Starting my Saturday night/Sunday morning with some alcohol and nibbles, and the conversation that ensued when we all heartily debated whether one of the nibbles in front of us was spam or mortadella, got me thinking about the appearance/reality conundrums in Malta, of which there are a book’s worth, but here is my selection for your Monday morning…

First of all, the mortadella in front of us was cut like spam, so the majority assumed it was spam, regardless of the actual taste. That says a lot about the way many of us judge things, and those in charge of PR need to keep that very healthily at the front of their minds when they are trying to sell things to a very overweight in body but relatively light in mind Maltese public. (Mind you, with the kind of education system we have, which generally only rewards memory work, I do think someone bigger than us wants us not to be interested in thinking independently anymore).

Let’s start with weight. We are the fatties of Europe apparently, our women and now also our kiddies. Many, many women dedicate themselves entirely to housework here so they have all the time in the world to prepare nutritious, simple healthy and not fat-making food. The evidence suggests, however, that even when mums have more time on their hands, the pressure from advertising, and from their kids, for what we can loosely call “junk food” is so enormous that even stay-at-home mums succumb to the pressure of fast food.

Or perhaps these stay-at-home mums are still cooking healthy meals but kids are eating junk food as well. Who can tell with all these levels of reality around?

Can it be that, in 21st century Malta, babies/kids can just be dumped in institutions, or later on be taken away from their real parents for all manner of abuse and neglect, but then cannot be adopted without the agreement of the same hopeless parents? So childless Maltese couples circle the globe, Madonna-style, to give a child a home, when our own home grown hundreds are languishing in institutions – run by generally saintly nuns, I grant you, but it is not a home life and never will be. True, fostering has come in, but kids want permanence, kids want to belong. Kids prefer imperfect parents who are really theirs to anything else. And these kids cannot wait any longer for the spam to turn out to be mortadella!

We get wardens because we are an undisciplined nation, apparently. And if you try talking to a warden, many of them tell you they have little or no education. So the people who were meant to educate us into becoming law-abiding citizens are sometimes even failed school dropouts. They really are spam not mortadella, processed in a way, uniformed and all to make us believe they should be there in those positions, but should they be?

Take an undisciplined country, preach to its people about the lack of discipline and set up a warden system. Then, in many cases, choose as your wardens the kind of person none of us would employ for very long and what do you get? A discredited system where another entire system had to be set up to curb their abuses – although I am not sure you can ever turn spam into mortadella.

Blocks of flats in our prettiest village and rural centres. Look for the permit application to build a block of flats in the back garden of a listed house in San Pawl tat Targa, or similar no-nos in Lija. It is, after all, not the developer concerned but the policy that allows this that is to blame.

How on earth did we ever reach the situation of listing a house, and then allowing development (I’m not talking about a greenhouse) in its back garden?

Planning policies must be of the best quality mortadella, too, otherwise we risk more of the country sprouting cubes of spam where no development should be allowed at all.

I recently complained about poor service at the Passport Office where my passport was sent flying, literally, in order to be delivered (after I was told it wasn’t ready and a story that I won’t repeat). The acting director appallingly – and, in my humble opinion, breaking all data protection guidelines – not only writes in to belittle what I said (unlike Air Malta who – fantastically – lately just said sorry for one of their failings; what an example to others and how refreshing compared to their previous PR attitude), but says in his letter that the delay was because of wrong personal information he gave the public about me?

If that is the attitude of acting directors – not uneducated wardens, mind you – I am appalled. And, by the way, the information he gave was wrong, and I am still considering whether I should take the said acting director to court for breaking data protection guidelines, apart from any sense of ethics. But why bother, can spam be transformed into mortadella anyway?

So, can we at least also concentrate on the needs of child-ren who have actually been born, and not solely and exclusively on those of the unborn? Can we concentrate on the buildings that could yet be built instead of only moaning about what is already there? And give your kids some mozzarella (no, not mortadella) and tomatoes for supper tonight. They may not eat it, but when they are hungry enough, and not refuelled by the infamous packet, they will...

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