As one gets older one treasures more and more catching up with past acquaintances and freshening up old relationships. It happens to us all the time as old friends, emigrants returning from aboard to touch base with their own families in Malta and to spend months here on holiday. Sometimes people meet again casually after several years of not seeing one another as if Malta were some Australia or the United States.

Little do we realise that we live on a speck of land, a stone’s throw away from each other, yet so many years pass without meeting someone one has gone to school with or worked with years back.

I find reunions a great idea where one can meet again with people from one’s past. It is always interesting to find out where people have been in the years of absence from one’s life, what they have done, how their families have grown and what achievements they have been able to make. For me it is always a great pleasure to meet people with whom I grew up and with whom I worked in the first years.

My working life started early, at fifteen years of age after I had passed my GCEs, in the newsroom of the Times of Malta with one of the best news editors I have ever known, that strict no-nonsense taskmaster Joe Storace.

Many of those who were prominent in my life in my younger days will have passed on now and it is always a very sad day when one learns that those that one may have admired, indeed followed in one’s younger days are suddenly no longer with us.

I literally wept when Brother Hilary Clews passed away some years ago. That man dedicated himself to his students as a Christian Brother at the "Freres" in Gzira. He not only taught the English language as only he could teach it, not only did he inculcate a love for reading and literature in his students as only Brother Hilary could but, as the superb educator he was, he instilled in each and everyone of us, his students, the values that he believed would serve us in good stead in life.

I kept in remote touch with him over the years as my own career developed and as, with a young and growing family, I tried to get myself out of what was to me an unsatisfying existence as a graduated teacher in the primary schools, hoping to embark on a full time journalistic career in radio after having had a first taste of the medium as soon as I was out of secondary school. The rest was just a matter of luck.

I was invited to join radio full time in 1961 by the then general manager of Rediffusion Graham Binns, after he heard some interviews I had recorded at the United Nations studios in Geneva where I was attending the World Refugee Year International Conference as the Secretary of the Malta World Refugee Year Committee.

The Director General of UN Radio, American Irving Berenson, had included some of my interviews in his weekly programme Perspective 61. The tapes were received in Malta by Rediffusion on free distribution from the UN office in Geneva. The rest was just my good fortune. My career made steady progress in spite of some hiccups now and again.

This week I went back into my past voluntarily. Together with my crew from NET television, cameraman Roberto Runza and production assistants Anna Maria Grima and Sergio Mallia I travelled to Rome for practically a day and a half to meet and to interview a personality who in my younger days as a Rediffusion reporter and later as Head of Programmes in the early sixties was a top international guitarist with millions of records to his name.

He is Peter van Heuten or, as he is known throughout Europe and the rest of the world, Peter Van Wood. In the sixties Peter Van Wood ranked with the top recording artistes of the time. Crowds idolized him wherever he went. Victor Aquilina, at the time Malta’s top DJ invited Peter Van Wood to Malta, to the Radio City as it was then and to the Rediffusion studios.

Hundreds of people, turned up at the airport to greet him and his shows at the Radio City were a riot. Peter Van Wood returned to Malta several times during his music career and he was known to have invented a way of writing music in which he seemed to be conversing with his guitar.

In his teens, as a young man growing up in hiding in German-occupied Holland, Peter Van Wood read avidly about astrology. It was a way for him to pass the time reading a subject that fascinated him. Some 20 years ago, Peter decided to leave his music career behind and start anew as an astrologer.

In Italy he became instantly popular and for several years Van Wood was a constant fixture on RAI together with Fabio Fazio in a popular Sunday afternoon sport programme. Peter Van Wood is still RAI’s favourite astrologer having seen his predications realised time and time again.

A Romano per eccellenza, he has since moved out of the Rome centre to take up residence in an area on the Roman hills where many other celebrities also have their residence. He lives with his wife Laura to whom he has been married for 28 years, a peaceful and calm way of life, still giving astrological advice to those who require and request his services.

The phone never stopped ringing as we tried to record in his office. Offers from newspapers, television stations and request for meetings from individuals were constantly being passed to his secretary. Daniela.

