Thoughts and happenings from a life on Malta

A premature greeting, is it not? What with  the summer not having melted away completely and another two months before that December day. However, springing up from the turfed roundabouts are the decorations heralding the Christmas season. Why such an early blossoming of baubles?

Commerce is probably the main factor because, as economists and politicians like to emphasis, spending stimulates the economy. Since childhood, our minds have been trained to equate Christmas with gift giving and consequently these traffic island embellishments are actually a diversion to the shops and malls. Physically we might be driving home or to work but mentally we have been detoured into drawing up our shopping lists.

There could be a religious dimension to the matter of course, especially in view of developments in neighbouring Libya. Last Sunday, National Transitional Council leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said that Islamic Sharia law would be the main source of legislation in the country. Many on this island shuddered upon hearing the words “Islam” and “sharia”, immediately fearing  that Maltese Catholicism was facing a new threat. The Church, which has recently lost its battle against the introduction of divorce in Malta, may now be girding its loins for another holy war. This early erection of Christmas symbols in public places is  proof of Malta’s preparedness to become Europe’s bulwark against the spread of Islam once again. I ask, is it mere coincidence or prescience that the government has been repairing the formidable bastions which protected us from the infidel  in the past?

A merry Christmas to all.

Why am I finally convinced that equality between the sexes in Malta has been truly achieved? No, it’s not because of a plethora of political declarations which serve as confetti to celebrate Women’s Day; neither the Catholic church which proclaims from the pulpit that a woman is a man’s equal while ensuring that she never even gets a whisper in its upper echelons; nor the feminist groups which paradoxically still exist in spite of our decades-old Constitution clearly stating that there mustn’t be any gender discrimination.

Well, the other evening I spent an hour or so strolling through Paceville. I have never been a habitual frequenter of the place but I am very much aware of a particular aspect of the landscape. That is the sight of a male, whipping out his weasel and using it as a water spout, watching the urine sizzle and bubble as it makes contact with the limestone walls or the Lilliputian-sized dust dunes gathered beneath. Then, a good shake of Mr weasel to extract the final, reluctant drops and he reels it back into his pants.

This time round though I was amused to find a change in what was once familiar scenery – instead of innumerable impersonations of worshippers at the Wailing Wall, it was glorious moons ashining over different terrain. And by their luminescence I was enlightened because if a woman can comfortably expose her bottom, squat and pee on the rocks near the Casino or the 5-star turf of the Corinthia San Gorg Hotel, then she has certainly raised herself on a par to any man.