I followed two presentations given recently about “Mediterranean” food and how good it can be, not just by way of tastiness, but health-wise as well.

Among the ingredients that make it up were mentioned olives and oil, some kinds of bread, spices made of aromatic herbs, garlic and onions in reasonable quantity, as well as other vegetables like tomatoes and kohlrabi,  plus cheeselets. Such presentations make one’s mouth water with the options for delicious meals that they highlight.

But then one pauses and reflects about what the Maltese – themselves placed in the centre of the Mediterranean – are eating, really and truly.

Pizzas. Hamburgers. Pasta of all sorts cooked with sauces that have little to do with what the supposed “Mediterranean” diet consists of. Huge steaks fried or grilled with blobs of fat still attached to them. Sausages – Maltese or of the pinkish variety, fried, grilled, stewed.

Probably all this has become the true food of the Mediterranean. It’s still delicious but it’s hardly as healthy as what apparently used to be eaten in olden times. But then somebody told me: In those days as well as now, obesity was quite the rule in this country.

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THE FACTS

What makes the telling of what has happened a “true” account: that all the facts which constitute the happening are fully laid out, including the most minor and least important details? (But then, how should what is important or not be gauged?) Would it be that the selection of the facts chosen for the account does cover those aspects that determined how the happening developed? (How is this selection to be carried out though?) Or should the account just focus on how the protagonists and lesser actors described what happened in their own words? (What should these people be made to tell? All they remember or heard or saw?)

In the end – what is a “fact”? How should it be recognized, evaluated and scaled against other facts?

All these queries arise when the story of a happening is being envisaged. It hardly matters whether the project relates to creative fiction, political or national history, biography, or economic reporting.

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STORMS IN EUROPE

Many people were shaken by the violent storms that swept across Europe – including those who have long been warning that the global climate is deteriorating. They too had not expected that the changes which are taking place would be having such a major impact so fast.

True, great care was taken not to claim that the climatic consequences of global warming could be directly linked to the occurence of any one storm. The wording chosen retains a “scientific” prudence in the interpretation of natural events.

In a strange way though I have noted how recently even persons who up to not so long ago were sceptical about the negative effects of climate warming, have become more flexible in their reactions to the possibility of climate change. They seem to be acknowledging at last that serious changes are building up and we need to prepare for them.