One of the things that I love about Lija is a little bakery shop at the centre of the village. It is family run, but not as in husband-and-wife, or father-and-daughter, it’s the whole family: the mother runs the shop, the father bakes, and three children and grandchild give a helping hand, Swiss family Robinson like.

It was one of the first things that I discovered when I came to live here. And it was sheer serendipity. One Sunday morning, while out for a walk, I noticed that there was an ant-like queue of people walking towards the same direction: this tiny, unassuming, bakery with an old, panelled, wood-and-glass door. Inside, this shop was delightfully unlike all the photocopied convenience shops mushrooming in every corner.

That Sunday I learnt that it’s the Lijans’ place to go for the Sunday sin: the pasti bil-krema, kannoli, pastini and all the other joys for sweet-tooth people – which I am not – but even better, they had freshly baked ftiras and proper baguettes, plus they stocked the London papers. What struck me was that the people behind the counter seemed so happy doing whatever they were doing, and that was it, I was sold. From then on I became a regular.

I have real interaction with real people every day, I don’t need to do that virtually too

Being a regular means that it’s not rare that I turn up at their doorstep last thing at night, panting, my hair having got their before me, holding the door and gasping – “I just realised, please, do you have...?” and without my even having to finish the sentence, promptly a spotted orange carton of milk is placed in my hands. “Go, then pay me tomorrow.”

On other days when my hair is in place and when my breathing is inaudible they take the time to ask: “Everything okay Kristina?”, and we have delightful little chats. Over the past two years, I have gotten to know the family: the daughter who’s doing the master’s, her baby daughter who’s started taking her first steps; the son who recently got married, the father who lights the wood-burning oven. The thing is, they just know when the time is right for a conversation and when you urgently need to skip the queue, leave the money on the counter and dash off. 

Their life is around their little shop, but in a sense, they leave a mark on our lives – all of those who are their customers. Sometimes I’ll be at social dos, and people would come up to me and tell me “You don’t know me, but we buy our bread from the same shop. I live in a street not far away from the Bonacis.” Always, we proceed to greet each other like proper acquaintances and we end up having a little chat about the family and how they’ve saved the day for us many times in the micro-scale of life. Little things, such as, if you go in and ask for a ftira and it’s not yet out of the oven, they’ll tell you “Oh, don’t worry, go home, we’ll drop it off for you – will hang it on the door knocker.”

However, it’s not just a matter of having that food item that you desperately needed but forgot all about or dropping off bread for you when everyone at home is sick. It’s also the – how shall I put it – the philosophy of the shop.

A fortnight ago, I went to pick up the papers on a public holiday and at the counter I realised that I was mistaking the day for a Sunday. “It’s the birds,” the mother told me. “Listen.” And we stopped and listened to the sound of birds twittering from all the nearby gardens in Lija. “You can only hear them on public holidays and on Sundays because during the week the traffic drowns down their song.”

The mother then told me how much she enjoyed her garden, and how she took a conscious decision not to be on the grid at all. So she’s not on Facebook, no longer uses the internet unless her 20-year-olds want to show her something, and does not use the mobile phone anymore, ex­cept to text the milk deliveryman because he does not take calls.

It then struck me that her children, unlike all the other 20-somethings I know, are not all the time stuck to their mobile screens, their granddaughter is not given a mobile phone in hand to pass the time, but is given empty cardboard boxes to play at stacking or helps with whatever her family is doing.

“I have real interaction with real people every day, I don’t need to do that virtually too,” she said. “Life is more peaceful like this.”

I nodded. Here’s someone who makes the time to listen to her own thoughts. In this mad world, we’ve got a lot to learn from her and her family.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.