I have only been to The Point twice since it opened since I can't walk and using that nightmare underground car park gives me the creeps. I thought that nothing could beat the horrors of the Hilton car park but the one at The Point takes the biscuit.

Anyway I had to go to exchange a gift and got there when the massive blackout had started so most of the shops were in darkness and the escalators weren't working. Some of the shops and the lifts were operational but unfortunately not the shop I wanted.
Now anyone would be forgiven for thinking that a big place like that has no sunlight coming in from anywhere and where you are buried alive, would have a generator since power cuts in Malta aren't something rare ,but I was wrong and it hasn't.
After sitting there for over an hour waiting for the power to come back to the New Look shop I gave up and I left and I wasn't the only one as when I arrived there were several people waiting who ended up leaving thus depriving the shop of business. I for one won't be going back as I hate the place.
How anyone would rather go underground to shop (or work for that matter) instead of walking around our Sliema streets which are full of shops just beats me.
What made me feel so very sad going to Tigné was seeing a once very beautiful part of Sliema being turned into an expensive slum. What was once such a lovely area now has towering blocks everywhere and how anyone can even think of spending millions of euros to go and live there beats me. I wouldn't go and live there if they paid me.
My aunt and uncle used to live in a house in St. Mary street corner with Matthew Pulis Street and I loved going there before all the rampant building took over. From their house we had a panoramic view of Valletta and up to Manoel Island. From the roof we could even see my other uncle going out of my granny’s house all the way along the seafront close to the Pebbles hotel, crossing the street and rowing his boat to Manoel Island and swimming.
My granny had one of those huge, beautiful houses where the main entrance was in St. Agatha Street and the back on the seafront. It's still there but now it's just dwarfed by more and more towering flats blocking all the sun.
What makes me even sadder is the fact that my children and their children will never ever know how beautiful the Tigné area was once. I remember halcyon days and nights when my uncle used to go fishing and we used to go swimming at the point where there were no buildings and all along the front there were only lovely houses. If you go to Valletta and look over to Sliema all you can now see aren't grand , old houses but monstrous blocks of buildings and I just wonder how anyone in his/her right senses could grant even more permits for even more buildings.
Will the madness ever stop? I don't think so and soon this lovely island of ours will be just one concrete mass of buildings and nothing else with no sun anywhere, where children would hardly dare set foot outside because of all the traffic and where what was once  a peaceful, little island will be turned into a concrete jungle(or has that already happened???)

Margaret Camilleri-Pace
Sliema