This year’s Eurovision is now history and it’s been analysed to death. However emails are still coming in and one of them has a Malta – don’t do it! campaign from the Schlagerboys who are trying to convince us Maltese that we should continue to participate in the Eurovision which will ‘carry on bringing us fabulous pop music.’ I e-mailed them to say I cannot support the campaign. ‘Let’s get out of this Eurovision’ shindig, is my campaign.

As all those white violins and naked torsos with golden nipples were happening on our screens, a friend messaged: ‘What a lot of talented young people we have in Malta. If only we could send them all on a scholarship!’ She was interviewing youngsters to be sent on scholarship to study music at the Ian Tomlin school of Music at Napier University.

Let’s get out of this Eurovision thing and instead use all that sponsorship money both from the Arts Council and from various sponsors to sponsor a couple of gifted musicians to further their studies. Will someone out there please hear those of us, and there are many, who think similarly.

The Méridien Phoenicia is this year celebrating its 60th anniversary. This has always been my favourite hotel, with its sober elegance, air of gentility and huge grounds, not to mention the good food it has always produced. I have forever loved tea in its lounge with potted palms, sofas in which you can sink and chocolate teas in winter. I haven’t been to one of these for ages because disaster to the non-existing waistline invariably follows.

I was invited to the Phoenicia last Sunday to a concert ‘Gloria’ given by the Northwest Festival Choir, UK under the direction of Dr John Bethell, in support of the Malta Community Chest Fund. This Choir has been doing its magic in churches in Birgu, Bormla and St Paul’s Cathedral in Valletta during their stay here. They mainly fund themselves. They are a group of men and women of a certain age who travel around and give their services free. It’s a wonderful way of spending your retirement years.

The choir sang Vivaldi’s Gloria beautifully and then retired to the back of the ballroom while younger artists entertained us with more worldly music. In my view the star turn was the tenor Declan Kelly who gave us Serenata di Peppe from Pagliacci and Una Furtiva Lagrima from L’Elisir d’Amore. He sang them as if he meant what he was singing, he was touchingly serious when he needed to be and far from just standing in the middle of the stage he gave us a little performance which was appropriate. As Nemorino, the young man in love in L’Elisir, he believes that the elixir, which turned out to be nothing more than red wine, has, however worked when he sees his love cry. He immediately concludes that she has fallen for him. “Cielo, si puo morir! Di più non chiedo”. Lovely to see a lovesick young man!

I also enjoyed the singing of the bass Alastair McCall, too, particularly his How About Me! from Beauty and the Beast. He enunciated his words properly so we could catch the humour of the piece.

Soprano, Karen Johnson was excellent in the operetta piece. It was more suited to her voice than the aria from Tosca. So I enjoyed her interpretation of Villia from Lehar’s Merry Widow. The mezzo soprano Adrienne Murray’s interpretation of Elgar’s Sea Pictures was superb and she is a seasoned singer and teacher.

The President and Mrs Fenech Adami were there and Dr Fenech Adami told the audience how he had played the piano in this very ballroom, during a concert all those years ago, after he was awarded ‘Distinction’ for a piano exam and therefore was invited to play, as was the custom in those days. Another facet to our President’s personality which I found interesting and pleasing.

Afterwards we were invited to drinks at The Rotunda and I spoke to one of the choristers and her husband, who must have been around 90. I thanked her for an entertaining evening and asked him if he was in the choir too, as I hadn’t spotted him. She said he was there as a ‘groupie’ and they travel together as he no longer sings. I thought that was lovely.

I hear that there were twice as many people in St Paul’s Cathedral when the choir sang there last Sunday. Perhaps better singing rather than better sermons would improve church attendance in Catholic churches too, who knows. And let’s stick to traditional music rather than this silly modern music accompanied by guitars;the kind of music some churches seem to be fond of.

I resolved, once more, to go on diet, after my darling sister-in-law gave me one of her exquisite figolli, after Easter. I don’t know whether it was a mermaid or a eunuch, a swan or a fish as it was headless and without a tail. She is a practical woman and has to keep a large family in figolli and Christmas fare and goodness knows what else, so she usually makes a huge slab rather than fussing with individual forms. We are all grown up now and are more interested in the taste than the shape.

After I sat and ate it – my resolve to have a little every day abandoned once I had tasted it – I made another resolve: definitely, definitely but definitely no more indulging. My spare tyre has turned into two spares.

I kept on repeating my favourite mantra: ‘this cannot go on’.

I went down to Homemate to purchase a carpet cleaner since my hoover went up in smoke and once there I am tempted to put into my trolley all sorts of other things. I looked at the little mirrors and thought a new one would be a good idea, since they are much more attractive than the one I presently have on my dressing table. I picked up one with bulbs, à la Hollywood. but hastily put it down when I saw myself at close quarters, every wrinkle and double chin transformed into two. I repeated my mantra ‘this cannot go on’ all the way to the car and throughout the journey home. I did not purchase any chocolate that day, or the following. But only the very determined keep these promises and resolutions up for any length of time. It was not long before I succumbed to more good food.

There were two invitations to Palazzo Santa Rosa in Mistra. One was to the launch of an anti-wrinkle cream and that very same evening, the chef patron, Claude Camilleri, invited me and Sarah Borg, who was there in her Manolos, purchased in London, to his Last Tuesday Club gourmet dinner.

The food on both evenings was superb and most enjoyable. Last Tuesday’s dinner was very well attended and Claude told us that he had to turn down some twenty people as there were simply no places left to accommodate them.

I am not going to give you the details but let me pick dishes that I particularly liked on both menus. The Gazpacho with Vodka and the Salmon Tartare, the Hot Smoked Chicken Breast with mango and rucola pesto immediately spring to mind. As to the desserts: The Cassatella Siciliana, served individually in a chocolate casing, was absolutely delicious but far too large after some five courses at the Freeze 24/7 dinner, Freeze 24/7 being the name of the anti-wrinkle, not the sorbet. Most of us left half of it though unwillingly. Last Tuesday the dessert was Sinjizza. But this was not those course slabs of pastry and ricotta which you can purchase at certain confectionaries. I cannot stand them and always by pass them. This was delicate, with proper marzipan and the candid fruit in the creamy ricotta hardly perceptible.

Fortunately, on our table for four one of us did not eat dessert and we were allowed to share the remaining piece. Wines were supplied by Carnaby and I particularly enjoyed the white Cusumano Angimbé 2006 – a name derived from the woods of the town of Salemi in Sicily, the menu said, and the excellent Port.

I turned down another two meals this week because yes, this must not go on.

And as if hearing me think aloud, Nestlé sent me two packets of their Fitness Cereals. I tried them both when I got home and I particularly enjoyed the one with ‘petali di cioccolata’, which is absolutely delicious. I’m having them for breakfast now that porridge days are over for the summer. I shall observe my waistline for results. I haven’t eaten a bar of chocolate for three days and the petali are substitute enough. At the same time I know I am getting a decent amount of roughage and thus doing my bit to keep healthy.

At my next reincarnation, I want to be born thin, thin, thin.