The lament of the Maltese townhouse

I am baffled, confused, hurt.

After all, I’m a good-looking townhouse, double-fronted (although that works against you these days because apparently I’m more suitable for redevelopment into flats that way), built and brought up in a well-located street in Sliema. My stonework is now a bit grimy, my blue shutters faded and sunburnt and windswept to a nondescript grey. And I even once boasted a smart gallarija and pretty carvings too.

So why on earth are these grey, badly dressed, pot-bellied guys putting some white, plastic-covered note on my side to say I’m going to be pulled down and replaced with more ugly flats? That’s all I can see around me anyway – ugly flats.

Why am I not worth keeping, I wonder? Why am I not loved anymore?

I remember being carefully and lovingly built by hand by craftsmen that make today’s contractors look like cowboys. When the first family moved in, we were packed. A large, noisy family of six kids. The mother died young, giving birth to number six. Then the father married the wife’s younger sister (quite a common practice in those days) who produced another four, but somehow I managed to keep them all happy. Ten children packed into three bedrooms. It was a home full of drama, laughter and people dropping by, something that these tiny nuclear families I see moving into these box-like caves called flats never experience today. No wonder Sliema’s population has fallen, despite all these flats. Rooms are just empty compared to my time.

Mind you, Sliema was

different then, too. It was

elegant, quiet, peaceful. And people loved us. People loved the Maltese townhouse, and the Sliema specimens were among the most fabulous of all. The Sliema townhouse looked so grand compared to what was built before. Each one of us had something

individual to show.

Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised they are going to pull me down. They pulled down my best-looking cousins along the Sliema Front years ago and few batted an eyelid. The money families made then seemed too tempting. Mind you, it was peanuts compared to what is being made today.

They say it’s all a bubble, but if it is, I’ve never seen a bubble that takes so long to burst!

But you would think they would have learnt something from the mistake of destroying that beautiful stone carving that was the Sliema Front. That Michael Falzon set up an organisation to help make sure that these things stopped. So why are they still happening? Why aren’t there more incentives to keep me, restore me, and get me lived in again? I heard a couple of those kartanzjani people in my street a couple of Sundays ago, talking about an article written by this same Michael Falzon. He was criticising the very organisation he actually set up.

It’s funny. These “houses of character” have more luck than we townhouses do. I wish I were a house of character in a village centre. They are making a much better job of restoring and preserving them. A decision seems to have been taken that, with so much of Sliema having been destroyed, let’s concentrate all the destruction there and just concentrate on building flats and, the latest craze, car parks.

What’s gone wrong? Why doesn’t anyone love us anymore? I’ve heard about this determined flaming redhead called Astrid Vella, who is leading a little revolt about us. I wonder if she’ll take me on as well. I don’t want to be put down. I want to be restored, and made to look good again. I want to house another family, or even be separated into two, as they have done with so many of my Victorian cousins on the streets of London? Why pull me down and replace me with something ugly?

It’s only a small consolation to know my replacement will be ugly. So ugly, in fact, that within 50 years it, too, will be pulled down. These blocks will have a much shorter shelf life than I have had – you can be sure of that.

I hope Astrid Vella is reading this, and that she has more luck with me than with that house in Ghar Il Lembi Street. They didn’t even bother to keep the facade there, to jolt the memory, you know.

Soon even I will be just a memory, if that...