SERENITY NOW

Ok, since returning from Malta, I’ve done absolutely nothing of interest apart from sample another pub older than the Australian colonies (Southwark Tavern at the Borough Markets) and shoot around at the local outdoor basketball court in zero degree temperatures one night last week – with flocks of unseen birds singing in the trees all around in the darkness, strangely enough (aren’t they all supposed to be working on their tans on African beaches right now? G'day climate change).

No-one I knew was doing anything for Australia Day here last weekend (I could've wandered over to such vomit-encrusted delights as The Church or one of the Walkabout Pubs, but I've done all the mixing with verminous YAABs as I'm ever going to voluntarily do), and nothing major was organised, so I didn’t bother doing anything for it. Would've like to, but this place is like a big wet blanket on the Fun Fire right now. Sounds like everyone at Burleigh got an absolutely tremendous show on Oz Day, though.

So anyway, above are just some piccies of my street that I’ve been meaning to throw on here. My place is in the bottom picture, second set of windows up on the corner of the far building.

Hmm what else can I report on here? Well, my morbid fascination with the collapse of the entire United Kingdom continues to grow. The Good Ship HMAS Brittania is sinking, and sinking fast. Don't know the full horror is being communicated to everyone in Oz or Canada or the US, but suffice it to say that when the IMF says the UK is going to get the biggest smackdown out of all Western countries, you can bet things aren't exactly smelling like roses here at the mo'.

Every single day brings news of another 1000-or-so job losses, as yet another company slips under the chilly administrator’s blanket-of-no-return with a puzzled frown and a last gasp of redundancies. Every day the blame is sprayed around like grapeshot by anyone with access to a microphone or an editor – it’s the government’s fault, it’s the banks’ fault, it’s the real estate agents’ fault, it’s the developers’ fault, it’s the consumers’ fault. Work colleagues sporting frazzled expressions and fingernails well into negative growth territory regularly take me aside in the photocopier room and quietly-yet-earnestly tell me of their desire to escape overseas and ask how Australia's economy is holding up.

But the Finger O' Blame is increasingly being pointed squarely at The Grin That Walks, former PM Tony Blair, and his dark shadow of a Chancellor at the time, current PM Gordie, for championing the freedom of the markets and refusing to intervene in the feeding frenzy at the trough. And every day the UK looks more and more like it’s going to implode. Come soon for the bargains!

At work, it’s just going from the pitiful to the utterly ridiculous. I work on the 18th (top) floor, which only has 3 general use meeting rooms for about 100 people. One of these is a big conference room that seats around 20, and has a huge wall of windows with expansive 180-degree views north all the way into central London and beyond – you can see the Millennium Dome, Wembley Stadium, the towers of Canary Wharf , Big Ben, St Paul ’s Cathedral etc quite clearly – and it’s usually booked. The Powers-That-Be decided today that this is to be the Council's Serenity Room. That’s right, Serenity Room. Aussies across the organization have been trading Kerrigan and The Castle jokes allllllllllllllllllllll day (“Smell that? Two stroke”).

The workmen came and yanked out all the furniture this morning and no-one knew what was going on. Then we were told indirectly that it had become a Serenity Room by order of the CEO, who, it was breathlessly claimed, reportedly told Building Management's manager "I don't care which room you stick it in, just pick one". Then we later found out indirectly that "Serenity Room" was actually another term for a Multi-Faith Prayer Room, so then the email jibes reached fever pitch.

But the old regulars in my section are utterly outraged – so much so you’d think someone had told them they now have to wear burqas and curly-toed slippers to work. Scandal and outrage. My manager, who’s not the calmest gent at the best of times to say the least, was talking at least 2 octaves higher all day after hearing of the decision. Watching the impotent arm-flailing and screeching and gnashing of teeth from all the "colourful characters" I work with was easily the best laugh I've had since I started work here - despite the fact that The Office tv series was undoubtedly based on the section I work in. Cannot wait til the first worshippers turn up to use the new facility. The laughs in an English office job are few and far between.

Nothing else has really happened. Yawn. It's about to get arctic again this weekend / next week as a massive cold front being sent Special Delivery from Siberia is about to envelope us. Doesn't bother me, I'm off to Sri Lanka on Friday for two weeks. Curry, beaches, temples, jungle, elephants, leapords and hopefully blue whale-spotting. Serenity Now.

ARCTIC LONDON

Ah, post-Christmas winter in London.

