Joe Demanuele visits Ron Stark and Andrew Gilmore, who have chosen to retire in Valletta.
The moment I step into this jewel of an apartment in Valletta I cannot believe that the last time I was here – only three years ago – it was something completely different. Where there are now luxurious burgundy and old rose carpets there was once dreary grey felt and the charming blue and yellow tiles of the kitchen have replaced scuffed and uninteresting linoleum.
Ron Stark and Andrew Gilmore are British and share this striking home. The first thing I do is ask for the secret behind the ability for two men to live together: “We have lived together for 32 years and what one needs is tolerance,” says Ron with his blue eyes twinkling. At that moment Andrew, who comes from Belfast, walks in with mugs steaming with coffee, and adds: “Extreme tolerance”. They both burst out laughing and Andrew pushes up his glasses from the tip to the bridge of his nose. He hasn’t got the slightest hint of an Irish accent. This may be because he has lived in England for such a long time.
When apart from living together they also started working together everyone told them that it would be near impossible because no two people can tolerate to be in each other’s company round the clock. Andrew starts explaining: “At first I worked as a display manager while Ron worked with the homeless. We started the new business quite unexpectedly when a lady asked us to change a bulb in her flat. She then asked us to do a few odd jobs following which she told us that if we liked that sort of thing she would give us more work than we could ever hope to handle. She wasn’t lying either and gradually we started a decorating business!”
After many years of working in London they eventually grew tired of all the pressure. “It was impossible to park and that was very frustrating so we moved to the country – to Essex where the business continued to flourish.”
Eventually they semi-retired but they abhorred doing nothing and took up voluntary work. “We used to collect used greetings cards and recycle them for charities and we also used to produce religious plaques,” Ron explains. This activity grew to an enormous extent so that their home was often filled with boxes upon boxes of cards.
I look around and comment on the neatness of their apartment and Andrew jokes that he had washed the floors especially for my visit. I also notice the graceful and familiar statue of St Joseph with lilies in one hand and Baby Jesus in the other. On one wall is a picture of the Virgin Mary. Ron follows my gaze and he anticipates my question: “We converted to Roman Catholicism some ten years ago. It was at the time that the Church of England started ordaining women priests.
Funnily enough quite a few Anglican priests converted to Roman Catholicism and they were allowed to be priests even though they were married, some of them with children!”
Their love affair with Malta started because of a Maltese priest. “We met Monsignor Anton Galea ten years ago in England and he urged us to visit Malta. We arrived at 2am and the taxi driver did not know where the British Hotel was so we ended up lugging our suitcases around Valletta in the dead of night. When we eventually reached the hotel we were not exactly seeing everything in a rosy light. But when we opened the window of our hotel room and saw the magnificent Fort St Angelo lit up in the night all anger dissolved away and it became love at first sight – with Malta and its capital city,” Andrew recalls.
They then started coming back every year and two years ago they eventually decided to settle here. “We were still undecided between Valletta and Tuscany but when we saw this apartment with its six balconies and its potential we just forgot about Italy!” The weather and the fact that everyone speaks English here continued to tip the balance in favour of Malta. All the decoration of the apartment was done by Ron and Andrew except for the stylish and graceful hand paintings on the walls of the sitting room, which is their favourite room. “We met Rae Celeste in the King’s Own Band Club in Republic Street and we were pleasantly surprised by this man’s artistic abilities. He also painted the design on the wardrobe in Ron’s bedroom.
I step onto one of the balconies and Andrew joins me: “The only thing that we don’t like about Malta is that the people often don’t appreciate the riches with which they are surrounded”. In fact Andrew has often written letters to the local council and various other entities complimenting them on their successes and pointing out their shortcomings. He does not do this because he thinks that he can dictate to the locals but because of his deep love for Valletta. “I can’t stand the fact that restoration takes so long and that it is being done by foreigners when there are Maltese people who are perfectly capable of undertaking works of restoration,” he adds.
I am always amazed at how time flies when one is having a pleasant conversation especially with ‘outsiders’ who see us in a different light then we see ourselves. Andrew gets up and tells me that he must prepare the pork for this evening’s meal while Ron sips the last dredges of his coffee and speaks of his earliest memory. “I was brought up in the East End during the war and my earliest memory is being lifted up in my pram over a fireman’s pump. Our house was bombed twice and the church where I was baptized – St Augustine was also razed to the ground – the only thing that remained was the baptismal font!”