Thoughts and happenings from a life on Malta

She carries her pregnancy like a fashion accessory.

These words came to me last week during my waking hours, so, as is my habit, I immediately put them down in a notebook. This was a catchy sentence which deserved to be kept on the back burner...

... while on my bedside table, I keep this Olympus voice recorder for any thoughts that leak out of my sleeping hours; as happened twice last night. At 01:21, while fast asleep, an inspirational spasm! I awoke and with eyes still shut, I rolled over for the recorder. It's a simple gadget to operate, even in darkness. Two presses of the Record button and I spoke my thought. One further press and it was digitized. It seems that the mind was in poetic overtime because at 05:05, another flash. Once again, with eyes closed and lights out, I recorded my ideas. I must have been in a much deeper sleep than in the earlier recording because now, when I listen to my utterances, I actually have problems understanding what I said. The voice sounds like it is being sucked into a quagmire,  with muddied clarity and gunky syllables. But already I see an interesting development.

He wears his girlfriend like a chain

Another item of male jewellery for his collection

A little joy for someone living on an island is to walk along the coast, possibly barefoot on a sandy shore, seeing all manner of debris that the currents and waves have unloaded there. Plastic bottles or their tops are particularly common, as is wood from some dismembered crates or pieces of coloured rope that have become fed up of being tied up. Worthless though they are, in the eyes of a child they must appear as treasures offloaded from some pirate ship.

Very rarely, the same sea that washes this island's littoral brings with it a real treasure, even to the eyes of an adult. It needn't be the fabled padlocked chest of gold and jewels but something more valuable.....someone more precious.

My derrière is ensconced in the protective husk of a wicker seat at Portomaso Cafe. The eyes, having nothing better to do, lazily follow a line of vacant chairs which sit outside, silent props to the movie that plays within this coffee shop's glass walls. It's when I descry what appears to be a bronze bust appended to the back of one of the seats that the casualness of my glance fixes into the steadiness of a gaze.

As the eye lingers analytically, it transpires that there is, after all, a human form attached; one with a bronzeness of hair that is inversely proportional to his less than monumental build. If I were to be a mite less polite, I'd say his phosphorous head is an appropriate addendum to his stick-like body. Fittingly, his physique complements his cigarette addiction. Yet, despite the tranquillising effect the drug is supposed to impart, his feet tap away frenziedly, outracing by far the rapid swings of his right arm as it dutifully performs its role of fag holder-cum-conveyor.

I study his absent looks and can see that he's lost in the brume of nicotine that clouds an otherwise clear January day. We're just a few hours into another new year but I swear he must be weeks away, even months, because I catch his thoughts dawdling in the shade of a darker cloud.