Seasoned in sleaze… number the 38th…

Sunday

I and all my ministerial and parliamentary secretary colleagues are absolutely furious! These… foreigners at Air Malta have grossly exceeded their authority by terminating our – divine – right to travel on our… yes our… airline for free.

So how on earth are we going to get to and from our vital freebie… er fact-finding missions to places like Thailand, Miami, Majorca and the Seychelles?

This is totally unacceptable. Particularly so since this year, for the first time, I have been allocated a most attractive freebie, I mean fact-finding mission, studying the effects of organised lethargy in the Maldives. I am in shock!

Monday

The recent animal cruelty backlash is frankly getting a little silly. Take today: I’m at home, resting during parliament’s recess, when I answer my door to a very old lady. She tells me I must act against, what she calls, a case of appalling animal cruelty.

Apparently her carer, when changing the old lady’s goldfish Goldie’s water, accidentally flushed the fish down the WC. She wants to know what the government is going to do about it.

I reply that I personally will have the perpetrator arrested, tried and probably executed. Good move; at least the old biddy left happy.

Tuesday

My wife Angelika’s pregnancy continues apace. Although from the utterances of her mother – who has now more or less moved in with us – you’d swear it was the kunjata who is pregnant.

Whenever I arrive home, she greets me – or rather abuses me – with a string of my shortcomings, which have apparently contributed to Angelika’s and her problems. Today she greets me with: “Our condition – ”

So it’s official, pregnancy is a shared phenomenon: “Our condition requires far more concern from you. So from today, you won’t be sleeping in the same bed or room as Angelika.”

No? Right, well I’ll just move my stuff into the spare room.

“No you won’t,” she snaps. “I’m in there.”

Ha! Well if she thinks that for the next three months I’m going to sleep on the sofa in the millroom she’s… Right… I’ll just make up a bed down here then, shall I?

Wednesday

That flatulent, doom-laden printed lavatory roll, Malta Yesterday, runs a profile piece on me. In it, they describe me as a balding, incompetent nincompoop. Insufferably pompous, totally unfit for public office, and completely useless.

How dare they! My comb over conceals my… smallish bald patch… totally.

Thursday

High summer is a very good time to be ‘working’ at the Ministry of Lethargy. Here we certainly practise what we preach… and do… as little as humanly possible. Today, for example, I arrive in my office at 11 a.m., take a coffee at my desk, read The Times, then go out for lunch.

After – and by now totally exhausted – I return home for a siesta. Just two more weeks before my fact-finding freebie… roll on.

Friday

With most of our ministers away on yet more fact-finding missions… and even the big boss absent, I actually find myself seventh in line to running the country. Wow! So if the five remaining ministers and one remaining parliamentary secretary were all to drop dead… I would become acting prime minister!

As I tell my personal private secretary; that is one hell of a scary thought. He agrees… a little too enthusiastically for my liking.

Saturday

Oh dear. I am designated as guest of honour at a so-called Family Day at Ta’ Qali. I attend alone – since Angelika pleads aggravated pregnancy.

It is truly gruesome, but I soldier on – fixed rictus in place – greeting all the party faithful and their offspring. All goes reasonably well until late on… when I am confronted by a member of the clergy who asks me if I am enjoying the occasion.

“Hugely,” I lie, but this just gives the old prude leave to add: “And this is just what you and your depraved colleagues are jeopardising by passing that iniquitous divorce Bill. May God forgive you… all of you!”

Next year I must remember to take my vacation at the same time that the bigwigs do.