The regeneration of Sliema

I'm a relative newcomer to this town. I've only been here for eight years. But unlike living in a small village where I would have continued to call myself and be called 'from somewhere else', this is the one place I can feel at home, simply because like me, there are hundreds, thousands, of others in exactly the same situation.

Then there are the old Slimizi, the ones who are at least second or third generation, who have never known anywhere else. They could have grown up in one of any of the sections: the Tigné area, once full of government housing, now prime property site, the Dingli Street or Tower Road area, once posh and old money as hell, now full of apartments, the Lazy Corner, a hotchpotch of intertwining streets with the closest feel to a Maltese village you'll get anywhere.

Gorg Borg Olivier Street, chic, old world and still commanding the highest prices for the eternally elusive town-house that will (hopefully) never be knocked down.

And regardless of which part we all come from, we all complain incessantly of constant construction, of a local bird called the crane, of having our lives taken over by the constant shouts of builders, electricians, plasterers, removal truck men, aluminium aperture installers, tilers. You name it, they're there, somewhere around the corner, in the apartment above us, in the house next door. And they're making their presence felt. They're as local as we are.

They arrive very early in the morning, shoving their pick-ups and their Morris Marinas and their Escorts Mark 1 in whichever space they find, but usually the space supposedly earmarked for yet another truck or skip but which they conveniently make use of themselves. They grumble like hell about the lack of parking in this place, usually at the stage when we are negotiating their fees.

And we awake and go to sleep to the sounds of metal constantly knocking against limestone, the dig- dig-digging and earth-shaking seemingly producing underground garages of which there will never be enough, the pervading smell of diesel wafting into our bedrooms from the cement truck parked just underneath the window.

When the little earthquake happened some months ago, I didn't bother panicking. I thought it was just another old house making space for a new one, the sound is so familiar.

I have opened my eyes to see three men's faces catching glimpses from the wooden balcony to the inside of the house. They were hanging there, fixing some wire or other. I abandoned a roof garden after I realised that the adjacent development meant that the building had risen so high, my roof had become a crystal ball and I was the future.

I have had to hunt around for parking spaces rarer than truffles because there is yet another sign that says that 'No Parking: work will be taking place tomorrow'. I have been woken up at six in the morning because no-one bothered to tell me from the night before that it would.

I have refused to budge my car to counteract the sheer insolence, then watched with shaking knees as I imagined the huge windows being hoisted to the fifth floor opposite crashing down on to its roof.

I have almost skidded on the supposed street cleaning that trucks are meant to carry out after they finish their work, because this usually means that they open a tap and leave the water running. I have abandoned washing windows simply because there's no point in trying to keep them clean for more than five minutes.

I have had a ground floor apartment flooded because the contractor working opposite dropped so much cement on the ground, the water outlet got blocked.

I have lost count of the amount of times my car was towed because a huge truck couldn't go through and someone can always get something fixed in this country: namely pulling my car away to make space.

And yet, in two years living in a one-way, no-trucks street with huge plant whizzing down the wrong way, holding up traffic coming up by rights I have never seen a single policeman or warden arrive on time for the perpetrator to be booked. Such are the quirks.

Yes, this is my town. It is the town of the people who have been here for long years, of the tourists who come to be dazzled for a couple of weeks, of the extraordinary amount of working staff who arrive every day to make sure I get my cappuccino, of the visitors who leave their own homes to drive here because they like it so much then complain constantly that there's no parking while obviously taking space themselves.

And although I, and many others, complain, we're still here. This is a great place to live, as close to cosmopolitan as we can get in a country of 400,000 people. We have shops, we have cafes, pubs and restaurants, we have the promenade for jogging and walking and chatting, we have (usually) clean sea.

It may be noisy but quiet streets still exist, and having lived in close proximity to the countryside for many years, can vouch that quietude there is a myth: try the ten-minute engine warm up at 5 a.m. on the cement mixer soon to be driven somewhere else, or the child-like screaming coming from the pigs being slaughtered and you'll hear what I mean.

If we didn't have all this, Sliema would be as dead as the dodo. It would be the place that once was. We have an aging population too, but we still have aspiring young people whose dream in life was always to move here. Unlike Valletta, we're open 24 hours a day. That, in spite of the complaints, keeps us alive.

We just wish for more organisation, more respect for our everyday lives. We want our council to take good care of us by providing us with basic things such as residential parking and enforcement of the law which is meted out to others as it's meted out to us. We want organisation, buildings to be covered while works are carried out, working hours which are respected, and quiet afternoons, nights and weekends.

We're not asking for much. We love this town, and most of us have invested our hard-earned money into its property. We just want to be left to enjoy it.