Such a great deal of fuss over the possible rise of two cents on a loaf of bread. Prices are rising all the time, imperceptibly and we don’t even mention it. Why do you suppose that most businessmen here and everywhere on earth are such rich people? But when it comes to bread so much ink is spilt when the price goes up by what is after all, an insignificant amount. Wait till the Euro is introduced in January. Do you really believe all the hype, that prices are going to remain stable? I won’t even bother asking

St Anthony to intervene in this one. I don’t like to pressurize him and ask him for the impossible.

Quite frankly if the rise in the price of bread is going to mean that as a nation we shall be eating less bread then it would be a good thing. I love my baker…covered in flour as he is…working in front of a furnace even in summer… such a darling soul and a gentleman. He is one of the few, outside Qormi, who makes the proper Maltese hobza which doesn’t have the texture of cotton wool. Helen Caruana Galizia and Julian Sammut have written about keeping the Maltese loaf alive. We simply cannot expect these bakers to produce this delicious bread in the traditional manner while we go on paying a pittance for it. Nor can we expect government to subsidize it. We have to learn to pay the correct price for a good loaf of Maltese bread and perhaps eat less bread and consequently put on less weight. I am trying to follow my own advice. And let’s not have another riot as we did in 1919.

And while I am speaking of food let me tell you briefly about the working lunch we had at the Westin Dragonara with Karen Mifsud and their new girl Maria Debono at Palio’s restaurant. This is presently outdoors and although we did not get an obvious lot of work done as it was mostly to get to know Maria, the face behind the e-mails, we enjoyed the spirit of it all. Palio’s specialises in Mediterranean and Italian cuisine and it right by the water’s edge, although you may choose to dine indoors which would be a pity. We are all perpetually on diet, myself ever since my Cow & Gate days when I was the typical Cow & Gate baby, so we chose a refreshing salad supported I am afraid by very fresh bread and butter. Everyone pretended they did not want a dessert. I skimmed over the menu…a definite ‘No’ for a Banoffi pie…that is mortal sin. I asked if they had sorbet even if it was not on the menu. They did, so every one went for a venial sin instead, a delightful sorbet. Thank goodness for these occasional oasis in our lives in which we are mainly, in the date time at least, Siamese twins attached to a computer.

The geography programme Thalassa on Friday nights is an institution on TV 5. I sometimes watch it if I am about the house. It is a programme about anything to do with the sea and the reports are from somewhere exotic; the photography magnificent. I only caught the second part of it, the Friday before last and so I had no idea in which corner of the world it had been filmed. It was some part of Africa though.

I thought how wonderful to have such a simple life: a mud hut with a thatched roof, a thong, banana leaves as lingerie – apple green, Irish green, shamrock green, electric green, depending from which tree you had chosen your leaves – and dipping in and out of the sea all day long to keep cool. These people eat fish caught by their children and when they feel like some meat their men go into the forest to hunt wild boar. On special occasions they make themselves a new grass skirt. No fear of the washing machine, iron, television or dish washer breaking down. No wretched plumbers and electricians to struggle with.

Yes, I prefer to watch TV programmes which are about something, rather than the endless local magazine programmes which try to include everything in them – from cooking, to removing blackheads, to having your hair streaked and false nails firmly stuck onto your own, in order to try and attract advertising.

And to continue with small screen matters, brings me to the incestuous matiness and nepotism prevalent on PBS. I admire Mr John Camilleri for resigning and refusing to play the game inspite of his being a Blue tesserat. He could have stayed put as chairman of the editorial board of PBS. But he knows that he is not going to win the battle against Bondì, so why waste his energies and fight a battle which was lost by the editorial board when it comes to the new schedule of programmes? Inspite of the fact that Bondìminus is number 8 in the April-June 2007 Broadcasting Authority Survey, receiving merely 6.87 per cent of the audience share, Bondì will still get his programme in the next schedule. And better can be relied on to be a spin doctor for the government than Bondì who has earned so much money from making the government look far better than it actually is? Do you expect Bondì to have the slightest twinge of conscience or a moment’s moral panic for getting back his programme and thus depriving others from giving us something new and refreshing ? His conscience was buried long ago. He wants to keep his TV career on the bubble and, dripping with idealism, the thousands of liri from PBS, filling his bank account for a programme which did not even have a decent rating. And he doesn’t care who loses out because of this.

Many are at one with Mr Camilleri who suggested that a current affairs programme, such as the one Bondì has been running (yawn, yawn) for far too long, should be made by experienced staff on PBS in-house. But his suggestion has been turned down. And we know why.

And we haven’t even started talking about what is happening to Rachel Vella’s Tista’ Tkun Int! which in the Broadcasting Authority Survey received top rating with an audience share of 24.24 per cent. Her popular programme has been unceremoniously dropped. Rachel was apparently asked to pay a hefty sum. But we haven’t heard the end of that story yet. Rachel will rise again from the ashes, like a phoenix. Two weights and two measures did you say? My goodness, what makes you think that?? ‘They’ are shameless.

And as I was cleaning out my fridge, I was also thinking of other little matters in the news this week. I mean what can you say to cheques found in drawers at the local councils of Mosta and St Paul’s Bay? Are these local councils runned by men with the brain of a goldfish?

Then there is the other small matter of the WSC contracts, a story which doesn’t smell good at all, as bad as the drainage in Sliema where we can no longer swim. I wonder if Michael Falzon of WSC is going to show us how clean the sea really is, as he had charmingly done a few years ago, and take a plunge into the polluted waters? As to those whose land the government took over to build roads and pavements: do you blame them for grumbling as they received no compensation for it, and all put together they are owed millions by government? They cannot even chain themselves to the railings at Castille now as these have been removed. But, they are grumbling, someone in government received compensation even if he should not have as because of the time-frame he was strictly speaking not entitled to it…so it is alleged.

And one sure sign that the general election is round the corner is the spate of libels coming from both sides of the House. One sure way of stopping people from talking is to threaten to sue for libel… and then, we all know what happens once the law courts come into it. We shall know which side will have to eat its own words after the elections. But most of us know anyway what the truth is in most matters. It is often staring us in the face. It’s going to be difficult to put Humpty Dumpty together again.