Once upon a time, there was a farmer in Gozo who toiled daily, all year round, in his field overlooking the sea. He collected the rocks – which appeared in the soil in abundance – and built a strong stone wall around his land, partly to protect it from the wind, to prevent slippage in heavy rainstorms and to mark out the extent of his property. And all was fine with that.
Later, because he worked his land in all weathers, he built a small shelter, into which he could retreat in the fierce heat of summer or during the usually brief but torrential rainstorms of autumn. It seemed a sensible thing to do.
Little more than a shed, it also served as a tool store, so that he didn’t need to carry equipment to the field every day or to take it home at night. He was, after all, a practical man.
As he developed the land, clearing it, for the most part, of stones, he introduced livestock, a few head of cattle, a flock of hens, a family of pigs… and it seemed obvious that they, too, would need some form of shelter and he built it.
(I don’t know whether he thought, at any stage, to consult the village mayor about any of these gradual extensions, but, if he did, nobody objected: it was his own land and he was doing only what he felt necessary and, in fact, essential in the interests of agriculture.)
It was only when one of his cows went missing that he decided it would be a good idea if he stayed overnight to guard his property. And he extended his shed slightly and put a makeshift bed in it.
Fairly quickly, though, he realised that if he was going to be on his land day and night, he needed a water supply (for drinking and washing) and some form of sewage system. For these, he needed to apply to ‘the authorities’. But when he explained the situation, the water company was willing to provide both water and sewage (no problem because it would run downhill straight into the sea), provided only that he paid for it. And that, obviously, the farmer was willing to do.
It was a similar story when he approached the electricity company and told them that he wanted to, er, read, at night. He coughed up the money and an electricity supply was connected to his hut.
Will this story have a happy ending? It’s anybody’s guess- Revel Barker
He brought a table and some chairs from home and invited a few friends round for a lunch made from a couple of his chickens and the vegetables he had grown. One of them pointed out the difficulty of getting his car to the property but another said he knew the minister and there were grants available for levelling and surfacing farm roads, even for building stone walls beside them, and said that getting it done would be no problem.
To anybody who was aware of the situation it seemed reasonable that anybody stuck on a farm all day should be able to invite his mates round, once in a while.
Around this time, the farmer sold his livestock and knocked through the wall of his hut to extend it into what had once been a pigsty and a hen-hut but were now surplus to requirements.
Well… you will have guessed the rest of the story. Overnight (or so it seemed), that shed became a bar and a restaurant. A second floor was built above it and the farmer and his wife were doing bed-and-breakfast. Their son ran the bar and their daughter worked in the kitchen.
Sunshades (or umbrellas) and windbreaks were attached to the building so that people could eat out of doors in all weathers and the canvas was gradually replaced with aluminium and glass.
The farmer now bought his vegetables from kiosks along the Mġarr road while his wife picked up the chickens from Lidl.
Within a couple of years, the place had won a restaurant award and nobody could remember how it got there. A few more years and nobody could really remember a time when it wasn’t a restaurant.
A fairy tale…. You think?
Well, once upon a much more recent time there was a farmer who decided he needed to build a tool shed on his property. One with windows and a parapet… Only, this time, the mayor stepped in and objected to it at the start.
Will this story have a happy ending? It’s anybody’s guess.