the height restriction.

But beyond a certain age and height, you found that the charm swiftly wore off. You started to find the turquoise a little too in-your-face and repulsive and were left wondering just how on earth anyone managed to pull off a structure (that would have been better suited to some airline office customer care help desk for Bluejet) in the middle of one of Sliema's prettiest squares.

Of course Joe Pace should have seen it coming - with a name like that he ought to have known that sooner or later it would disappear. Although I hear all the turquoise remnants have magically reappeared in the limits of Naxxar which is where all the debris has been dumped.

Meanwhile the ground zero situation at the Ferries has been brought to a halt - so Pace's magic hasn't been entirely wiped out yet.

• I was thrilled to hear about George Abela's nomination for the presidency. For many of the reasons most everyone has written about - because Abela is who he is, an all-rounder who enjoys all round support. So I won't go there again.

More importantly, I like the idea of having someone from the opposition occupying a top position. That he's been on a political sabbatical for a while makes him even more appealing for the post. All in all it just seems a far less incestuous choice than the rest of them usually are.

• Like the rest of the world, the UK is bang in the middle of a bleak recession, with people having to choose between heating and eating. Parents are sharing baths with their children. They're chopping down trees to use as firewood for heating. They're not switching on the heating unless they absolutely need to, despite the cruel winter that they and the rest of Europe are experiencing.

Businesses continue to close down. Woolworths has shut its doors and close to 30,000 people have lost their jobs as a result. Bicycles are being used in lieu of cars.

In the middle of all this, football has gone mad and Manchester City is ready to pay over £103 million cash for Kaka, the 26-year-old Brazilian superstar who currently plays for AC Milan. It's madness and not something that I would not normally write about, but it does make you wonder.

When a team is ready to shell out that kind of money (apart from the weekly salary it will undoubtedly be paying) you are left wondering just where the world is going and where it will all go from here?

michelaspiteri@gmail.com