Queuing last month at my local mini-market, I couldn’t help overhearing two foreigners. One, who sounded distinctly American, had been on the island since October and “just loved it here”. She urged the other – a rookie? – to visit Comino’s Blue Lagoon.   

Why remember that? You’ll discover all in good time. For the moment, just know that as a dog owner I get into conversations with locals and foreigners. Some of the latter have sold up to come here, and I’ve got into a habit of asking them, and visitors generally, what they think of the island. The majority love it. Perhaps they’re just being polite, but I doubt it. Foreigners don’t usually mince words if they sense a ready ear.    

A Frenchman recently had this to say: “Malta makes me well. Sometimes I have the feeling of wanting to live here, even if it is not my country. There are beautiful things. Wow Mdina! The sea transports me to an impressionist canvas, to the marvellous city of Valletta. From my pen I share my emotions with delight. Malta is magic.”

Yes, he sounds a bit like a French-to-English Google translation but his random texts are wonderful and make me happy and proud. They also make me sad. And that’s because they’re a sobering reminder of what Malta could be like, were it not for the prevailing culture of obstinate and insensitive individualism and the low levels of enforcement and political will.

Yes, Malta is ‘magical’, especially if one is prepared to be blind in one direction and deaf in another. But as someone who has always lived here, at times in a state of nervous despair and tension, I’ve become anaesthetised to many of its shortcomings. Yet I’m still left wondering how this island can boast a ‘silent city’ yet revel in cacophony in every other. Is silence good for some but not for the rest? What makes Mdina and its inhabitants so special? 

What about Żebbuġ, Sliema or Valletta?  Does bringing the capital back to life have to involve inconsiderate construction and amplified music? What about the residents, dare one ask? 

Even as a visitor, I tried having lunch a few weeks ago and couldn’t even focus on the menu for all the drilling and chasing going on next door. I sought the waiter’s help – no dice – and felt sorry for the other patrons, most of whom were foreigners.

So I left the restaurant and pleaded with the worker (also foreign) to stop drilling so that we could dine in peace. He kindly obliged. I returned to my table and thought “If I can do that, without a badge, I’m pretty sure real enforcement could go a lot further.”

You should know me by now: I’ll always mount my soapbox when the subject is noise. So I’ll say it again. Streets and other public spaces belong to everyone; and as far as possible, they should be neutral areas, not appropriated by a single person or group. And that goes for beaches and lagoons. 

I did have an epiphany… the true meaning of a word that has puzzled my son for years – ħamalli

Which brings me at last to the Blue Lagoon. I spent last weekend in Comino. Friday night was perfect. All the boats understood the meaning of ‘shared space’. But by Saturday afternoon a contingent from Malta had arrived and I knew there’d be trouble, even from the way the 13 boats were lined up in what came to resemble a shanty boat-town. Yet I could have lived with that: it was the noise that kept me awake which was the problem.

I can’t begin to tell you how loud and awful it was. I waited till 11pm, hoping it would subside. But it didn’t. From the Macarena to Superstition to All Night Long. And what a long night it turned out to be. Replete with horn blasting, yelling, screaming and political chanting. Even Claudette Buttigieg’s Desire and Modern Talking’s We Take The Chance: their chance to show the whole bay who they were and where their political loyalties lay.

Surreal is not a word I often use. It was like – what? – ransacking a house and then leaving your visiting card. Letting their side down, at any rate. 

The music lasted till 3am, which was when, several Panadols later, I finally managed to pass out. Before that, as I lay in my cabin, willing sleep and gazing from my little porthole at the stars (so ironically serene), I found myself wondering how the other boats, some with children, were faring.

Some were classy foreign yachts. Would these people flee our disappointing islands in the morning and head for the Greek Islands?  And what gives these people the right to impose their music on an unsuspecting public endowed with the same rights as theirs? Would they relish a Shostakovich string quartet keeping them awake? Or a Baroque organ at full stretch cramping their ‘style’? Why then should I have to listen to their thumping? We’re not talking musical taste here: we’re talking silence. Or headphones.

But I did have an epiphany… the true meaning of a word that has puzzled my son for years – ħamalli. It’s not a word I’ve explained or encouraged him to use. But here it was, right before me, without ever having laid eyes on these people: crass, churlish, vulgar, desensitised and obstinately selfish, ‘high’ on their collective sense of extraordinary and extravagant entitlement, aided and abetted by their country’s culture of lack of enforcement.

If people want to misbehave or make a noise, arguably they can do it within their own soundproofed property. In the meantime, we desperately need tourism police and sea patrols. On an island measuring 3.5km with just three permanent inhabitants, that should be a cinch. If good order is brought to Comino, and indeed everywhere else, discerning, affluent visitors won’t leave us. And the magic of Malta will be preserved for all of us. Recommending the Blue Lagoon will hold good too. 

michelaspiteri@gmail.com