When he was 16 his ambition in life was to be a hippie, with a guitar on his back and a wandering kind of life.

By the time he became a pensioner he had become an oncologist and a very good one at that.

In September 1976 the author began his medical studies. There had just been an election in Malta, won by Labour, but for the new batch of medical students learning about anatomy was more important.

Ultimately, the feud between Mintoff and the doctors was so fundamental that everyone was affected and Malta's healthcare took long years to recover from it.

In July 1977, the author, and his older brother Mark, left Malta to spend their summer vacation helping out in a hospital in Syria, little realising how difficult it was to get there in the first place and what a culture shock the 'vacation' would prove to be.

Train connections were simply inexistent. The two were forced to walk and carry their luggage in the ferocious midday heat across the frontier to Syria. Finally, crammed into an already loaded taxi, they made it. Then they had to find the hospital they were assigned to, but nobody seemed to have been told to expect them.

They had to get used to life in the Middle East - from the muezzin calling for prayers before dawn to using a toilet that was just a hole in the ground.

Whatever, they somehow got used to things. They also found time to roam around the classical ruins just lying around. Some of these ruins were destined to be destroyed in subsequent wars. I wonder what he has been thinking these past days as Aleppo was invaded again.

Back in Malta the feud between Mintoff and the doctors reached new lows. The Medical School was closed down and its lecturers sacked.

Those who were students then managed to get accepted as medical students in the UK, continuing rather than having to start anew.

The author and his brother, together with Alex Manche went up to London thinking they would be back in four days. Instead they were to remain mostly in the UK for 10 years.

At first, the three students lodged in a hostel that, he says, had seen better days as a brothel.

The owner was a paranoid Maltese, known as George il-Qamar, who had escaped death through drowning twice in the mid-Atlantic. Another guest had the colourful nickname, in Maltese, as Gilardu, the semen. Despite this colourful environment, the Maltese students increased by the addition of Malcolm Crockford, sleeping six to a room in a basement.

Soon they were all working very hard in the lowest rungs of the British national health service and having to travel across London.

They all eventually graduated and became renowned doctors in Malta, but that chapter had to wait until 1987, when the Nationalists returned to power. This was still 1979.  The newly-graduated doctors had to do their period of housemanship around the different hospitals.

This period was extremely instructive and many times the new doctors were called upon to carry out procedures they had not done before. And those were still the days before what we take for granted today, like MRI.

In time, the author gradually understood he wanted to specialise in the new discipline of oncology. He never looked back.

I'm afraid to say that the author's attempt to explain cancer in simple words a layman can understand left me rather confused. He also went to the US and found out the drastic difference between ordinary care as practiced all over the world and the superior one provided (for fee-paying clients) in the US.

In the midst of the Church schools' controversy, Dom Mintoff paid a visit to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street. He was welcomed by around 30 Maltese, including two nuns, protesting.

Accompanying the Maltese prime minister was Foreign Minister Alex Sceberras Trigona who gave a two-fingered salute to the protestors who promptly reciprocated in kind - maybe even the nuns.

When he received his FRCR the situation in Malta was still bad so he chose to take up a post  as Radiation oncologist in the Gulf.

As he was boarding the plane he learned that in Malta Raymond Caruana had been shot dead in the PN club in Gudja.

The hospital in Abu Dhabi was the best oncology centre in the Gulf, run on American standards.

His general knowledge improved too. Abu Dhabi means th0e father of the gazelle and in Maltese we have a number of surnames starting with a Bu - Buttigieg = the father of chickens, Buhagiar = the father of stones, Busuttil = (no idea).

Some phrases he heard were recognisable in Maltese - Tikber u tinsa, minn zmien Zemzem (a holy well in Mecca -  dating back to Malta's Muslim phase).

In May 1987 Labour lost and the PN were back in government. Agreement was immediately reached with MAM and he could come back to Malta.

But things were not so simple. He was urged to come back by Health Minister Louis Galea and he went to an interview with parliamentary secretary George Hyzler, who was accompanied by CGMO Dr Giglio.

He informed them he could begin working the next day but Dr Giglio told him a call for applications had first to be made, interviews held, and so on. It would be some nine months before he could begin. To think he had left a job that gave him a salary 10  times what he would get here and he had to wait nine months without a wage.

Anyway, a solution was found and he was assigned to Sir Paul Boffa Hospital (formerly King George  V Hospital) in Floriana.

What he found showed the sorry state of the health service under Labour. The hospital was where they sent staff as a punishment, as undesirables.

The first to greet him were three patients sitting on a bench. Their legs had been amputated, but they had removed their prostheses, which lay beside them.

The only other oncologist said nobody had informed him of the new recruit and he promptly went out on leave.

When he toured the male ward he found male nurses smoking and drinking beer.

The machines were old and malfunctioning. The stock of morphine was running out and had been adulterated with water. And someone was quietly adding to the requests for stock and pocketing and selling the extra.

The hospital itself was (and still is) in a splendid location while two commemorative plaques had to be rescued from an underground storeroom full of cockroaches together with a bit from the old House of Commons.

The author dove in, removing a few problematic staff members, purchased although under the old rules new apparatus, and enforced discipline all around.

He faced problems and obstructions, surprisingly from the ministry itself. There were also challenges with Maria (Bugeja), who was initially welcomed for her help with fundraising but later proposed initiatives the author felt unable to support. (They later reconciled.)

Among the major obstacles, some came from the police many times spurred by unscrupulous lawyers representing some of the problematic individuals. As years passed, the same Nationalist Party he had supported passed through an involution.

He mentions three names - Lawrence Gonzi, who was to issue a damning statement later on, Natasha Muscat the CGMO, and John Dalli, for a time Health Minister, who sent a group of Maltese consultants, including himself, to meet an Italian prince who wanted to sell Malta some machines that were low down on the national priorities.

He also mentions, without naming him, a minister who got him out of the hospital and uphill to the ministry and all this to ask him to be careful about his driver's penis.

And others who made pressure on who got to be operated upon first or discharged.

This and more earned Malta the soubriquet, Levantine.

After being subjected to incredible pressure and then made to change plans to move Oncology from Boffa to Zammit Clapp and then to a new site within the Mater Dei footprint and giving him an architect who knew nothing about oncology, the author gave up and resigned - to be told by Gonzi that he couldn't resign, because he had not been formally appointed in the first place. He had just been acting all this time.

Then while his marriage was falling apart and he found he had to take care of three small children, he spent the rest of his career as a doctor and not an administrator.

And found a new love and peace.