“Only in Malta” has become a major, embarrassing cliché’ we hear, read and blissfully repeat with monotonous regularity. It is comic at most times, at others desperately frustrating, but there’s no eluding it.

Where else in the world would a nation find itself celebrating success in an international fireworks competition at the very same time it is mourning six victims of an umpteenth fireworks factory explosion? This paradoxical state of existence has been a source of much study and gentle wit for centuries, from Byron’s “yells, smells and bells” (get it? Yells and smells are ugh, bells can be beautiful but at awkward times tedious) to Jeremy Boissevain and his multi-faceted studies of Malta and the Maltese from a social and anthropological perspective.

While Malta has had the misfortune of belonging to foreign rulers and powers for most of her history, it is fun trying to imagine what it felt like to be in those foreigners’ shoes.

Forget pre-history. There were no nations then but gangs of semi-human nomads who fought each other over uncooked meat, unwanted daughters and wild berries, but it must have been intriguing for the first civilisations to come face to face with what could then finally be described as the Maltese race.

Only in Malta did the Carthaginians and the Romans find a people so ready and willing to join them in ousting each other out and then quickly submitting to the alternate victors by way of being left alone, albeit governed in abstentia, to produce their wine, honey and dyed fabrics. Daft and intelligent at the same time, one might say.

The same whimsical attitude met the later princes and queens who lorded it over these islands for so long. Earlier, the Arabs had given us the language that was to evolve into one of our own, the irrigation system, the best oranges in the world and most of our place names, only to eventually find themselves being totally obliterated from our history books as part of a Europeanisation process that was to have a re-run after the 2003 general election and subsequent membership of the European Union.

We are still learning, so one hears. In fact we have received generous funds from the EU to help textile workers who lost their jobs and instead of using them we have sent them back sealed with a kiss.

For one bloody bird of prey a year the islands were donated to the Knights of St John who, after witnessing the acute lack of water sources, almost opted for collective harakiri before accepting them. Weren’t we a bunch of savages that quenched our thirst by collecting rainwater in containers made from upturned human skulls? No. We had our nobles too, who were not so enamoured of these knightly upstarts. As much as the knights and the Maltese nobles hated each other however, they still agreed to use the common populace as cannon fodder during the war games with the Ottomans.

When the French came in, the Maltese were caught in a new conundrum. Not only had the knights not bothered to make even a semblance of resistance on their behalf, but many of them were actually in concord with the new revolutionary idea sweeping the Continent. When the French started dismantling what the (hated?) knights created, the Maltese did not like it, particularly when the nobles were denied their titles. Didn’t they also hate the local nobles?

Only in Malta could a rebellion get under way with the spontaneous throwing of a French officer from an Mdina balcony, as the legend goes, though when one sees the actual balcony he is bound to realise the poor officer could hardly have suffered a scratch so accessible is it from street level. But it must have been fun jostling him about.

Still, the Maltese fought the French, not surprisingly spurred on by the nobles they resented and the priests they suffered from fear of eternal damnation.

The British era was dominated by eclectic periods of war and peace. We fight, you get jobs. We make peace, we throw you out. You fight in our wars, we give you a medal, but the enemy gets the money ha ha. The paradoxes continued to proliferate as the Maltese finally hit back: either we get your benefits as citizens of the empire or we quit and become independent. Rest of the story: Maltese scaremongers against Maltese patriots.

Since 1964 and Independence, it has been an ongoing spectacle of “Only in Malta”. When we were supposedly independent we became free in 1979. Then we somehow ended up with five national holidays; quite enjoyable really for the not-so-workaholics, even better than throwing French officers off balconies.

And it’s still going on, hooray. When Paul Borg Olivier, secretary-general of the ruling party in Malta of the 21st century, was lately heard talking about ethics so soon after his holiday on board party chum Zaren Vassallo’s mega yacht, one was reminded of the famous slogan “fighting for peace” or, an even better one, “screwing for virginity”.

Now we have the Prime Minister pooh-poohing on radio the nationwide concern over rampant corruption at national and local council levels and insisting it is “merely a perception”. Why he has been keeping his secretary-general working overtime to keep up with the overwhelming tempo of local council scandals when it merely is “a perception” is beyond comprehension.

Someone, somewhere, save us, be it Joseph or the raving mad pastor of Florida, it will always be for the better. We just need saving. From ourselves.