As the Christmas period was approaching, and as it is PN policy to keep politics out of its radio and television programmes during the Christmas and New Year period, my assistants and I were looking for non-political themes to deal with. For someone like me, whose programmes invariably centre round politics one way or another it was not easy.

I was helped by the fact that two programmes I had wanted to put together for several months were also suitable for the Christmas period. I have wanted, for several weeks, to discuss Maltese monetary contributions to the Missions, and what happens to the money that the Maltese give in hundreds of thousands, and I was lucky that one of the kingpins of the Missions, Gozitan Fr George Grima was also in Gozo for Christmas.

I invited him together with a number of other “missionaries” to discuss the issue with me on Opinjonisti.

In a second programme which was broadcast by Net TV this week, I invited more people who collect money for the Missions and who set up projects in Africa in Latin America and in other parts of the world for the poor, the destitute and the homeless. Most of the projects supported by Maltese Mission funds goes to saving children from hunger, from crime and from an untimely death.

It was edifying to learn from the protagonists how the money was spent and to see for myself, through the videos they brought with them, how effective the Maltese and Gozitan priests, nuns and lay people are in helping those who need their assistance most in a world that we Maltese know absolutely nothing of.

I was also pleased be able to interview one of my favourite personalities, Bishop Nikol Cauchi, Bishop of Gozo for Thursday’s show. Mgr Cauchi will always be one of my all time favourites who I would be willing to converse with and listen to for long hours if ever he had the time.

Talking with Peter Van Wood about his visits to Malta was like taking a drive in a time machine that took us both back at least 45 years. We had one full day to film with him in his house and, considering that we arrived at about 10:30 in the morning, because a driver we hired allegedly lost the way and took much longer to get to the house, naturally making us pay a bit more for the trip than we should have, the time left to us was reasonably short.

After hugs and kisses we got down to business. In spite of his advancing years there are two things about Peter that still distinguish him. His memory is still as sharp as ever. He recalls instances, events, names and locations in Malta, that remain pleasurable memories for him, as if those events happened last week.

He recalls with a gleam in his eye the concert he gave for schoolchildren in Malta. “ The pleasure in their eyes” he told me “ is still emblazoned in my heart and in my recollections.”

The second is his mastery of the guitar at which he excels to this day. The rest of the morning was dedicated to a long interview I did with him, which I will split into two editions of Opinjonisti.

After an exquisite lunch prepared by Laura, the afternoon was dedicated to the horoscopes I had asked him to study for us from Internet web pages that I found for President Eddie Fenech Adami, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Leader of the Opposition Dr Alfred Sant.

All of these included a vital element for Peter to be able to look into their stars – the date of birth. We also added a few singers that are well known here and e-mailed their web pages to him. He surprised us all with his insight into the personalities we had suggested to him and the realism with which he drew their horoscopes. That also applied to the singers whose names we had suggested to him.

Then Peter drew up his predications for 2005 for each and every sign in the Zodiac. In Italy he has published his Book of Horoscopes for 15 years and this year’s edition is particularly smart. Unfortunately the publication is not sold in Malta.

During the recording we also asked Peter to play one of his favourite songs on the guitar so that we could record it. His mastery of the guitar is absolutely incredible. He played Butta La Chiave, giving us the name of the song in Maltese as he remembered it from 40 years ago Itfaghli c-Cavetta (Throw me the Key). His technique of speaking to the guitar and getting a reply from the chords is still as good as it was all those many years ago.

When we left Peter and Laura late that evening, Peter looked as fresh as I had seen him when we first entered the house. He did not look tired and he performed as if he was on stage playing for the crowds that have adulated him and his guitar for decades. Like every other professional, his work keeps Peter Van Wood young at heart, ready and willing to be the showman he has always been for the best part of half a century. Give him a camera, show him a make-up bag and he’s off.

God bless you Peter Van Wood. God bless you also for a wonderful wife Laura. Keep well my friend. I can’t see the horizon yet for either of us.

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