I don’t know what my horoscope says this week but I know that for the month of July one prognostication goes as follows: “that by the Capricorn Full Moon on the 21st circumstances and your perspective are substantially altered. This is no surprise, since your ruler Saturn’s move into passionate Leo mid-July ends a cycle of focus…” Well, I shall have to wait until the 21st to see what is going to happen…but there is nothing about my car in this particular interpretation of my horoscope. And believe me, it has been a bad week for the car.

A big blue rather mangled car stopped suddenly in front of me one morning, because someone was coming down fast the opposite direction so he had to stop abruptly, the ‘blue’ driver told me later. My bumper, I could see from my seat, was caressing one of his rear lights. The ‘blue’ driver jumped out of his car, I admonished him for stopping so suddenly, he told me it was not possible to do otherwise and had the cheek to look me in the eye and tell me that I had sustained no damage ‘M’ ghandek xejn hi’. Of course I believed him and arrived at work only to find that my car had been bashed and one side was festooned with a blue streak from his automobile. What could one do about it? I was mentally preparing a counter-attack when I realised that I had no information about him at all, not his name, nor his number or even his car number. I sulked a little, snivelled resentfully and got on with my work.

But it seems that demons lie in wait on every street, and the apocalyptic Beast lurks in every other car. The morning of Saturday before last as I was coming quietly to work and passing through Old College Street, I suddenly saw the four-wheel drive in front of me in reverse mode sliding towards me. I tried to reverse quickly, blowing my horn like a maniac on the loose but reversing was impossible since there was another car directly behind me. Bang! Scrunch! And the sound of shattered glass related the whole story. It seems that the chap in a Skoda in front, who was parked in a No Parking bit of the road, must have either left his handbreak loose in the hurry to go to the shop opposite or, as he put it, someone knocked his car (which should not have been left there) and loosened his handbreak with the result that the Skoda hit the four-wheel drive and both of them hit poor little me.

Anyway, enough boring details but the warden came, took pictures and made a report…I insisted it was far from being a bumper to bumper accident, in my case.

I called my insurance who asked me if I wanted to initiate a report. I said ‘Let’s wait for the culprit to do so’. Until today he hadn’t done a thing about it. Of course, he sustained no damage so had no interest in reporting anything, hoping, in true Mediterranean style, that this stupid woman would not either. Ah! Ha! he is wrong. Off I go tomorrow to my insurance to initiate that report seeing that if I don’t nobody will, it seems.

But, horoscope or not, my ‘bad car week’ persisted. Off I went on Wednesday to the Camilleri Wines launch of their delicious Laurenti which was held at a mysteriously named restaurant-to-be (at least so I am told) Heat (XVI) at the elegant Valletta Waterfront. The Laurenti is made of ‘hand-picked Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes harvested from selected Maltese family vineyards, some 1,870 metres above sea level.’ to quote the very good looking invitation.

I latched on to members of the media for security when I arrived. We agreed that ‘there weren’t the usual people.’ Domenic Galea and his trio were playing the kind of music I like. Good old-fashioned songs intercepted by civilised jazz pieces. Inside me I chortled with glee at the thought that if there were admirers of the Sex Pistols and those who thought punk is sacrosanct were having a ‘bad music evening’. I believe that within us all, there exists a taste for calm, soft, fluffy music full of unthreatening sounds and nice tunes. Burt Bacharach, Bert Kaempfert, Edmundo Ros and Helmut Zacharias And His Magic Violins…I shall love them until I am grasping a Zimmer frame and my bones are crumbling to dust underneath my parchment-like skin…

Pretty young girls wearing black were serving us lovely canapés. The Waterfront surrounded by sea and the bastions on the other side is a sight to behold especially after the architectural zoo and pathetic seafront monstrosities of Sliema which I am doomed to live with until the rest of my days. I hope the Waterfront is not going to finish up looking tatty, with people using it as a site for picnics or horror of horrors, the word I dread most of all, barbecues, but that those who go there will respect this historical place now turned so cleverly into an elegant destination.

Anyway, to get back to my ‘bad car week’. I was off to another launch in St Julian’s that same evening and had arranged to meet a fellow hackette ‘outside the carpark there’. On the way my car stopped three times and only fervent prayers to St Anthony got it going again, until I got to the bend of the Regional Road that is, when it because obvious that it was going to take a long rest for the remainder of the evening. I had worn down the battery too, trying to start the car, again and again. St Anthony was not going to budge. He was probably asleep by then, as it was long past his bedtime. Friends and acquaintances kindly stopped, proffering help. Thank goodness for my subscription to RMF. Felix eventually turned up, recharged the battery and told me that a crucial pipe had been repaired with sellotape, one reason why the car kept on stalling. He snipped off the offending bit of pipe which was damaged and the car went like a bomb. I haven’t yet had the time to discuss the matter of the sellotape with my mechanic. I cannot believe he used sellotape to repair a crucial rubber tube. What will I discover next, a piece of elastic from a haberdasher – or someone’s knickers – holding something important together in the engine? The mind boggles and I tremble at the thought.

But more about motoring. I received in the post, as all members must have, a copy of the very useful RMF Motorist Handbook. If you haven’t got a copy I understand that they are on sale for Lm2.50. They are worth every penny with a

picture in front of Jesmond Mugliett (Minister for Urban Development and Roads) looking dashing. I browsed through the chapters Why do cars break down? How to avoid it; What to do in an accident or emergency; Traffic offences and fines; Essential vehicle accessories (I have none of them.) and best of all a little piece entitled Every second counts which advises us to keep our distance “as driving too close to the car in front of you is a common fault and a regular cause of accidents.” I have now repeated this to myself several times over as it is so true. In my first accident at least, had I kept more distance between me and the blue car he would not have left me with a blue streak and a dent.

Let me update you on the story which I published in my diary some two weeks ago regarding the distraught mother whose schizophrenic son’s pills were changed for generic ones and who was therefore suffering from this as they did not seem to agree with him. The mother tells me that after spending a week between one consultant and another they finally came up with a solution: they are now providing patients with a liquid version of Risperdal, which is even more expensive than the tablets and prescribed to patients who find it difficult to swallow the tablets and available on the National Health. So, try and understand that arrangement. Still, the mother is happy that her son now has the same medication even if in liquid form.

Of course one can understand the Government trying to save on free medication especially when according to the papers recently twenty business firms involved in the supply of pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and other services to the Ministry of Health are claiming that Government owes them a total of LM8.5 million and are threatening to go to court over the matter. I shouldn’t think many of these firms are Red in political inclination either so they must be really desperate.

And to think that when the Labour government had introduced a miserable 50cent fee to curb abuses which a free medication system is bound to encourage, reams and reams were written scolding it for this!

Last week I mentioned Rainer Fsadni’s uncanny resemblence in voice and behaviour, to Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott who I thought was his uncle. A relative e-mailed me to put me right. It seems that Rainer’s mother is a cousin of Fr Peter’s and is Erin Serracino Inglott’s daughter so Fr Peter is not his uncle after all. You can work out the relationship yourselves if you wish. Still the resemblance is there. I’ve never been very good at sorting out family trees anyway.