Yessiree, it’s been a tad nippy here in the Old Dart recently. For a few days last week it was even colder in London than it was in Greendland or parts of Antarctica (-11 degrees Celsius). The ocean froze at Dorset (see pic above), the Trafalgar Square fountains froze over (ditto), lakes and ponds froze over and foot long icicles formed in my street. Bookies started lowering their odds on the Thames getting chunky, school was cancelled for porky little primary schoolers in numerous areas out of fear that they might devour their bus drivers if they got stuck in a snowdrift en route, and I got a few dustings of huge fluffy snowflakes on my morning walks to the train station. Slightly warmer now, but only just. Aye, i’s been royt interestin’, me ol’ muckers.

Other London-y bits of interest:

· New Years – didn’t do much at all, hundreds of thousands people here were sick with colds, flus and the dreaded nonovirus, so not as many people went out, apparently. I stayed at home and watched the rich drunken neighbours set off fireworks from their rooftop balconies at 11pm. No apartments or rich drunken neighbours caught fire, unfortunately.

· More big names in the world of consumer products have been chewed up and spat out by the C****t C****h (as the w*nker editorialists in the papers here now refer to it – oh, my sides). Both Marks and Spencer and Debenhams started shedding jobs last week after the post-Xmas rush turned out to be a stroll. And Wedgewood, the fine china flogger which also happened to own Waterford Crystal and Royal Daulton, has called in the administrators. The dirge continued sounding today as Barclays gave 4000 of their employees the big Double Mocha Sackicino as well. Hopefully the entire mass-produced pop music industry will be given their Permanent Coffee Breaks later this week. Getting goosebumps of delight already at the thought of Girls Aloud and Boyzone having to line up at the Social office next to toothless Milwall supporters.

· My gym is packed with wretched New Years' Resolutioners clogging up the free weights area with their shiney new outfits and soon-to-evaporate enthusiasm. The cretins. I tolerate their presence because I know that, by the end of February, all of them will be back in their cosy local boozers, sucking down pints and bucket-sized glasses of Pinot instead, having convinced themselves once again that walking to and from the train counts as “exercise” and will save them from looking like Vicky Pollard or Ronnie Barker in a few years’ time. Very London.

· An escaped horse decided to canter into the lobby of his nearest cinema to check out the latest box office releases, prompting much spilling of popcorn and fizzy drinks onto tracksuits. Rumours that he left in disgust upon seeing High School Musical 3 still on the billboard are yet to be confirmed.

- The government announced today that they were going to push on with plans to build a third runway at Heathrow, meaning thousands of nearby houses will get the Big Yellow Machine Makeover. The airwaves and news broadcasts tonight have consequently been full of howls of protest, teeth-gnashing, clothes-rending and spirited-yet-polite discussion. Boris Johnson apparently even BLOW-DRIED AND STYLED HIS HAIR for a press-conference on the topic, causing everyone to momentarily forget the topic completely. Am going to have to commence self-flagellation if I miss seeing THAT on the late news. Some things are a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

- Almost forgot: after Croydon Council dropped one politician (our ex-IRA operative councillor), we're down another. Our Mayor. He dropped dead of a heart attack on New Year's Eve, apparently. At this rate I'll be CEO by Easter. Hobbiton-upon-Croydon, anyone?

So that's all the news that's fit to print (or that I can remember right now here in my room). Hope you're all well, and yes, fill me in on your latest shenanigans, you nutty bunch of scamps, you.

MALTA - THE LAND OF PRICKLY PEAR AND JOHNNY CASH

Last Friday afternoon saw me departing from The Land That Forgot How To Pronounce The Letter “T”, bound for a small, history-rich nation in the middle of the Med aboard a Ryan Air flight (Xmas pressie from Mum and Dad-cheers!), full of dark-eyed women and octogenarians with Yorkshire accents. Indeedy, it was off to Malta – the tiny island nation that’s twice taken everything the World’s Baddest Nation at the time could throw at it and still come up trumps.



Famous for the steely-eyed seige-busting antics of the Knights of St John (formerly Knights Hospitallers), refusing to throw in the towel despite copping the Grand Daddy of all pastings from the Nazis in WWII, spectacular scuba-diving and rockpools, nougat and prickly pear liquer (honestly), this little island has got some seriously interesting quirks to it. For example:

· The Maltese look almost Arabic and they speak Malti, which sounds like a cross between Italian and Arabic, but can all speak English pretty fluently due to England’s long occupation and friendly support through their darkest years. And they drink pale ale. So you can still have a natter with them when they're six sheets to the wind.

· The English influence goes further than just the ability to hold booze-addled convos with Pommy tourists, however – the red phone booths and post boxes are exactly the same as those here in London and the buses are all old ‘60’s-era Leylands relics, shipped over from England once they’d failed their roadworthy. Same with lots of the cars in Malta – similar-vintage Minis and Cortinas and other famous old British family cars crash around the narrow roads looking like they’re held together with ruber bands and prayers. Love it.

