As Day 50 of the trial related to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia dawns, the question in most people's minds is, apart from the question as to how this trial will end, whether this trial will last much longer.
It's been said that so far this trial is still not the longest one on record. The record is still shared between the Giga trial, accused of murdering her son, and the BICAL banking scandal trial. Other sources give other results - including the murder of a priest in the 19th century and that of former Police Commissioner Pullicino.
Whatever, but spare a thought for the jurors, taken from their families, forced to live together for all this time in such unrelenting heat, monitored to ensure they don't peek at headlines on their mobile and faced with the responsibility of taking a decision of prime national importance.
We who are 'outside' get accounts of varying levels of accuracy of what is said in the courtroom while the vast social media interprets and many times distorts the implications of what is said inside the courtroom.
Over the past days there have been some sporadic attempts to analyse the varying strategies of prosecution and defence. It will however not be until the final judgment that the country comes to a conclusion. And most probably not that, given the probability of an appeal.
Such is the legal reality of our country. The jurors will have had explained to them the various abstruse terms used, derived mostly from Italian of past centuries. But who will explain them to the general public?
Over and above the trial's conclusion there will inevitably be the more fundamental judgement by the nation on the wider issue of what is signified by the murder of Daphne and what has been revealed of the connections, the shortcuts, the illegalities laid bare by the trial.
Despite strenuous efforts by Castille, that judgement is already done and it's a huge negative.
Still, the people of Albania, now in the Flamingo Revolution since 16 May, didn't have as much reason to protest. Theirs is comparable to the anger in Malta on Manoel Island or Comino. Ours is more fundamental, yet we don't react.
One can also compare the protests in Spain regarding Ceuta, the protests in Georgia, etc and in each case we come out as complacent.
Now we have power cuts, chaos on the streets, evidence of bad planning and an ongoing invasion by TCNs and life goes on unperturbed.
It's too hot to do anything, we murmur. And the festa is coming. At the end, that's all we are left with.
A note of history
A window on Muslim traders through Maltese archives
Joan Abela
Different cultures and religions in the Mediterranean, apart from clashing, found it also opportune to move along each other's shore to trade despite their traditional enmity.
Malta, the official base of the Knights of St John, and as such considered the epitome of the Christian fight against the Muslim, offers an excellent example of this paradox.