Jo's travels

Josephine Burden is interested in how people tell their stories and compose their lives. She recently moved out of teaching at University and is travelling for a year "playing at being a writer". These are her thoughts about Malta:

One of the things I love about Malta is that it is small. I don't need a car here because I can walk everywhere around the village. Shopping is done every day so it's fresh and I can carry it easily by hand. If I want to go further afield as I usually do several times a week, I can catch a bus to anywhere on the island. If I take a book with me, or the Times of Malta that is saved for me most days by the local newsagent, then the unpredictable wait between buses is an opportunity. So far, if I am pressured for time or I have to go home after the last bus leaves, I have been able to find someone with a car who is going in my direction. It is a good system with the added satisfaction of reducing my footprint on the planet!

Another good thing about smallness is that it is easier to see the complexity of the links between everything that makes up the whole. I seem to have moved into a space where I am avidly gathering all the information I can find about Malta. The word 'Melitensia' has started to come up. It means things to do with Malta. The local librarian used it the other evening to describe my area of interest. When I went slightly wild at the book fair in Valletta a couple of weeks ago and bought too many books on Maltese history and culture, one of the book stall owners used the word to encourage me to go to browse his shop collection. So now I can put that label on my current interests...

Around Siggiewi; Rambling around Zebbieh; Dingli Cliffs and saline marshlands; Getting around in Malta; Back to earth - Wied Garnaw