· The aforementioned prickly pear was introduced to Malta from the Americas and got right down to business reproducing itself at a biblical rate as it did in Australia. However the Maltese fell in love with the ugly little b*gger, and today they not only make liquer out of it, but candies, sweets, sauces and dividing walls for their rocky, terraced fields (instead of the usual stone walls). I even saw a few plots where the farmer had used huge prickly pear “leaves” as weights to hold down his irrigation pipes. Whereas we in Oz spent hundreds of thousands of dollars chopping, spraying, burning and chain-felling the stuff before introducing Monsieur Cactoblastis to have a nibble. Hmmmmm.

· The Maltese do not know what Maltesers are. I asked. Many times. They don’t know. Export opportunity for Nestle right there.

· They’re one of the very earliest Christian civilizations on the planet. And by Great Odin's raven, do they love a good church.

· The Knights of St John obviously weren’t Maltese but got “given” the islands by the Pope in the mid-1500’s, which didn’t sit too well with the locals at the time. But then the Ottoman Turks, under Suleyman the Magnificent (the equivalent of Darth Vader at that time) tried to invade in 1565. The Knights of St John thought that was a bit rude, and managed to persuade the entire population (except some snooty Maltese aristocrats who took their ball and holed up in Mdina) to aid them in the struggle. Nothing like a common enemy, ey?

The Turks had been doing the Viking routine on Malta for decades, so the locals jumped at the chance to hit back at the local bully by helping out during what was to become one of the greatest sieges in history. During which the Turks had the snot beaten out of them by a force less than a fifth its size, thanks in no small part to the frankly stunning escapades of the Maltese men, women and children. Reading all the accounts of the seige, you can almost see the Maltese standing next to the Knights on the shattered ramparts of Fort St Elmo, shouting out things like “And the camel you rode in on” or “Suleyman sucks minaret” at the Turkish fleet as it limped away across the Med to Constantinople. They were some spicey little Maltesers, alright.



- In the early phase of World War Two, the Nazis and the Italianos dropped more bombs on Malta (the hub of England's naval presence in the Med at the time) than all of southern England copped during the Blitz, mainly because His Majesty's Royal Navy wasn't playing fair with the Nazi ships supplying the Desert Fox in North Africa. In fact, Malta still holds the record for copping the heaviest sustained bombing attack in history: 154, count 'em, 154 days and nights and 6,700 tons of bombs. So quit your whingeing, Baghdad! For their bravery and for holding out against simply laughable odds, the entire Maltese population was awarded the George Cross, England's highest civilian honour for bravery - the only nation ever to receive such an honour. Lesson learnt - never take on a Malti in a staring competition. They never blink first.

Anyway, so here’s what I did/saw/thought while in situ:

• Got a great introduction to Malta with my transfer bus driver playing Johnny Cash at volume as we went up on two wheels round corners and ripped past semi-Arabic, semi-Italian houses, massive churches, plots of aubergines and citrus groves sandwiched between old apartment blocks.


• Stayed in Sliema the first night, in a decent-enough hotel, for 7 euros a night. Was right on the promenade overlooking the water and Manoel Island and, further behind that to the east, the capital city, Valetta, with its forts and domes all gently lit in the darkness. Did a nice cruise of the Grand Harbour (where most of the action during the 1565 Great Seige took place) the next morning, wandered Valetta's steep and narrow but oh-so-grubbily-picturesque streets, wandered through the Palace but missed the Cathedral (was shut for maintenance). Had a quick look in The Pub, an authentic English dark-wood-and-lanterns boozer where Oliver Reed carked it doing what he did best (getting absolutely trousered) while on location for "Gladiator" (shot in Malta). Surprisingly not cheesy. The whole thing was kind of village-y in a way - lots of wizened little old ladies sweeping their doorsteps and smiling at you as you walk past and stocky, barrel-chested men in labourer's clothes sipping pints and tiny red wines outside tiny little bars and cafes.


• The local fashion was much the same as anywhere else in Europe- meaning most teenage boys wore far too much gel in their hair and deeply dodgy tracksuits.


• Saturday night I stayed in Mgarr, a small steep harbour town on the south coast of Gozo (the northern island) with fantastic views back to Comino (small island between Malta and Gozo, scuba central) and Malta's main island. My hotel (Grand Hotel, 20 euros a night for something that'd cost 100+ in London - result!) was perched high on the hillside overlooking the harbour full of brightly-coloured fishing boats and the farm plots that hugged the hillside down to the water's edge. Had the local delicacy (roast rabbit) at a nifty restaurant down near the harbour that night. Avoided car-load of drunken tourists on walk back up hill to hotel by about 5 centimeters. Resolved immediately to never walk near speeding carloads of drunken tourists again.


