The Limestone Letter - 28 September 2026

I got my Mariah Carey tickets on Friday, and I'm still not sure how. The pre-sale was manic: seats appeared and vanished on the map like twinkling stars, and every WhatsApp group I'm in exploded with who had got in, who hadn't, and which block they were in. By Saturday the show was sold out.

It's a seated show at Ta' Qali on 8 December, the last night of a tour that plays Birmingham, London and Manchester first. Malta isn't the add-on date. It's the finale.

That's worth knowing if you moved here thinking you'd traded culture for sunshine. The trade is smaller than it was. The catch is speed: fewer seats than London, and the whole island finds out at the same moment. Next time, register for the presale the day it's announced, and keep your phone charged.

Walk the Gżira front towards the Manoel Island bridge and look left. What you're looking at is 6,700 square metres of padel court on land that was promised, for years and in writing, as a public park.

The numbers are plain. Gżira United Football Club holds a permit for 30 courts. Twenty were built without one and have now been regularised; ten more are to come. Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, Moviment Graffitti and Żminijietna appealed, and asked the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal to suspend the permit while the appeal is heard. On Wednesday the tribunal said no. Work continues.

The objectors' case is not sentimental. Manoel Island sits inside the UNESCO buffer zone for Valletta; the courts light up a bird sanctuary; they sit in the sightline of the fortifications; the structures are, in the NGOs' estimate, worth around €1m and permanent in all but name; and the landowner, they say, never consented. In April The Shift reported that the club's president, Sharlon Pace, had confirmed his involvement in the padel company. Times of Malta has reported that the courts went up over Roman-era remains.

Anyone who has lived on this side of the harbour for more than a couple of years will recognise the shape of the thing. Build first. Apply later. Let a tribunal decide whether to stop something that already exists, which tribunals in Malta rarely do. Sanction becomes the price of admission.

What makes this one sting is the location. Manoel Island is the last big open space between Sliema, Gżira and Ta' Xbiex, three of the most densely built localities in the country and the ones most expats land in. Campaigners have spent years asking for the island to become a national park, an idea that polls well, costs nothing to say and has never quite happened. Padel, meanwhile, happened in a summer.

I don't hate padel. It's a good game, it's social, and the courts will be full every evening from October. That's rather the point. Once thirty courts are full of people who booked and paid, no politician is going to stand in front of them and order the bulldozers in. The appeal continues. So do the courts. Only one of those has a lease on reality, and it isn't the one with the lawyers.

Go and look at it this week, from the bridge or from the Gżira side, while the fencing is still new enough to be worth being angry about.

Power-cut money lands on your bill.

If your flat lost power for six hours or more, cumulatively, in July and August, Enemalta owes you between €60 and €110, and you don't have to ask for it. Credits are being applied automatically from Enemalta's own interruption records: €60 for six to eight hours, then €70, €80, €90 and €100 bands, up to €110 for anything over 48 hours. Look for a line marked "Ex-Gratia Payment" on the ARMS bill. If you sweated through the outages and nothing appears, a portal opens on Thursday 1 October and stays open until 31 January; the helpline is 153. Two practical notes. The credit goes to whoever holds the ARMS account, so tenants whose landlord holds it should have that conversation now. And €110 for two days without a fridge in August is not compensation. It's an apology with a decimal point. Take it anyway.

Non-EU parcels get a second fee.

Since 1 July every item bought from a seller outside the EU has carried a €3 flat import duty. Brussels has now added a €2 handling fee per product on distance sales worth up to €150, published on 21 September. Stacked, that's €5 per item before VAT and before whatever MaltaPost or the courier charges to hand it over. The start date isn't in the published summary; one Italian report says November. For anyone in Malta the practical hit lands on Temu, Shein, AliExpress and, since Brexit, on ordinary British shops. A €12 phone case is a €20 phone case by the time it reaches Sliema. Buy from sellers with an EU warehouse where you can, and be suspicious of any site that quotes a price without saying where it ships from. A further warehousing fee is pencilled in for July 2028. Nobody is coming to make this cheaper.

