• How often do Health and Safety officers carry out their work by going to dine undercover? Food providers at places inundated with customers who must be served within a short time sometimes cut corners. They have been seen handling food and money with bare hands, without washing them in between.

Drainage

• For months, now, there has been an all-pervading stench of drainage in the neighbourhood of the Kunċizzjoni church in Ħamrun. Is it possible that no one has reported it to the local council, and if so, that a solution has not been found?

Dirt

• It is a well-known fact that if, while inhaling from a cigarette, one puts a piece of white fabric in front of the mouth, the resulting stain would indicate what more would have gone inside the body. This gives the lie to the statement that tiny particles in the air cannot be inhaled.

Degrees

• The attitude of some doctors serving at state clinics in the mornings leaves a lot to be desired. The length of time they allow patients to see them depends upon the length of the queue; in fact, some of them actually ask each patient who goes in, how many more people are waiting outside.

Decisions

• Meanwhile, of course, pharmacies that host these same doctors in the evening make hay while the sun does not necessarily shine by charging patients money to use a cramped reception area. Their excuse is that they provide seating, and possibly, a TV set. If they asked, they would discover that a glass of cool water would be more than welcome.

Doodle

• On Tuesday, September 27, in the morning, a transaction that ought to have taken just 10 seconds took the better part of half an hour, at the Ħamrun HSBC Branch. The client required an account number of a charitable institution to make a donation through the ATM; however, the reception desk has been removed, and she had to wait in the queue till a cashier was available for it to be provided.

Derision

• Incidentally, it is worth noting that the supercilious attitude of some staff members in certain companies is not a good advertisement for them. Just because people wear track suits, jeans or other casual clothing, it does not mean they may be talked to condescendingly, with several uses of the term ħi to reinforce this approach.

Dependence

• Despite notices on walls, feeders still persist in providing food for stray cats and dogs, as well as pigeons and incidentally, rats. It would help if food that is not eaten is cleared away after a decent interval of time, which would stop rats from proliferating. It would also help if pigeon food were laced with contraceptives, such that the population were decimated slowly.

Decisions

• New sections keep being opened at the Maria Addolorata cemetery. Meanwhile, the older ones keep deteriorating to the extent that some areas, such as the entrance, could now be way beyond repair, and will have to be replaced. Meanwhile, the argument about whether cremation ought to be allowed, lingers on.

Disappointing

• The bus shelter on the Rabat route, at the Fleur de Lys roundabout, was the subject of many comments because of the state it had been in – dirty and falling apart. This has now been removed and not replaced. Very soon, when the rainy season will begin, workers from the nearby industrial states will have to wait in the open for their trip home.

Detours

• Why is it that, whenever they feel like it, the round-Valletta bus drivers decide to skip random parts of the route, leaving locals and tourists stranded? Seeing that some of the stages are used by only one or two people at a time, this might be considered a negligible number, but a service ought to be a service, even if the bus has to make the trip empty.

Dreary

• Work on the Dock 1 project at Cospicua is taking too long to be finished. People feel that they are living between the excavations of a historical site and an area that has been bombed in the war. The general feeling is that the pace of the works will pick up as the general election draws nearer.

Development

• The boundary wall for the Vincenzo Bugeja institue at the Fleur de Lys roundabout is being finalised, after several weeks of painstaking work. One hopes that the work will continue around the corner, into Fleur de Lys Road, because parts of the wall are missing there, too.

Designers

• Too many presenters of media programmes appear to be obsessed with celebrities and their doings, perhaps because they think this will make them appear hip to their followers. However, frequent references to underweight persons, and others who appear on covers of magazines with skin several tones lighter than its natural one, surely is not giving a healthy example.

Dangerous

• It has become even more dangerous than it used to be, when one decides to cross High Road, Ħamrun, using the zebra crossing near St Cajetan church. Though the traffic lights may be in favour of pedestrians, it is not the first time cars from one side stop but those from the other keep driving. Perhaps wardens ought to make occasional stops there rather than trawling the whole length of the street for vehicles parked in the wrong spots.

Deviations

• Why is it that there is no enforcement of regulations when trucks containing building debris and bulky refuse are on the road? It is no fun at all having to drive uphill behind loaded trucks or vans, hoping that nothing will fall off. Isn’t it that the contents of these vehicles ought to be covered with netting or tarpaulin?