Jiddispjacini seems to be the hardest word

We arrived in Malta yesterday for a week of R & R (which in Maltese terms seems to stand for Rabbit and Red wine), Staying at the Hotel British in Valletta which is fine: no frills but no bother either. It has free wifi which is how I come to be blogging. Spent today wandering around Valletta, taking in the local wildlife



the annual national parade of all of Malta's Scouts and Guides



and the National War Museum, which was fascinating. It contains the George Cross which King George VI awarded to the people of the island for their withstanding of the most intense bombing (of our side at least) of the war (in three days Malta took as much ordnance as the whole of the UK during the Battle of Britain). It also contains "Faith", one of three Gloster Sea Gladiators (along with "Hope" and "Charity") which formed the whole of Malta's air defence for the first few weeks of Italian air raids in 1940. These were elderly biplanes which couldnlt go as fast as the bombers they were defending Malta against, but they shot some planes down, and generally surprised the heck out of the Italian Air Force until more modern planes could be delivered.





Malta in some ways feels incredibly British. Many of the buses are elderly Leyland ones, most of the post boxes and phone boxes are old-style British red ones, they drive on the left, and most of the signs are in English) which is one of the two official languages). However, they tend to speak Malti (the other one) to each other, and every now and then one is brought up short by a plaque or a notice only in Malti. Because Malti is very different from most European languages: it seems more like a bastard version of Arabic but in our alphabet, give or take the odd accent. The first word of my title, as you may has worked out, means "sorry".