Roamer's Column

Once upon a time and long, long ago, longer than I care to remember, I fell in love at the age of seven-and-a-half with my prep mistress, Miss Walsh, Monica Walsh. She was quite something. 'Howmuchofathing' was borne out when she ended up governess to the children of the King and Queen of Spain. Today's Crown Prince and I share someone in common.

For reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, Miss Walsh came to mind the other day and, simultaneously, a song from New Faces, a revue that took America by storm when it hit the stage in the 1950s. In it is a delightful piece about a young boy who falls in love with his teacher, Miss Slogan. So he sings:

"I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love/ With Miss Logan./I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love/ That's my slogan" - and the wretched boy goes on to say what he wouldn't do to win her.

In the same revue, that bewitching performer Eartha Kitt, sang a piece called Monotonous, a song about the many famous men who fell for her seductions and who would do anything for her favour - "King Farouk even cooked for me!"

As she purred out conquest after conquest she would remark, with a profound sense of world weariness, how monotonous it had all been; and as if to emphasise just how humdrum it had all become, she would add a long-drawn out 'monoton-i-ously' in that sultry voice of hers. It was sheer witchery.

There is another song of hers - The Heel - from which I recall a particular verse: "But now he's really on the stairs/ I'll try to act as I don't care/ For in my heart's arith-metick/ I know it takes two heels to click."

Late on Christmas Day, I switched on the television and learned that Eartha Kitt had died at the age of 81, that as late as September last year she was still performing and was booked to appear early next year in some cabaret. And now she's dead; and so is Miss Walsh.

TWTYTW

The year that started with an election campaign in Malta ended with another in the United States, resulting in a triumph for one, Barack Obama. Here, the laurels went to an indefatigable Dr Gonzi (and his lady wife). Labour thought they had it all wrapped up and, when the Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando factor entered the equation, ribboned, too. Yet, they managed to blow it. Labour snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

This was followed by what seemed to be an interminable interlude during which the party made every effort not to put its house in order. The new leader promised an unlikely earthquake but tectonic plates refused to nudge. The mountain groaned and out popped a mouse. The party dropped the word 'Malta' from its name. Everything else seemed to remain the same; the stuff his deputies are made of, the general secretary, the party's media, its obeisance to the leader et many ceterae.

That life was not to be plain sailing for the government, however, became clear when energy prices went through the graphs. Winds raged, seas swelled, rivers broke their banks, and banks were broken when international finance went bump-bump-bump in the night and promised more turbulence in the New Year and throughout it. There was something perversely satisfying about a system going berserk because of absurd, human greed.

As a consequence, the capitalist system had to be saved from itself by taxpayers to the tune of trillions of dollars, which is one for any book. When we could no longer be gobsmacked by the sheer numbers - Bush, $700 billion; Obama, another $700 billion; the EU as many billions as you care not to count; Japan, whatever; China, too - along came one, called Bernard Madoff (those first three letters, I learned at a pre-Christmas party, are not pronounced 'mad', for all the lunacy of the investment schemes the man launched, but 'made' - as in 'made off with other people's money').

'Maidoff', then, was no pushover; his pedigree included nearly 50 years in investment securities and chairmanship of the Nasdaq stock market.

A separate advisory business he ran managed more than $17 billion of assets. What Mr 'Madeoff' did - it had been done before but not on anywhere so ghoulish a scale - was to lure investors into his lair, persuade them to invest in schemes that were not earning a sufficient return, and pay them off later with money from new investors, and so on and so on, presumably on a timescale ad infinitum.

No such timescale exists. When the Big Bang came, investors discovered that their investments were not worth a dime. One Reuters report had one of these calling at the firm's office after the police made off with 'Maidoff' - the prosecution is hoping to earn him a 20-year sentence - and was informed that it was "business as usual". At which point, another investor who had been similarly short-changed understandably lost it and thundered: "Business as usual? Of course it's business as usual. We're getting screwed left and right!"

TWTYTW and 2009 is TYT will be

So President-elect Obama's fans all over the world thought the world would change. One unwelcome conclusion to his election was that Sarah Harrendon will be staying on in America, which she let it be known she would have fled had John McCain been elected. There spoke the true Hollywood liberal.

Mr Obama, it needs to be known, is a man with a record, or more precisely a non-record, in Congress, which is why the team he is knocking together will need to deliver the goods.

It will not be his articulacy that matters from now on, but his character. The Russian President will not be impressed with the way Mr Obama strings his sentences together; still less the Iranian leader, or Hamas, or Hezbollah.

2008 was also the year when two supposedly funny men, Ross and Brand, called up the man who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers and told the septuagenarian they had gone to bed with his granddaughter. They thought this hilarious. And it was the year Channel Four offered the ionosphere to the Iranian President instead of the Queen to broadcast a Christmas message. Ah, Brittania!

And in Spain, the Prime Minister is more interested in taking on the Catholic bishops than the economic challenges that are snarling at the heels of his government. Mr Zapatero is the GWU's idea of a dream. He has committed himself with Spanish unions to do nothing on the economic front without their fiat. Eat your heart out, Tony.

So, how will the world measure up to the tribulations of 2009? More to the point, how will Malta?

The government's intentions are honourable; that much is pretty evident. There are massive projects and a number of reforms coming on stream - among which, rent reform, Mepa reform, and public transport may be the three that will most interest the electorate. All three should be sorted out by the end of 2009 and a blessed relief that will be.

In the case of the city projects, the biggest problem will be to organise the work in a manner that will not bring the city to a standstill; not an easy task, but no work should start without a detailed plan of the logistics involved in construction and infra-city communication for retail outlets, shoppers and residents.

Meanwhile, keep your safety belts on. Happy New Year.