If you could choose to live anywhere in the world, where would you like to be? Why do you live where you are now? Is this where you were born and grew up, where your parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles live? Or have you been transplanted here in the search for work, for security, for a better life?
But if you could choose, and had the freedom to move, what would the criteria be? A good job, never mind the environment? Or clean air, quiet country lanes, a mountain view? Maybe the excitement of city life with theatre, concerts and shopping close by?
My own itchy feet are beginning to tingle again. The flat I'm renting is in the process of being sold and I'll have to move out around six months from now. I thought I'd just look for another flat close to this one - until I saw a notice of planning permission sought for the building next door. Construction in Malta is no joke, and is impossible to avoid. It's noisy - really, really noisy - thanks to the machines used to cut limestone blocks and tiles; it's dirty for the same reasons, the thick grey dust coats my windowsills even now; and it's slow and never stops - even in this recession. Ernle Bradford, writing about the Knights of St John in 1972, noted "Malta is in fact a giant stone-quarry... and from neolithic times onwards it seems as if this mass of easily-quarryable stone has induced a paroxysm of building in the island's inhabitants." (The Shield and the Sword: Ernle Bradford, p.204)
If you have the perfect place in mind: peaceful (in all senses of the word), with green trees, a blue ocean, glorious mountains, and - of course - affordable accommodation, let me know where it is!
Sun setting behind Gozo, viewed from Qawra, Malta - not as peaceful as it looks.
