Making people happy

It is easy to find people who laugh at others but there are very few people who can effortlessly laugh at themselves and my late bank colleague, Alfred Scerri, affectionately known to his friends as Il-Manga, fell squarely in the latter category.

One of his missions in life seemed to be to make people happy and he invariably succeeded! I can still recall his narrative of his serious experience in hospital some months ago when what should have produced a sober effect on his listeners had the opposite effect as he spiced his story with his usual funny innuendoes. His greatest thrill was when he was sometimes invited to go on a pleasure boat trip to Sicily; he was no sailor but he would immediately install himself as the unofficial ship's galley boy, dishing out breakfasts and endless cups of coffee and, of course, stories galore.

Apart from this, Alfred was a family man through and through as his wife, Connie, and his children and grandchildren readily testify. To them my sincere condolences. I will leave the last word to the epilogue of Gray's famous Elegy:

"No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dead abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God".