On-the-spot fines: 1,600 and counting.

Since July, police and LESA officers have been able to fine non-residents on the spot, and they've used the power 1,600 times in two months, up from 1,400 on 17 September. Security Minister Glenn Bedingfield calls it a step forward; the aim was to close a loophole that let fines issued to visitors go unpaid once they'd flown home. The reported offences are described only as disorder in neighbourhoods and streets, which covers a lot. Why it matters to you: the scheme keys off residency, and a newly arrived expat without a residence card looks, to an officer, like a tourist. So do your visiting friends. Nobody has published the offence list or the amounts. If you're stopped, pay, keep the receipt and argue later; the alternative is being flagged at the airport on the way out. And get the residence card sorted. It's slow, and this is one more reason to start.

School's back, with gaps.

State schools open this week for 37,771 pupils, 2,754 of them new, taught by 8,861 educators including 187 recruited over the summer. Free school transport runs for 36,457 children across 207 state, Church and independent schools, for anyone living more than a kilometre from the gate. Valletta Primary reopens after a €2.2m refurbishment and Kerċem Primary in Gozo opens for the first time. The Opposition says a substantial number of schools start the year without assistant heads, learning support educators, guidance teachers or psychologists; the ministry hasn't published a vacancy count. For parents, the LSE shortage is the one to ask about at the first meeting. For everyone else: the school run is back. Add fifteen minutes to anything that goes through Birkirkara, Mosta or Naxxar before nine, and consider the bus, which at least doesn't have to park.

The sea has turned.

Five swimmers got into difficulty in four separate incidents on Wednesday 23 September, none fatally, and the Civil Protection Department has put out a formal warning about rough seas and changing conditions. Late September is when the water stops being a swimming pool. It's still warm, around 24 degrees, which is exactly why people keep going in after the wind has changed and the swell has picked up; the surface looks the same as it did in August. The rocky entries along Sliema's Tower Road are the ones to be careful on, because getting out is harder than getting in once there's a swell. Watch the flags where there are lifeguards, look at the sea for five minutes before you go in, and call 112 rather than swimming out to someone. The CPD's own line is that visitors unfamiliar with Mediterranean conditions are most at risk. Residents who've forgotten are the second group.

On Sunday the festa season, which everyone told you ended in September, doesn't quite end. Gudja, Mellieħa and Sliema each carry a statue of Our Lady of the Rosary through the streets on 4 October, and Marsa and Valletta follow the Saturday after. These are secondary feasts: smaller bands, fewer fireworks, no marquee on the square. If you've spent the summer avoiding festas because of the noise, this is the one to go to.

The reason there's a rosary feast at all is a sea battle. On 7 October 1571 the Holy League fleet met the Ottoman fleet off Lepanto in western Greece. Pope Pius V credited the victory to the rosaries being said across Christendom that morning and made the date a feast, Our Lady of Victory, which the Church now keeps as Our Lady of the Rosary. Malta was there. The Order of St John sent three galleys, its flagship under Pietro Giustiniani, prior of Messina. Uluç Ali's squadron attacked the ships around that flagship, nearly broke the Christian centre, and escaped with the Knights' captured standard. The island had survived its own siege six years earlier. Lepanto was the sequel, fought at sea, and the anniversary has been kept here for 455 years.

Practical notes. Gudja's feast is run with the La Stella Band Club; timings are on the parish notice board rather than online. Streets around the parish church close from mid-afternoon; park at the edge of the village and walk in. Dress as you would for church, because at some point you'll be in one.

That is what you're watching on Sunday: not a village celebrating a village, but a village remembering the week the Mediterranean was decided. The band plays the statue home to the church door, as it has every October for four and a half centuries, and almost nobody lining the street could tell you why. Now you can.

