So I thought I ought to take the fast ferry to Valletta, while it was still there. I mean the ferry being still there (and ridiculously cheap to use); the Valletta that I used to know lost its soul, gave up the ghost of its creators and disappeared long ago.

The ferry, a 300-seater, was pretty well-packed, almost totally with tourists who were staying on Gozo but had probably heard that there was another island, just across the water, that was worth a day trip – on the basis that it was cleaner, greener and quieter than the small island they had mistakenly booked to stay on.

I nodded off for a few moments and, looking out of the window,  thought for a second that I was waking up in Singapore but we passed the awful skyscrapers and were soon in the delightful Grand Harbour with that gorgeous view – that doesn’t seem to have changed much, ever – across the water to the Three Cities.

This newer city, built after the mariner knights discovered that, if fighting on land, the best method was to occupy the high ground, was once described (by Benjamin Disraeli) as a city built by gentlemen, for gentlemen.

Ye gods! Dizzy should see it now. Every doorway, every shopfront that has not been turned into a café is a shop selling mobile phones or tat for tourists.

There are no cars, except government and police vehicles – and even then, there are cops riding on segways – and the only other traffic is the road trains that whiz dangerously close to the chairs and tables that nowadays occupy the middle of the once-spectacular thoroughfares.

It used to be a grand feeling to walk the streets that the knights walked. No longer, I’m afraid. And no knight would recognise it now. The streets are packed, like Gozo’s, with chairs and tables and tourists (you can distinguish them from the locals because they are in vests and shorts, cut so short that, if they are wearing any, you can see their underwear.)

But, here’s the thing: they had no tattoos. That’s amazing because, on Gozo, that’s the way you recognise ’em: full arm, full leg or full body tatts. The fatter the limb, the more likely is the artwork.

Trust me on this: I mentioned it to my chum and we made a point of checking: not a single tattoo in sight in Valletta. So, here’s the question: why do tattooed people choose Gozo? And what does that tell us about the type of person who chooses one island rather than the other?

It used to be a grand feeling to walk the streets that the knights walked. No longer, I’m afraid- Revel Barker

The air, thanks to the no-vehicles rule and the lack of stone cutting, is obviously cleaner than the stuff we are forced to ingest and constantly brush away on my island, so that alone makes the visit almost worthwhile.

As for quieter… well it might be if one bloke had seen the irony of playing Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence at a volume that could be heard the length of Republic Street. But then I had learnt, long ago, that in Malta ‘irony’ is about trying to get the crease in the right place in a pair of trousers.

On the other hand, I wonder how one tourist can tell another: “Valletta? Oh, it is from the Latin, of course, which is what the knights spoke. It means ‘little wall’…”

One place that’s quiet, yet packed, is called, I think, the Upper Barrakka Gardens. The service at the café there is amazing. You order at the bar and are told to find a table and sit down, then a waiter somehow finds you amid the throng. And there are trees, so it’s green enough, and there are no Spanish sparrows bombing you from their branches, as there would be in, say, it-Tokk.

Then it’s back, waiting for the fast cat with that three-cities view that has only one tower crane in sight.

I might do it again, while it is still there. I mean the ferry, of course. I have given up hope for Valletta. I have no doubt that, now there’s a tower crane hanging somewhere over Vittoriosa, there will be many more on my next visit.