My Malta Memories

by Heather A. Hayne
The Times of Malta 5th July 2000

It was June, 1959. I was eight, and for the first time in my life I was going to fly in an aeroplane. Along with my mother and several other service families, I boarded a plane at Hendon RAF base to spend two and a half years on an island I had only heard about in conversation... Malta.
 
My father, a chief-ERA in the Royal Navy, had been drafted there and we were to join him. He was no stranger to the island, having served on the Malta convoys during World War II, but for me it was a journey into the unknown, an adventure, and a wholly different lifestyle.
 

 
I was happy there, the classes were small and the standard of teaching was high. They even had a Brownie Pack. A love of music was enthusiastically instilled in us by a Miss Davitt, and we were rewarded when we joining a festival of singing with all the other service schools on the island. Hearing the effect of so many singing together left a big impression on me.
 
Before long we moved to Rudolph Lane in Gzira and our flat was opposite a waste ground - probably a bomb site and in the middle of it was a partially ruined house. The children used it as a den and often sparred verbally with each other. The Maltese children seemed to know all our rude words and it was not long before we learned to return the jibes in Maltese, and I must confess that these are the phrases I still remember best!
 
My mother joined the Naval Wives Club who organised many events for themselves and the children. The highlight of the week was the Thursday trip to Valletta where we visited the "Pots and Pans", a second-hand shop for Service personnel, where all sorts of bargains were to be had. Afterwards we went to Cordina's where we were treated to cheesecakes and soft Italian ice-cream... so delicious and never seen in England.
 
Often during the summer, the club would arrange a midnight swim and barbecue at Ghadira; the dads came too, and lit the fires.
 
One weekend the mothers and children went to Sicily staying in Taormina, visiting Catania and going up Mount Etna in cable cars. Our exploration of the volcano was limited, however, as large areas had been taken over by film sets and crews who were in the middle of shooting the epic Barabbas.
 
Coincidentally, though a ladies and children only trip, the Navy was on exercises and my father's ship, the minesweeper HMS Houghton, was anchored just below us in Taormina bay!
 
Life in Malta seemed to me to be one long round of pleasure. Weekly deliveries of crates of Coca Cola and 7-Up, visits to Spinola Bay for roller skating, Brownies, ballet classes and school finishing at l p.m. after which, at my father's insistence, my mother and I were route-marched to St Julian's for our daily swim!
 
The climate allowed us to spend nearly all pf our spare time out of doors and the Maltese people's love of children meant that we had no fear of harm. In England a seaside holiday was a rare thing for us, but when we were in Malta, we took holidays in Gozo!
 
Another enthralling event was the Carnival, phenomenal in terms of the size and variety of the floats, the atmosphere of the crowds and the noise ...indeed the Maltese never do things by halves! I had never seen so many churches or witnessed so many celebrations: it appeared to me that Guy Fawkes night came almost every week where festas and fireworks were a way of life.
 
I attended the Holy Trinity church in Sliema and was confirmed in St Paul's Pro-Cathedral, Valletta, in June, 1960.
 
After well over 18 months in private accommodation we finally moved to naval quarters in Balluta. Our flat was on the top floor with easy access to the roof. In front of us and one storey higher, was a magnificent block of apartments occupied by Maltese families and it was here that my best friend and I attended the Royal Academy ballet classes, strictly run by Mrs Attard.
 
After class we would return home to our block and go up to the roof, where we had a ring-side view of the families opposite having their evening meals. We were very naughty and would shout across to them and duck beneath the parapet and other times we would take a bowl of water and paper-bags up there and drop water bombs into the lane below.
 
It was not all play however; I took my 11+ examination in Malta. I was only 10 and passed with top marks. Many of us at Tigne did, thanks to the excellent education we had received, arid in spite of the shorter school day. The following September I commenced at Tal-Handaq grammar school and it was a huge shock. The campus was enormous to my eyes and there were five classes in each year of the grammar school and the same in the secondary modern. Ten classes in each year! That gives you some idea of the numbers of English children being transported, every day from many parts of the island.
 
I found it all rather overwhelming. Many of the classrooms were previously billets like large Anderson huts, and it seemed that each subject was taught in a different hut or building far away from the previous lesson! Many of the female teachers were Wren officers who were to be addressed as Ma'am and woe betide you if you called them "Miss".
 
Before I had a chance to adjust to all this we were drafted home. I had not seriously believed that we would ever leave and go back, but, return we did, to grey, rainy and bleak... Plymouth, in October. Re-adjusting to this was a challenge. It would be well over a year before I could accept my free and happy life in Malta had really ended.
 
The Maltese islands and their peoples left an indelible impression on me, and one which I would never wish to have missed.
 
I have returned a few times: with my husband, whose father was in Malta for three years during the war. His ship, HMS 'Lance, lies at the bottom of Valletta harbour. Our children and my mother have all holidayed there together, and last year, our grandson, aged five, made his first trip. It was his first flight, too, and he was lucky enough to go into the cockpit and meet the Air Malta pilots.
 
In 1998 I was anticipating a visit to Malta after many years, and I wrote a poem which was published later that year in an anthology called "Happy Days".
 
It sums up my feelings and memories of that most friendly of islands! In June this year of the new millennium, my husband Michael and myself came again on an Air Malta flight from Bristol in order to be out there for our 29th wedding anniversary. We could think of not think of no better place to celebrate it.