Osteria Scottadito, Nadur, Gozo

Italian, in the sense of a room that would be at home in Le Marche and has no interest in pretending otherwise. The Michelin inspectors added it to the guide this February, one of five new recommendations for Malta, and their notes are worth taking at face value: sardoncini scottadito, crumbed and oven-baked, gnocchi with rabbit ragù, a proper carbonara, and an owner whose recommendations you should follow rather than resist. Diners this year mention squid ink spaghetti with bottarga, passatelli with seafood, and a strudel that gets ordered more often than a strudel in Gozo has any right to.

It sits on the ridge at Torri Ta' Kenuna, above the village, with a large terrace facing the sunset.

The caveats are all logistical. Dinner only, seven to ten, Tuesday to Sunday; closed Monday. It is frequently fully booked, so reserve online or on 7733 0009 before you book the ferry, not after. Prices sit in Michelin's second band, which in practice means a reasonable bill for the quality. You'll need a car or a taxi up from Mġarr, and the last ferry is not your friend after a second bottle. Go on a Sunday, stay in Nadur, and take the boat back on Monday morning with the commuters.

MALTA CLASSIC HILL CLIMB - Thursday 1 October, 9am to 4pm, Mtaħleb. Classic cars against the clock on the cliff road, opening day of the four-day Malta Classic.

HAYDN AND SCHUBERT, SEASON OPENING CONCERT - Thursday 1 October, 8pm, Teatru Manoel, Valletta. Carmine Lauri conducts the De Valette Chamber Orchestra with cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière in Haydn's first cello concerto and Schubert's Death and the Maiden; black tie.

MAKER FAIRE MALTA - Friday 2 to Sunday 4 October, from 10am, Esplora, Kalkara. Malta's first edition of the robotics, craft and science show-and-tell; good for children who've had enough of the beach.

PUERTO FLAMENCO - Friday 2 and Saturday 3 October, 8pm, Teatru Salesjan, Sliema. Seville's Juan del Puerto and company, cabaret seating, paella cooked on site.

NOTTE BIANCA - Saturday 3 October, from 6pm, Valletta. Twentieth edition of the all-night arts festival; palaces, museums and churches open late, around fifty projects, free.

MDINA GRAND PRIX - Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October, from 9am, Mdina. Classic cars race the street circuit under the bastions; Saturday sets the grid, Sunday races; tickets via eventworks.mt.

FESTA OF OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY - Sunday 4 October, Gudja, Mellieħa and Sliema. Secondary feasts with afternoon processions; the story behind them is in The Expat Edit.

THE EWFONIJA GRAND OPERATIC CONCERT - Sunday 4 October, 7.30pm, Villa Fiorita, Marsalforn, Gozo. Overtures and choruses under Mariella Spiteri Cefai; free, booking required, donations to the Arka Foundation.

Thirteen Melita Street, Valletta, down a staircase you'll walk past twice. Chocolate District makes its own chocolate from the bean, sells bars from €1.20, and runs a small café under the shop where the coffee is about €4 and the hot chocolate with whisky is €5 and does exactly what it says. Open nine to seven. It's the answer to the question every newcomer asks in their first month: where do I buy a present for someone in Malta that wasn't made in a factory in Sicily?

This is where readers talk back. Each week The Limestone Question closes the letter, and the sharpest replies run here the following Monday, first name and locality only. One recent arrival and one long-timer, ideally disagreeing. This week's question is about service charges. The Pjazza opens next Monday; hit reply and you might be in it.

Mid-twenties by day, low twenties at night, and the first proper showers of autumn drifting through most mornings on a light easterly. The sea is still 24 degrees, which is the island's way of saying summer hasn't left, it has just stopped answering the phone.

Malta's restaurants have discovered the service charge. When it appears on the bill unannounced, do you pay it, question it, or tip on top because you can't face the conversation?

Hit reply - we read every response.

Fejn tħobb il-qalb jimxu r-riġlejn. The legs go where the heart goes. A Maltese proverb, usually said about love, and just as true of the people who came for six months and are still here eleven years later, unable to explain why.