Michael Testa shares some of his reflections on the occasion of his retirement as a journalist with Allied Newspapers' Il-Berqa, The Times and The Sunday Times.
Everything comes to an end. And so did a span of 43 years working with Malta's leading newspapers.
Having joined the company in 1965 as a proofreader I was moved to the Maltese sister newspaper Il-Berqa until eventually I took my place at the newsroom in 1971 after some time living in the UK.
Like everything else in life this job too has its ups and downs, among the latter working under pressure and often late hours. But leaving the job after so many years brings mixed feelings, particularly following a career that allowed me to follow first-hand most of the major events that changed the history of our country. This long stretch of time also entailed a revolution in the role of the media and printing processes. What a difference!
Having been used to the newspaper, I have to admit that giving news online as it happens initially came as surprise. Not so long ago we used to keep stories close to our chests, especially when they were exclusive, before the time came to put them in print. But we are living in a competitive world and one has to compete - and evolve - to survive.
Many may still remember the huge linotype machines that used to produce small lead lines with letters on them, which together would form paragraphs and pages. These disappeared to be replaced by the modern computer. Gone are the days when operators were faced with the danger of being splashed with hot lead after something went wrong with the huge machine.
Working for so many years also meant watching young and not-so-young people coming to work at the newspaper and then moving on to other jobs or professions. These included judges and magistrates who in their younger days as lawyers used to give a helping hand by covering court proceedings or parliamentary sittings for The Times. Indeed, many of Malta's prominent personalities spent some time in their lives working at The Times.
Eventually I became the eldest in the newsroom as the average age of journalists stands at about 30 years. As the years went by I found that colleagues enjoyed calling me Pa (father) or Zi (uncle), which I liked.
I often come across people who ask about which events that I covered remain impressed in my mind. There are many, some tragic: people who left an impression, crime and political events that made history and which cannot be forgotten.
The first that comes to mind is the Egyptair hijacking in November 1985, which I covered along with colleagues from the newsroom from start to end. I was on duty on that fateful evening when commandoes stormed the aircraft with the result of heavy loss of life. I will never forget the cries of the poor people inside the aircraft as the plane caught fire following two explosions set off by the Egyptian commandos.
Another instance of disbelief related to the hijacking was when I rushed to the airport soon after the aircraft landed and we intercepted the communications between the control tower and the hijackers through the captain who was acting as an interpreter.
Other journalists and I just found it hard to believe that when the hijackers were threatening to kill passengers to press their demands for fuel, they were actually executing their threats. Later on during the hijack drama I witnessed the door of the aircraft opening and a person coming out followed by another, only to realise that the one at the back was a hijacker who shot the other in the head and flipped the body over the staircase onto the tarmac. Such scenes are hard to stomach.
I had flashbacks to those events when, years ago, one of the victims who survived a bullet in her head, Jackie Pflug, came to Malta to meet people who had been involved in the drama, including the surgeon, the police and journalists.
Although a reporter gets used to practically everything because their main concern when covering tragedies is to get facts and ensure these are correct, stories that involve innocent victims leave a sense of sadness, to put it mildly.
Explosions, for instance, such as the one at Paola many years ago, when a young mother and her son died, and the most recent one, the fireworks explosion in a residential area in Naxxar, which killed a young mother in her home... The loss of such lives just does not make sense.
Another event that was closely connected to my work and which is remembered each year by holding a Thanksgiving Mass at the office - as was the case on Wednesday - is the burning of The Times building on Black Monday, October 15, 1979.
Never throughout my 43-year career with the company did I have fears that I would lose the job that gave me so much satisfaction. On that fateful evening I was truly worried. When I returned to the office after covering a demonstration in Valletta to mark the 25th anniversary of Dom Mintoff's leadership of the Malta Labour Party, I was really convinced that the end had arrived and that I would have to find a new job.
I also had doubts whether the record The Times enjoys of having never missed a copy would be shattered. The building was in flames and there was no way of printing the newspaper there, I thought.
But relief came when the then editor, Charles Grech Orr, selected a group of staff, me included, and told us to go with him to issue the paper for the following day. We went to Independence Print in Pietà where we had to start from scratch writing the news of the day and the story of the demonstration, a job carried out throughout the night but making us proud that The Times was on the news stands as usual the following morning.
On that same day, at lunchtime, I recall walking through the internal yard of Castille with my colleague Charles Meilaq and, suddenly, we heard shots followed by noise and a commotion from inside the Office of the Prime Minister. It turned out that a staunch supporter of Mr Mintoff had insisted to speak to him and, when this was refused, shots were fired.
Moments later the individual was helped out of Castille bleeding profusely from his head.
Even when inside The Times building there were still some tense moments. Occasionally we were targeted during political demonstrations. Insults were not unusual and stones were at times thrown at windows, even breaking the glass. On one occasion I was out covering one such demonstration and on my return to the office the demonstrators were still in the streets. I went into the editor's office to brief him about the event and a stone crashed through a windowpane, landing right between him and me. Mr Grech Orr picked it up and kept the stone as a paper weight!
I need no paper weight to retain memories of my career. They remain within.