Hacked to Death in Your Bed

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Today we’ve arranged to catch up with Issy’s second cousin Kevin who lives here in Gozo in the nearby village of Xaghra. I’ve got absolutely no idea how to pronounce that, and I’ve now given up trying to pronounce any Maltese words because Issy just laughs at me whenever I do. It doesn’t help that the Maltese alphabet includes a lot of strange additions that change the way letters are pronounced - a cross through an “h”, dots above “g”’s, “z”’s and “c”‘s - all very mysterious.

Kevin’s house mightn’t be far away, but it might as well be on Mars for all the help the GPS is in navigating our way there. Its special trick today is to constantly try to take us the wrong way down one way streets. Very amusing … not. Anyway we’re getting a good look at the countryside. One thing that stands out is that most of the villages both here and in Malta are built on the tops of hills and ridges, whereas back home most towns are in the bottoms of valleys next to rivers. It seems the Maltese approach stems from historic times when invasions were the order of the day. I suppose if you lived in constant fear of being hacked to death in your bed it would have been nice to have some advance warning so you could at least dress appropriately for the occasion. Oz’s early settlers didn’t have those same concerns, but they did get a bit twitchy about the possibility of not being able to get a drink. I wonder what the early Maltese did for water. Based on what we’ve seen here so far I’m fairly sure there’s no such thing as a Maltese river, or at least not one that’s got any water in it.

Kevin and his wife Katerina live in a beautiful house, and yes it’s in a village on the top of a ridge. Katerina is originally from Portugal. She met Kevin when she first came to Gozo back in 2014, and they’ve only recently been married. She says she tried to learn Maltese, but she’s now given up; she says that she prefers not to be able to understand what the locals are saying when they swear at each other, which she says seems to happen constantly. I’m with Katerina, although Issy’s always telling me that the Maltese are just passionate people, and while they might sound like they’re swearing at each other constantly they’re usually just having what they would regard as a normal conversation. Kevin and Katerina share their house with their gorgeous dog, Gudu, who Kevin’s mother Nancy rescued from the side of the road when he was only a pup.

Kevin‘s an artist. He’s had a few career changes over the journey including one period when he took groups on meditation programs to the forests of Ecuador. He used to paint using traditional techniques, but has now given this away in favour of digital art. He’s currently using a technique involving artificial intelligence; he demonstrates this to us by putting some random prompt words into the computer and then watching on as it goes about generating composite images based entirely on artificial intelligence. He says that that’s the easy bit, the skill comes in selecting and refining the images, and then “stitching” them together into the final product. He shows us a work in progress. The “stitching” process in this one’s got six hours still to run on a powerful machine, which presumably means it would take several lifetimes if you had to do it manually … and it usually takes several iterations to get it right. The detail is incredible. He’s got some of the final products hanging in the house, and they look stunning.

We enjoy a very relaxing lunch overlooking a small sandy beach at Hondoq Bay, looking out towards Comino. Kevin told us that Gudu was an escape artist and he’s proved it again today. They have to board up the windows when they go out to avoid him diving out and taking the fly screens with him. It seems that today he’s managed to open their bedroom door which they thought they’d locked, and we get back to find the recently installed fly screen destroyed and Gudu nowhere to be seen.

We take a post-dinner stroll along the Marsalforn waterfront. It’s nearly pitch black when we hear a voice shouting “Isabelle” behind us. The voice belongs to a second cousin of Issy’s who she’s never met, but who recognised her in the near pitch darkness from pictures on Facebook. We’re introduced to Romina’s sister Gloria and their families who were enjoying a meal at a restaurant when Romina thought she recognised Issy as we walked past. I know Malta’s a small place, but this really is ridiculous.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Reconnecting on Gozo
I'm glad Issy was able to reconnect with family.

[DaveandIssy]

Malta and Cefalu
Thank you so much for reading and for your kind words. We seem to have been following some very similar paths! We did indeed have a great time catching up with Issy’s relatives in Malta, and it almost felt like we were leaving home when we finally had to fly out. Happy travels!

[RENanDREW]

What a coincidence!
I'm very impressed that a never-met cousin saw Isabelle and recognised her from Facebook! That's so awesome :)

[DaveandIssy]

Small world
If we had any doubts before that Malta was a small place….