The backstory

What’s that flower? How old is that church? Are all those cows milking cows? I don’t know, he answered. I don’t know. I don’t know. I could drive a teetotaller to drink with my incessant questions. And a series of ‘I don’t knows’ disappoints me  – irrationally so, as it’s very often my standard reply when I’m asked about buildings in Budapest. So I told my Italian friend that day many years ago when we were half-way up Monte Rosa in the Italian Alps, I told him just to make up a story. Any story. I really didn’t care what he told me as long as he told me a story. I think he surprised himself with his creativity and I had a hard time deciphering truth from fiction.

I have a friend in Malta, SM, who is a walking repository for historical facts and trivia about the island and its people. There’s no limit to what he knows. He could, of course, be making it all up, but do I care? Not a bit. And I doubt it. There’s way too much sincerity there.

We’d been to see a play in Santa Venera one night. An AmDram production that was so obviously enjoyed by those in the audience who had friends on stage but left me in need of some sustenance. Wandering through the late-night streets, we happened across a bakery that was still open to those who knew the knock. We went inside and while he was buying his bread, he gave me a tour of the types of breads and cakes on offer, along with their associated traditions.

Outside, looking skywards at the moon shining over the streets of Santa Venera, I spotted one of many lovely old buildings that seem to be crying out for some TLC. I noticed the broken windowpanes. He noticed the empty flower pillars.

Apparently, back in the day, when the daughter of the house was in search of a husband, she’d put flowers  on the ledges on either side of the window. This told the single men in  Santa Venera (and their mothers) that she was open to be wooed. Interested suitors would pass beneath the window and call to her, or perhaps sing. If she was interested, she’d appear and engage in conversation. If she wasn’t, she’d stay put, not showing herself, but no doubt sneaking a peak or three as she made up her mind.

This was in the days before online dating, before apps like Tinder that let you browse through catalogues of online photos saying yay or nay as the mood takes you. This was even before classified ads and personal columns. Before matchmakers. And what a lovely way it was, too. Romantic, if a little public. But what of the girl who posted the flowers only to find that no one stopped by? And worse, the whole town knew of it?

While I found myself mentally going through the checklist of necessities – I have a street-facing balcony, I have flowerpots, and I have hope – I could also hear a voice telling me to get with the twenty-first century. And not for the first time, I realised that I may well have been born into the wrong era.