Nothing, at my kitchen sink, prepared me for the volte face of Mr John Dalli and his appointment by the prime minster as his personal consultant. I mean, I told my stack of plates, there is Mr Dalli, writing Sunday after Sunday obliquely and otherwise about the Nationalist Party since his resignation; there he is on television baring his soul and the next thing we know, he is sitting by the side of his rival for the leadership, looking sheepish – yes, Mr Dalli looking sheepish – and suddenly, being taken on as consultant and accepting. Well I never! I suppose, as the saying goes, Les loups ne se mangent pas entre eux. Let’s plug all the holes before the election. Who needs an enemy in one’s very own camp, after all. But even this move may not stop the baby from disappearing with the bath water.

The intelligent move by Dr Sant to refuse to go and debate serious matters with the prime minister on the circus that is Xarabank pleased me immensely and there were special kisses to St Anthony. Dr Sant spelled out to the prime minister, in a letter, the parameters he requires for debates which are fair and where you don’t have the likes of Peppi and Lou posing as independent chairmen, and thus start off with a programme which, before it even begins, is heavily weighed against the Labour Party. I hope that something can be retrieved from the ruins that is PBS and that Dr Gonzi will take the Leader of the Opposition’s letter and make sure that an ambience for fair debate is created now that an election is round the corner. Xarabank may have been voted the best programme or whatever but we aren’t all idiots. You would be surprised to find that there are many who think and observe on this island. Let’s cater for them too.

Sunday lunch at the Westin Dragonara Terrace with Harry, so that we could bond a little as the week is so fraught with duties at the moment and I hardly see him. There was a Holy Communion ceremony somewhere nearby and half the patrons were beautifully dressed as they came straight from the ceremony to the Westin. It was busy and bustling but we were still very well served and Harry had his very own high chair. It is best to wear loose clothing if you go there as the spread is enormous and enticing. I observed that far too many people were eating far too much, as if the Great Siege was about to descent upon us again.

There, as I was putting Harry’s bib on, I met two English gentlemen, friends of a friend, who have been living here for a long time. One of them said to me that he had been coming for years and that, all in all, he has come to the conclusion that it is the best value-for-money Sunday lunch out.

It is one of those reassuring spreads in which everything looks tempting. So I organized myself and started with hors d’ouvres, keeping my unheavenly body in mind and that I simply have to get back to a size 16; then I had an excellent lamb stew and chicken and vegetables.

Harry had fish which he did not spit out. He cannot tell me yet but he must have enjoyed it as he kept on opening his mouth for more, even when his little spoon was nowhere in sight. I thought I’d forget my cholesterol count for the day and helped myself to some Brie and crackers and then onto the dessert table which is copious. My absolute favourite was the ‘home-made’ chocolate pudding which was fluffy and light and reminded me of my days in digs in Holloway Road with a landlady who dined with the father of Anthony Hope, the author of The Prisoner of Zenda. He apparently kept his wife Thea’s ashes in an urn and would put them on the table and ask Anna, my landlady, if she minded if Thea joined them for dinner.

I have been given very strict instructions by my 1980 baby and her darling Robin that I am not to give Harry any dessert or sweets behind their backs. The only sweet food he is to have is fruit. I felt so very tempted to allow him to share the lovely chocolate pudding with me, so that I could have an excuse to go up for more, without appearing greedy but I did not dare even give him a crumb.

Lunch out was a refreshing break from having to cook on a Sunday and there were no dishes to wash afterwards. Sunday lunch at the Westin is so popular that you have to book ahead, please note.

It was so predictable, wasn’t it? Karl Schembri had already told me a week ago he would have no chance on earth of making it to the National Literary Award if there are the customary "priests and other dinosaurs" on the jury. I tried to console him and said I would kiss all five holy pictures of St Anthony lovingly, one by one, and maybe even light the candle a friend brought me from Rome with his image, so that Karl would get the award. But Karl was spot on and the predictions in his crystal ball were, unhappily, only too correct. A priest and a former priest, Fr Norbert Ellul Vincenti and Mr George Peresso, were invited by the National Book Council to judge Karl's novel, Il-Manifest tal-Killer. Some of you may remember that Karl’s book was censored by Fr Joe Borg and could not be read on Campus FM, the state-funded university radio. Let us not forget that this book which attacked the Establishment, had been turned down by the major publishers who were afraid of irking their Church clients by publishing a work which could not be pigeonholed.

As I was sitting at my computer working on next Sunday’s December issue of First (yes, there is another issue, today’s was a Christmas Special i.e. an extra issue) I was praying to St Anthony that Karl might win the literary prize. Friends of mine too, had read his book and gave me glowing accounts of it.

I have had my differences with Karl when he worked here and we were on the same floor. He could easily be my son but I have always admired his intellectual rigour and investigative abilities.

I won't go into the novel's merits as that's not my territory though I shall spend much more time reading and analyzing Maltese literature, including the books of Alfred Sant, when I retire. But we'd covered Karl’s Il-Manifest tal Killer well in our magazine Manic precisely a year ago and all I can say is that it's the first ever piece of Maltese literature which tears our bigoted institutions to bits – from Dun Karm to the law courts. Karl attacks specifically the clericalism impersonated in our national poet, among other fronts. And why shouldn’t a writer do that for otherwise what are they for if not to go beyond the limitations imposed by society and push them further; if not to bark at institutions; if not to tear away the PR gloss from everything and get at the truth; if not to make us think.

So can anyone justify the National Book Council’s decision to choose a priest and an ex-priest to judge Karl’s book? When I asked Karl to comment on this choice he remarked: "It's like asking the Taliban to judge Rushdie, I mean Marie, can you take Suliman Rushdie and put him before a Taliban jury, for goodness sake? Is it fair, or even reasonable to choose a former priest and a Jesuit to judge a literary work which tears our revered national poet, Dun Karm to pieces, for that is what my book does?” Karl said this as he stormed out of Castille where the awards were held. However, he wants it to be known that the only redeeming aspect of this sad and sorry tale is that Claire Azzopardi won the first prize with her great book of short stories, Il-Linja l-Hadra. "She deserved it and I'm really happy for her," Karl continued, meaning every word he was saying.

And just to rub it in, the awards night included a short play with a dialogue between a nun and a priest. But then again, that's precisely what Karl's novel is about. Almost prophetic. Read it. Don't take my word for it. Even if it was not awarded a prize, as so many good books are not and we don’t have to go into that here, it will always be remembered as a piece of beautifully written Maltese literature which broke down barriers.

‘Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls,’ the Iranian poet and mystic Rumi was already writing in the 13th century. We need to shake up these organizations, all part of the Establishment with Establishment personalities sitting on them and stifling them and worse, much, much worse, discouraging young writers like Karl Schembri whose very soul is in his writing. All the usual platitudes are spouted out by those responsible when you ask questions: ‘Don’t take is personally.’ ‘We have no agenda.’ I’ve reached the last chapter of my life and still, I hear nothing but platitudes. I mean no disrespect to Fr Ellul Vincenti or the one with the beautiful voice, George Peresso, of course. They are not at fault. They accepted to perform a thankless task. They were not the right choice when it came to judging Karl’s book.

Karl is not easily discouraged and I hope he will go on writing in the way he does; that he will continue removing those veils in which our society chooses to wrap itself up, mostly veils of hypocrisy and bigotry.

A friend send me some Einstein quotations the other evening when I asked him to cheer me up with something as I was drowning in sultanas and Christmas tinsel and we weren’t even in December yet. One of them, appropriately is the following: ‘Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” That’s Einstein for you…so, take heart Karl.