Today, for the first time ever, Angelika's parents agree to eat Sunday lunch at our humble converted farmhouse home.
Angelika, bless her, cooks her father's favourite pasta - lasagne; just the way her mother does. Then - again to please her daddy - she roasts the pork fil-forn, using her mother's recipe. And to finish off the meal, trifle made the way her mother has made it, since Angelika was a little girl.
Later, as I congratulate my wife on her culinary skills, her father pipes up with: "That was the same old junk I get at home. If we'd known beforehand I'd have saved the petrol and eaten it there." Ungrateful old fa - far - father-in-law.
Monday
Another lunch. This time it's a sort of reunion meal at Rubino's in Valletta, for some of the law students from my year at University Law School. I feel a bit inferior, since all the others are making oodles of euros in private law firms.
Conversely, one of them, 'Buster' Hamilton Grech says to me: "Well, aren't you the lucky one!" Me? He continues: "The only one from our year to get elected to parliament. I expect you've got all that cash hidden away in a Swiss account eh?" Ha! That's rich, coming from him, a specialist in Mepa law, who drives a Lamborghini and a Bentley and who has just bought back-to-back palazzos in Madliena Heights.
Tuesday
My first TV appearance as Parliamentary Secretary for Fooling Some of the People Some of the Time. Actually I draw the short straw, since both Austin and Tonio manage to wriggle out of defending the government's position on the new water and electricity rates. I am gut-wrenchingly nervous but - mercifully, it's a recorded debate and I manage to come up with an opening statement that totally knocks the opposition spokesman off-balance. Unfortunately... I'm told belatedly that my microphone wasn't working... so I have to start again. Strange; it's not nearly so effective the second time around.
Wednesday
As the season of peace and goodwill is upon us, I - yet again - approach the perm sec at my ministry, to request an office more befitting my status; rather than the cupboard under the stairs I currently occupy. He is sympathetic but says: "What can I do, the credit crunch has imposed restraints on me. Ġbin, my hands are tied, sorry. And if I were you, with things being the way they are right now... I'd be grateful you've got an office at all." Grateful! I shall go higher! I'll speak to the head cleaner... so there!
Thursday
Yet another lunch.
This time it's the annual Christmas bash for the ministry staff. And amid all the boozed-up and regurgitating secretaries and the swaying and slurring clerks, I am presented with a Christmas gift: "From your 'greatfull' (sic) staff". I'm quite choked... until I open it and discover they've given me a miniature rabbit hutch. Not funny, not funny at all.
Friday
My secretary - who occupies the corridor outside my... rabbit hutch, tells me she's going to decorate my office with some coloured tinsel, etc. Well woop-di-doo! And just where do you think you're going to hang them - on the floor?
Yet in fairness, she does manage to make my cupboard look extremely festive. The only trouble is; I can now no longer get into it without running the risk of garroting myself on a rope of bloody tinsel.
Saturday
Tonight, my bride Angelika and I have to tour my district, to judge the party's mechanical cribs competition. We see everything from almost lifesize plastic shepherds gurning to an off-key Silent Night, via lit-up baby Jesuses and the wise men entering on miniature Harleys - to rather too realistic-looking and copiously defecating oxen.
We give first prize to an extraordinary creation that looks more like Gotham City than a poor stable in Bethlehem. It even sports mini-spotlights sweeping the area and an American accented updated version of the Christmas story, complete with a rap version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Of course, it has to win - it was submitted by the son of the chairman of my local każin.