In a survey on world happiness, conducted by a professor at a Dutch university, the Maltese hit the number one spot. The story was carried in one of the London newspapers on a Sunday and I pointed it out to one of my sons. “Ignorance is bliss,” he said. That was already my suspicion – but I said nothing. Perhaps there was some truth in the reasons given – strong family networks, plenty of sunshine, etc, etc – and it wasn’t a case of “see the happy moron” after all.

Some days later, the same London newspaper carried another piece about the subject, in which the son of some friends was quoted. “Ignorance is bliss,” he said. He went on to suggest that this happiness is the result of our not knowing what we are missing – or that there are ways of life far more comfortable and efficient than our own. “The Maltese have not yet worked out that the government is there to represent them, and not to police them,” he said.

* * *

I thought about this young man’s remarks as I sat in my car last night, waiting for the tow truck to come along and remove yet another burst tyre with a twisted rim and replace it with another. I had been hugging the inner edge of the road because the rest of it was under water and I had no idea what craters and cavities may have been concealed. The greatest of them all was – as luck would have it – on that inner edge of the road, and the virtually non-existent lighting ensured that I could not see it until I had hit it with a jolt so enormous, that the CD stopped playing mid-note (The Marmalade’s Reflections on My Life).

I mentally waved goodbye to the Lm65 it would cost to have the tyre changed and the rim fixed, and then remembered that only two months ago, I had two such experiences – one in which two wheels were damaged (Lm65 x 3), and another two-wheel incident nine months ago, when at night on the poorly-lit Naxxar Road I drove into a hole that had not been there in the morning (Lm65 x 2). That brings the grand total for the previous nine months to Lm390 spent on burst tyres and bent rims caused by ruined roads that are not maintained, despite the fact that we have to pay road tax every year (the disc that goes on our windscreens) and when we buy our cars – a ludicrously high registration tax that makes them the most expensive in the world outside Singapore.

Over and above that, I have to pay a breakdown service membership fee which, because I drive one of the most reliable cars in existence, I use only to have burst tyres removed. The tow truck guys who come along to help me out, say that the vast majority of their call-outs are now for burst wheels and other damage caused by the roads.

The owners of the tyre shop where they magically get my twisted and tortured wheel-rims back to normal within 24 hours, make a living by fixing the damage caused by the failure of every Maltese government to acknowledge that road maintenance is a primary and essential duty. I teased them that they must go out at night with a jackhammer to drum up new business. “A jackhammer?” said a man who was standing there with a tyre that looked as though it had met an angry Rottweiler. “You’d need a JCB to open up craters like the new one on Mosta Road in Lija, which I drove into this morning.” No, you don’t need a JCB – all you need is a few days of rain. That’s how poor the condition of our roads is – some rain and bits come off them.

* * *

I have been driving for 23 years and have never known the roads to be as bad as they are today. This is unsurprising, because in those 23 years, I don’t remember anything being done to them except bits of patching here and there where the rain pulled up the tarmac. Now, even that process, except for the very worst holes on the most-used roads, has stopped because there are more cavities and damaged bits than there is actual road surface. For the patching-up department, into which the roads department has devolved – it is a losing battle.

You can’t patch up forever, roads that need to be rebuilt from scratch. Just as a slave becomes accustomed to his or her chains, so we have become accustomed to our “non-roads.” We take them for granted. We pay for repairs to our cars as a matter of course, without feeling outrage that, after we have paid so much in registration tax, the government cannot get round to taking its finger out and doing something about what must surely be the very worst urban roads in the world. We call them roads because they lead from one place to another and we drive or walk along them, but they are not really roads at all.

* * *

The other day, I took a rare walk along the Sliema seafront. “Look at this road,” I told my walking companion. “It has had constant traffic, day and night, all the year round, since the 1960s. It has not subsided – it is still flat. There are never any holes in it, and the rain leaves it completely unaffected.” It was built by the Sappers, using road-building principles that had changed little since the Romans established them.

Roman roads lasted for centuries. If you build things correctly the first time round, patching-up becomes an extraordinary measure, and not a routine. Let us see how long the CHOGM highway will last, before it begins to subside in places and buckle under the sun in others, and whether it will withstand the winter rains and the passage of trucks – as all roads should.

* * *

We are taking longer than expected to adjust to the new reality. I still hear people talking about “doing business in the EU” or “doing business with the EU” or “getting contacts with companies in the EU.” These people have not yet realised that, even if they operate only in Malta and only with Maltese business contacts, they are doing business in the EU. The coffee-shop down the road is doing business the EU. This newspaper is published in the EU. When I produce a magazine, I am producing it in the EU. People who sell cars to Maltese customers are selling them in the EU.

Anything that is made here is made in the EU. We are living, breathing and working in the EU. Almost every transaction we make, and certainly every transaction that takes place with other Maltese, is a transaction in the EU – and yet, we still think of ourselves as being outside the EU but now with permission to transact freely with “it”. Do you know the book called Who moved my cheese?, which is basically about intransigence and inflexibility? In our case, somebody has moved our borders – and we have hardly noticed.