Sights, sounds and thoughts

Mtarfa based writer/photographer Mary Attard has set up a blog to 'delve in past sights, sounds and thoughts about Maltese culture'. She aims to establish her blog as a portal of old Maltese scenery and photography that reveals how Malta has been transformed in modern times. In her latest post she writes about a discovery she made in the Mtarfa cemetery:

Mention Enid Blyton to a bunch of people of my age and they are taken back in time to adventure stories that have coloured many a youngster back in the 60s and 70s. The Famous Five adventures were to us in those days what Harry Potter is to today's generation. But did you know that in Malta we have the remains of her first husband Hugh Pollock? I came across his burial place in the Military Cemetery in Mtarfa by coincidence while doing some research on Mtarfa on moving to the area some five years ago.

Pollock had eloped (at 50) to Malta with his secretary Ida Crowe who was 25 at the time - and who now is in her 80s - and is writing Enid Blyton's memoirs. He spent his last few days in the Mtarfa Military Hospital (now a Boys' Secondary School) and was buried in 1971 in the cemetery nearby.

Blast those blocks - for writers desperate for ideas.