Last week I blamed the oppressive heat for the spate of crazy stories. But this week, there’s no excuse.

The temperatures are getting cooler, but the stories hitting the news have now gone from wacky to just plain loony.

At least the man who was dragged before the courts because he was masturbating in his car while watching a young woman walk by, had the decency to look embarrassed as he stood before the magistrate. (I liked the way she scolded him: “You have done something very stupid and now your name will be in all the papers.”)

The online comments reacting to the report, however, make me wonder whether most of the men in this country are perverts. It is clear that too many of them simply look at women as sexual playthings who were put on this earth to deliberately tantalise and tease them until they are driven wild with uncontrollable urges. Predictably, several men brought up that age-old argument about women deliberately provoking men by the way they dress. (“I couldn’t help myself officer! Her cleavage was provoking me!”)

Let me tell you something gentlemen – it doesn’t matter what we wear. That is not the reason some men end up sitting alone in a car (or at the beach, or behind a bush) indulging in “lewd acts” whenever a woman or girl passes by. Somewhere along the way, either in his childhood or in his later years, this man has come to associate sex with something secret and dirty. It is the man who has the problem, and whether the woman is wearing a mini skirt or a burka has nothing to do with it.

Hey, that’s my pram!

I guess it’s OK to father two children and then walk away, never to see them again, but God forbid the mother should give away the pram he had paid for.

The details are a bit vague, but basically a 24-year-old man saw someone else using the pram he had bought for his two daughters, and called his estranged girlfriend demanding to meet her. When she showed up he started to strangle her – as you do – because she had presumably given away the pram.

My mind was bursting with questions such as: how did he identify the pram? Was it embedded with a microchip, you know like they do with dogs in case they get lost? And who was the recipient of the pram for him to have got so upset? Perhaps it was a particularly annoying relative who had snubbed him. Did the man want the pram for himself, you know, just in case he decided to have more babies with someone else? And finally, after it was all over, who got custody of the pram?

This is crucial because there are things like visitation rights to think about and whether the pram should spend Christmas with him and New Year’s Day with her.

So, where did you get the yacht, huh?

As the VAT scam case unfolds in court, things become curiouser and curiouser. One of the details which emerged was that, on investigating his bank accounts, the police found that the brains behind the operation was living a lifestyle “beyond his means”. My question is: so how come no one ever suspected anything before? How do you live that kind of lifestyle on the salary of a government employee?

This is something that has always fascinated me about people who are swindling money and dealing in drugs while holding down an ordinary job. One minute the guy is driving a Fiat Uno and the next he drives up in something sleek and swanky which would cost him about 10 years of his salary. And yet, no one says anything. No one bats an eyelid.

He’s flashing wads of money around and going out every night, while his colleague sitting next to him wears threadbare shirts and eats a

luncheon meat sandwich 365 days a year. Does no one ever wonder aloud that, “there’s something wrong with this

picture”?

I know what you’re thinking – what do you expect his colleague to do, report him to the Income Tax Department?

Well, technically it’s the taxman who should be on the lookout for these things by making it clear that he has the right to audit anyone spending more money than he claims to earn.

But it seems to me that the Inland Revenue folks only swoop down on people whose paycheques are taxed at source, or small businesses that are struggling to get by.

Meanwhile, those with BMWs, swimming pools and villas “with room for a pony” – as Hyacinth Bucket would say – are left in peace, even though, on paper, the person concerned is a lowly clerk in an anonymous government office with a salary that is less than most rich kids’ pocket money.

Keep it moving

I respect the police, I honestly do (I have a new rule: that I will be charming to anyone in uniform because I have an aversion to my jaw being broken – allegedly of course).

Anyway, there we were, driving towards Naxxar, when we were stopped from proceeding further because the road was closed for the

village feast. The nice, jolly policeman was diverting traffic as best he could, seeing that he had a cigarette in one hand. The healthy paunch of his beer belly only got in the way just a little bit as he tried to waddle from one car to the other, speaking to irate drivers.

I know that beneath the scowl there was a smile just waiting to break through and when he addressed my partner as “hi” (chum? pal?) I firmly believe that what he really wanted to say was “sir”.

I go to sleep at night just glowing with contentment, my mind completely at rest that this country is being protected by such shining examples of disciplined men in uniform.

Oh, to be a gardener

This week I realised how handy it is to be the gardener of a large villa. You can keep your tools in the shed, your overalls in the garage… and a stash of 80 kilos of marijuana in the garden wall.

Tune in next week for the latest module in Gardening Made Easy: “How to hide cocaine in the garden well”.

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