The Leader of the Opposition appears to be wringing the last possible drop of political gain from the accidental death of a young woman in the early hours of New Year’s Day. Standing outside the Mediterranean Conference Centre, near the spot where she fell, he addressed the bored reporters who surrounded him. I wonder how they stand it. He told them that he had demanded of the government an immediate ‘administrative and executive inquiry’, whatever that may mean. He was turned down, as well he might be. The accidental death of a private person, in circumstances that do not warrant the interference of the law, should not be turned into a national circus with the Leader of the Opposition performing as ringmaster. That poor young woman’s death is none of his business, none of the government’s business, and certainly none of ours. The Leader of the Opposition should devote himself to matters more befitting of Malta’s once and possibly future prime minister. A specialisation in navel-gazing and ringside clown-acts is not going to get us through the next few years.

* * *

This is a straightforward case of a person’s better judgement having been affected by alcohol. Had she not been under the influence of drink, this young woman – who by all accounts was sensible and well behaved – would not have climbed onto the bastion wall, and more so, she would not have lost her balance and fallen off. That’s all there is to it. It is pointless to seek another explanation, because there cannot be one. She was not pushed. She was not fed a drug that made her think she could fly. Casting around for straws of blame at which to clutch – the drinks were spiked; there was no danger warning on the bastion walls – is pure escapism. At the age of 19, people have been fully emancipated adults for a year or more, and are wholly responsible for their own behaviour, including how much or how little they choose to drink. No one else is responsible for them, and certainly not their parents, nor the government. They can vote, marry, raise children, have sex with whomever they want to when they want to, enter into a gay relationship, or move to the other side of the world and never see their parents again – and all of this is outside parental control, as it should be, because at 18, a person is an adult, with the freedom to do as he or she pleases, and also with the responsibilities and obligation that go with that freedom. Many Maltese parents do not understand this basic fact. They seem to believe that as long as their ‘children’ live in their home, they are their responsibility and theirs to control. A woman of my acquaintance recently explained to me how she “allowed” her 20-year-old daughter to go on holiday to Sydney because she would be staying with her aunt. “It’s not for you to allow,” I told her. “She’s free to go. If you try to prevent her, she can call the police.” The woman was very annoyed at me, but I couldn’t help myself. I can’t bear Maltese parent syndrome. They suffocate their sons and daughters instead of encouraging them to grow and taking delight in that growth. I often wonder what they think they are protecting them against: the world, perhaps?

* * *

I have seen letters to the newspapers from parents speaking about ‘the exploitation of our children’, after what happened at that New Year’s Eve party. Children? They are adults in terms of the law. What they do is up to them, and not up to mummy, daddy and the government. Perhaps that’s why so many young Maltese adults are hopelessly immature. They are not allowed to grow up. Then we wonder why they can’t keep a marriage together for longer than six years, if that.

* * *

There have been calls for a ban on open-bar parties. Why? When people are over 18 they can drink as much as they like, and it’s nobody else’s business unless they get into a car and try to drive, or bother others while under the influence. Alcohol is not an illegal substance, and it is ludicrous to believe that laws can be written which permit adults to have only two drinks and not three, four drinks and not five, while out celebrating. Am I to conclude that these people are suggesting the presence of drinks wardens at parties, who will key our ID card number into a little contraption, which is worn around their waist, before handing us part of our drinks ration? What do you get at wedding receptions and other parties to which you receive an invitation, rather than buying a ticket? You get an open bar, of course – a bar far more open than anything you can possibly get at a party for 3,000, because access to the drinks is quick and easy, and waiters are milling around topping up your wine glass. If you ban the open bars for which you have to pay, then logically, you have to ban the ones that are by invitation only, too, because it’s not the payment that’s the problem, but the access to lots of drinks – or rather, the inability of many people to control themselves. Yet the number of drinks grown adults consume is not a matter that can be legislated against. Grown adults are allowed to consume as much alcohol as they like. They are not 14 years old.

When reacting with hysterical immediacy, people fail to think logically. If open-bar parties are banned, they will be banned for 50-year-olds as well as for 18-year-olds – because 18-year-olds, like 50-year-olds, are adults in the eyes of the law. The State cannot ban open bars for adults who are 18 to 21, and allow them only for those who are over 21. And surely nobody is suggesting that the state should control, by legal means, how much 50-year-olds drink at parties. These people just haven’t thought the matter through properly. Young men and women of 18 and over cannot be up for discussion in the same category as teenagers aged 15 to 17. Their position at law is completely different. It is exactly the same as mine, aged 41. Yet I don’t think anyone would have the temerity or stupidity to suggest that open-bar parties for 41-year-olds should be banned because we cannot be trusted to control ourselves or to hold our drink. If we drink too much and throw up in the guest lavatory, or spend the next day with a serious hangover, then it’s not the government’s business. So it is with 18-year-olds.