• Sunday morning I went up to Victoria (or Rabat as the locals call it), Gozo's main "city" in the centre of the island. Gozo Cathedral's niiiiice - the only one I've seen in person that uses rich red tapestries from floor to ceiling - lush. Had a coffee in Cafe Jubilee just off the town square - this place was one of those gorgeous character-filled little narrow bars that you don't want to leave, a mix of French bistro and Italian cafe bar with an atmosphere that literally had me feeling like I was my loungeroom. Best of all, no tourists. Apart from the tall skinny one.


• Victoria / Rabat, and Gozo as a whole, were much less touristy than Malta proper. It has fewer people than Roma, in Queensland (5,000 or so) but it seems so much more vibrant and refined while still being rustic and relaxed at the same time. The labyrinth of old streets behind the main squares of Victoria were fantastic and completely navigation-resistant. I could usually see straight through people's houses through their ornate open doors and out to their foliage-draped internal courtyards, which made it feel like I was getting a free glimpse into the heart of Maltese life. But I missed St John's Basilica (called the gilded cathedral for a very good reason, judging by the pics). Bummer. To make up for it, I scored great views of the whole of Gozo from the top of the Citadel (old fort) in the town's hilltop centre. You can see across rocky, terraced, kelly-green fields to all the small towns scattered over the island, each dominated by a ridiculously-oversized church. Cue longing for a digital SLR camera.


• The most amazing sight I clocked wasn't one of the churches or fortresses or natural landscapes. I was in the middle of Valetta, wandering the quiet Saturday morning streets, fair few people out and about but you could hear the bells of the boats down in the harbour half a kilometre away. Suddenly, a local gadfly man-about-town in a clapped-out old Cortina came absolutely blazing out of a side-street up ahead of me on one of Valetta's long, straight, steep and very narrow streets, drifting sideways, then floored it 2 blocks downhill to the intersection I was standing at, which had a tiny, crowded bar on one side and a busy florist on the other. He then pulled a massive drift maneuver right in front of me, tyres squealing, car sideways again, and shot off into the side street to my right. All with one elbow hanging out the window, steering one handed and singing along to The Beatles' "Help" on his tinny old stereo at top volume. And then the blokes standing out the front of the bar and the ladies out the front of the florist all cheered and clapped and laughed. And then it was quiet again in the centuries-old city of Valetta. It all happened so fast that I was left standing there looking around thinking "Did that just happen?"


• The car ferry back to Malta from Gozo was packed on Sunday afternoon - and bizarrely, they had a stonking 2-piece band playing live covers of indie hits in the rear lounge who were studiously ignored by the throngs of elderly Brit tourists (where did they come from??). Outrageous. A bunch of young Maltese lads and myself made sure to give them a good round of applause after each tune.


• The Malti's seemed generally relaxed, and friendly and they all seemed fairly affectionate towards each other (especially the old couples, who love stroking each other's faces no matter where they are or who's looking). Despite their proficiency with the English language they're still definitely more Mediterranean than British (all those cars and busses and letterboxes and pubs are just a veneer) and they're probably slightly more Arabic than Italian. But Christian. With a taste for ale. And rabbit.


• They also seemed fairly religious on both Gozo and Malta too, with Virgin Mary or Jesus statues on every third building's corner, in wall recesses outside people's doors, in light-bulb-illuminated shrines in the middle of nowhere, even on some of the fishing boats cruising past in the Harbour. Guess you would be if you'd spent a large portion of your history defending the Faith against Muslim raiders hell-bent on converting you, enslaving you or bandinado'ing you to death (look that word up. Sounds fun. But isn't).


• Overall,Malta has got that great semi-rundown-yet-picturesque look and feel and relaxed attitude towards rules that you find in countries all around the Med - but without the craziness and manic pace. That could've been due to the fact that it's currently winter, though. It's not a pumping party destination and it's not the most utterly spectacular sightseeing destination either, but it's definitely worth another look in Spring when its snorkelling weather.
  
• Final point: when I left Valetta to get to the airport, I jumped onto another old rickety Leylands bus. Lo and behold, the bussie (who looked all of 17) was Walkin' The Line with Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison on a boombox perched on the back of his seat. The Man In Black seems to be kind of a big deal in Malta. Which makes me love the place in a strange non-descript way, actually. Go see for yourself if you've never been.