The Beckhams have named their daughter Harper Seven! Just picture it: Harper Seven Beckham. Sure as eggs are eggs we will now have our own Melitan versions: Harper Four Seven Eleven Borg and Harper Seven To Nine Farrugia. My psyche shudders in horror just as it did more than two decades ago when I heard (did I have a choice?) an irate mother shrieking at a recalcitrant Miss Ellie; or is it Missellie, in (lower) Republic Street, Valletta? Remember Dallas?

Gone are the days when my parents had to cable my great aunt in Rome to obtain Vatican confirmation that Kenneth was a true and genuine Christian name and the name of a king and bishop of Scotland to boot. Today, parents are concocting the most outlandish and heathen names imaginable to saddle their poor children with but then, let’s face it, Kenneth Zammit Tabona is a pretty mixed bag isn’t it? Danish-Scottish combined with the Semitic Zammit from even more Semitic Ta’ Bona. So I am in no position to talk.

What’s in a name? Nothing you may say… but, in fact, as Saladin said when asked what Jerusalem meant to him, everything! Our name is our most precious possession. It is what identifies us all our lives and distinguishes us from the herd, at least to ourselves. Imagine what the John Smiths and Joe Borg-es of this world, which come by the container load, feel about their uniqueness, which is why the John Smiths add initials of their additional Christian names in between one name and the other like so: John F.A.T. Smith or J.A.G. Smith or even Smythe for fun.

In Malta, our repertoire is somewhat limited and the Joe Borg-es can vary their Christian name to Joe, Joey, Żeppi, Ġius (pronounced Juice) and variations of the same. I have also noticed that the obituary comments of this once upper crust paper now sport the ethnic nicknames of the deceased… but enough of that before I get into really serious trouble as, after all, I am a Ta’ Bona, aren’t I?

Maybe it is this yearning to be unique and original that pushes celebrities like the Beckhams to inflict a number as their child’s second name as if she were a footballer or a soft drink. Poor girl! However, compared to the Casios, Cleavages and Charlemagnes I have come across, being One or even Eleven Zammit Tabona would have been a small mercy.

As you have probably already guessed, I am sick to the teeth of divorce, utterly uninterested in Arriva and appalled by Air Malta. I simply cannot get myself to write another word about them and as for our looming energy crisis it appears as if our government is taking the same attitude as the cricket in that awful poem Fr Piccinino SJ of joyful memory used to make us copy out hundreds of times at the least transgression. Go on Aloysians, you surely remember it: la cigale ayant chantè tout l’été/se trouva fort dépourvu quand la brise fut venu (the grasshopper, having sung all summer long, found itself most destitute when the North Wind came).

As for the moral situation of the country, without yet having remotely settled the divorce issue, people are bandying IVF, same-sex marriage, euthanasia and abortion with the same ghoulish enthusiasm that the sans culottes used to bandy guillotined heads of the French aristocrats in the streets of Paris singing the Ca Ira… mob rule at its most ghastly. Yet, by the time you read this I will have witnessed the military parade and aeronautical display on Champs Élysées on Quatorze Juillet or Bastille Day, that is if Air Malta gets me to Paris and back at all… Maybe I should try Arriva!

How long can we go on burying our heads in the sand? It is a natural progression that social liberalisation is an ongoing process. Our ancestors thought that the end of the world was nigh when the British abolished slavery in Malta and, within living memory, likewise when women were given the vote.

Believe me, the world will not end because of trivialities and niceties of this sort but because of the abuse the powers-that-be inflict on it every moment of our lives. So as my Indian guru says “doon’t feeeel gilltiee” and just get on with it because life is too short to peel mushrooms. Be that as it may, according to the Minister for Infrastructure the next item on the agenda will and has to be same-sex marriage or (what’s in a name?) same-sex partnership.

Several politicos on both (ooops several) sides of the fence joined the MGRM’s Gay Pride March on the 9th and I sincerely hope that they did understand the implication of doing so and did not treat it as a mere photo opportunity. They are, and will be, held into account as gay people do not wish to be second-class citizens anymore, which is what the vague and undefined cohabitation blah blah implies but like the state of New York wish to have a full civil marriage as badly as any straight couple (possibly even more so if the inimical feeling towards the institution of marriage in Malta is anything to go by). So then what’s in a name? Will the government along with its incumbent saints and blessed like Adrian Vassallo and Austin Gatt throw up their hands in holy horror and make us spend €4 million on yet another consultative referendum only to be slapped in the face?

Will Tonio Fenech receive more coded messages from the Blessed Virgin and compete with Anġelik? They must be gluttons for punishment and very cavalier with money that isn’t theirs. Now Minister Gatt has proposed that a morality test is carried out on potential Nationalist Party candidates to avoid potential Jeffrey Pullicino Orlandos! And this party calls itself liberal! Oh God give me patience!

kzt@onvol.net

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