Nick Archer

My blog's identity and the Prince of Wales Own Band Club in Malta

This blog has been suffering an identity crisis. It began life, as I explained back in November 2006 as a way of demystifying my role for a Maltese audience, produced in Malta and hosted on the High Commission website. Now it is hosted by FCO Blogs, and is more likely to pick up non-Maltese readers, not least colleagues elsewhere. Should this make a difference? When I was ‘negotiating’ (haa) their takeover, FCO Blogs laughed at my suggestion that it did not already have a global reach – once you are in cyberspace, they reminded me, you are out there for everyone. Oyes, but no writer writes without a more specific audience in mind – I assume – and this is where the identity crisis arose; I’ve been too conscious of a new, non-Maltese readership. So it’s time to say again; this will continue deliberately to be provincial; to assume some familiarity with these islands; and to avoid explaining them to the wider world – that is for Maltese bloggers.

So now I’ll put my blinkers back on. On Sunday morning I took the family over to the Prince of Wales Band Club to say goodbye, and to present to the Committee a signed photograph of His Royal Highness which I have had for months in a drawer. The Committee rooms of the old Stricklandjan band clubs are full of Royal memorabilia, and the Prince of Wales’ is no exception. When I first went over to Birgu two years ago, I decided that I should try to do two things; encourage The Prince of Wales to visit if I could engineer a visit to Malta, and in the meantime secure from my former boss a memento to symbolise a continuing interest in the links and affection we English still find in these clubs. The Prince of Wales was beginning a renovation of its clubhouse; the Household agreed to send a picture to mark its completion.I should have known better; completion is some distance away. In the end we had to anticipate it. As for the visit, it too will happen after my time, but I am confident that can and will; there is such an overlap between the challenges Malta faces and the issues His Royal Highness has now been working on for so long. It’s just a question of picking the moment. Meanwhile, this Sunday night, the King’s Own’s annual pre-festa reception is upon us.It’s always sweltering; always atmospheric – the ladies’ fans fluttering , the old banners and sepia photographs all over the walls, the window seats crammed with guests leaning out over the Strada Reale for fresh air – and always enjoyable; these are the places you find the goodwill which keeps the relationship warm.

Yesterday to talk to the Nationalist party Secretary General Paul Borg-Olivier about why – by contrast, you might say – links between the Nationalists and the British Conservatives are not closer. Of course you could do a PhD on that. Perhaps I should have said; ‘how we can make them closer’. Generational change at both ends opens up new possiblities. The two Labour parties are of course relatively intimate – something for which I always credit Joe Mifsud as much as history or politics, although, to circle back to ‘our’ band clubs, the MLP did pick up most of the Stricklandjani when that movement expired…

Posted at 10:28 23 July 2008 by Nick Archer  |