* * *

At the Law Courts, I overheard a police officer put the matter of the Leader of the Opposition’s demand for an inquiry into succinct perspective. “Tajba din,” he said. “So suddenly adults are no longer responsible for making sure they don’t put themselves at risk. Other people are responsible for doing this for them.” The young woman who fell was an adult. She was a young and inexperienced adult, which is why she made the mistakes that cost her life, but we cannot reset the legal threshold of adulthood at 25 on the grounds that between 18 and 25 people tend to make stupid and dangerous mistakes due to inexperience and poor judgement, including marriage to highly unsuitable partners. So please, let us not have politicians and worried parents whipping up storms for the sake of something about which they can do nothing. Nineteen-year-olds are adults. They are no longer their parents’ responsibility, and they are certainly not the responsibility of the police and legislators. What they do and how they behave is basically up to them.

* * *

A couple of people wrote in to the newspapers to point out that those parents are naïve who believe, because that is what they were told, that their ‘children’ (aged over 18) got drunk to the point of sickness on just a couple of vodkas. I agree completely. So what happens is that these naïve parents rush to the defence of their ‘children’ against those who cruelly exploit them by selling them doctored drinks, instead of telling them to grow up and get their act together – and possibly dousing them with a bucket of ice-cold water, as a friend’s mother once did to him when she went downstairs in the morning and found him, dead-drunk, sprawled and snoring in the hallway. But those were the days when parents didn’t blame the authorities; they blamed their sons and daughters, and bawled them out.

I approve of that school of parenting. The last thing teenagers need is an enabler: the sort of parent who always finds excuses, seeks justification for poor behaviour, puts the blame elsewhere and believes his or her ‘child’ is innocent. I always wonder about the kind of teenage years these parents had. If they were not very much the same as their own offspring’s, then they must be a lot older than I am, or they must have spent their Saturday nights at the parish disco between 6pm and 9pm. I don’t see much difference between what went on when I was 19 and what goes on today: people stayed out all night, drank too much, had sex, tried a few drugs, wore clothes of which their parents disapproved, threw up in public. And then, you know what? They grew up, got married and had children, and now their husbands snore on the sofa at 9pm while they clean out the fridge.

* * *

I received in the post a report on the deliberations of the language council, which decided that the euro should be written and pronounced ewro in Maltese. The report tells us that the council considered various other options, including jurow (plural jurows), and for the cent, sent (plural sents). I am almost grateful they went for ewro.

* * *

The obsession with sucking English words into Maltese and turning what was a perfectly good language into pidgin has led to some degree of confusion, and not just in the minds of young children who cannot understand why it is blekbord in Maltese and blackboard in English (no wonder so many Maltese people are semi-literate; it’s difficult to learn either language in these circumstances). L-orizzont last Friday included the word ‘coach’ in one story-title, and the word xowrum in another one. If xowrum, then why not kowc? And if ‘coach’, then why not ‘showroom’. “That’s because this coach is a bus, and kowc is a sports trainer,” a relative explained. You know, he might be right.

* * *

A friend emailed to say that I had forgotten to mention spukxin last week. It’s the word commonly used for the inspection chamber beneath a manhole cover. I told her that I had remembered it, but I couldn’t find it in Serracino Inglott’s dictionary. Perhaps he doesn’t meet a lot of plumbers.

* * *

I received an e-mail message suggesting that tobi, which is not used to describe fat persons as such, but those who are short and stout, is not a corruption of ‘tubby’ but of ‘toby jug’. The jugs, which were in the shape of a grotesque figure of a man with a disproportionately large head and a stout body, wearing a large smile and a tricorn hat, were common in Maltese homes and bars up to at least the 1950s. Then they went out of fashion and were probably broken and thrown away, and now they are fairly rare collectables. The tobi sound seems more likely to be derived from the Maltese difficulty with the English ‘oh’ sound, which would lead to ‘toby’ (tow-bee) being pronounced as ‘tobby’, rather than ‘tubby’, which would have the same sound in Maltese pronunciation and be spelt tabi. My correspondent quoted the heading of a newspaper piece, which has stuck in his mind since the 1960s. It was written by Lino Cassar and published in Ix-Xewka, and it was about the newly formed National Council of Women and its rather chubby president. The heading? Tobby or not tobby – that is the question. They didn’t use Maltese spelling in those days, or it would have had to be: Tobi ur not tobi – det iz de kwezcin.