It was, I remember, one evening in the 1970s. I had been to Valletta or Floriana for some meeting and was on my way home in Hamrun.

Suddenly I remembered I had left some unfinished business at the office, so I parked my car on the wide pavement on that side of the road, crossed the busy road and descended the hill to the Il-Hajja office.

My business over, I left and climbed the hill to get to my car.

Going up I saw what I thought was a traffic jam on the other side of the road but did not think anything special had happened.

But getting nearer I realised the traffic jam had been caused ... by my car. I might not have pulled the handbrake enough and the car, obeying the law of gravity, had inched forward so that it was now in the middle of the road blocking the traffic.

Cool as anything, I opened the door, got in and drove away. Had that happened today, I would have been submerged in swearing and cars tooting. But in those days people were more used to obey with no questions asked.

That was an involuntary accident. The following was by design. Protagonist this time was a PN Grand Old Man, with a cursus honorum to be proud of. He found a female activist and gave her some orders mainly to stop her car in a particular narrow spot and to feign a car problem and leave the car there. 

Those were the days of medical students chaining themselves to the Castile railing, of students' disruption of university functions while other groups went up to beat the students. The blocked road added to the mayhem.

Some years before this I happened to be going home after a wedding reception held in Valletta and was rather, let's say, liquid.

I must have cut a corner in a rather dangerous manner.  The driver of the other car reacted and came after me, no doubt to teach me some driving lessons.

Befuddled as I was, I recognized him - he was a neighbour of ours from High Street (if you could call people from the other side of the road neighbours) the son of the Director of Agriculture, Mr Farrugia Sacco.

Anyway, befuddled as I was, I let him level with me as if I was about to stop. Then when he was almost level, I opened up and flew away (I was driving a nifty Mini-Cooper S those days) and quickly lost him in the maze of streets behind the church.

Later on, we became acquaintances but many times when we met a small voice would be telling me: Does he remember coming after me to give me a lesson?

Still later at Sacred Heart I came to know and appreciate Susan (nee Laiviera) and to this day, together with many, teachers and students, count myself enriched by her example - a saint if there ever was one, her poise, her diction, were not artificial add-ons and her faith and attachment to her family in the face of life's troubles unsurpassed. In life and in death she was not given the appreciation she deserved.

End note: the new PN leader showed a predictable naivete and was caught out over a relatively innocuous slip-up by his partner which was then inflated by a government eager to bury the Fortina scandal with the complicity of Malta's largest media. 

Taste of things to come.

History note 

The making of Christian Malta (Cont.d)

How by the late 13th century the Maltese came to have Arabic as their speech and Latin Christianity as their religion.

According to some sources, after the capture of Malta by the Aghlabids of Ifriqiya in 869, the island remained waste and abandoned, visited only for timber, fish and honey. After the year 1048, it was settled by the Muslims, who rebuilt its capital, and then it became even better than it was before.

Prof. Brincat suggests that, although Malta was completely abandoned, some Christian Maltese may have survived as refugees in the interior. Luttrell objects to this. 

The two islands of Malta and Gozo were inhabited by 2,119 families, of which 1,250 (59%) were Christians, 836 (39.5%) Muslims and 33 (1.5%) Jews.

It might be there was a number of Saracens of Malta who were in fact Christians who had become profoundly Arabized and Islamized under Muslim rule and who, after the Sicilian conquest, reverted rather than converted to Christianity.