Sunday
Three days back from my seven-day fact-finding freebie in Wales, (yes, I drew the short straw) I spend the day writing my report.
I protest vehemently that my support for both the government and the PM is unequivocal
Cryogenics is truly bizarre and extremely gruesome. Apparently it costs a fortune to have your corpse frozen after death – in the unlikely possibility of it being defrosted and restored to life some time in the dim and distant future. Or... you can get a cut-price deal where they just freeze your head.
I told them I’d pass: I think life might be just a bit restricted if I had to live it as a disembodied brainbox.
Monday
While walking down Republic Street this morning I am approached by a foreign woman. She fixes me with a manic leer and announces: “I have good news! I have wonderful news! Our Lord died for you!”
Really? You mean GonziPN is no more and I get his job?
Er, no, when I reach my office the Perm Sec disillusions me with: “You? Oh purleez! What I think happened was that you were accosted by a JW.” Right... well I didn’t want the job anyway.
Tuesday
The PM has decided that – as part of his policy to make Malta a green energy place, all Parliamentary Secs and Assistants are to be issued with bicycles. These are to be used for all non-ceremonial government business, including commuting to and from work.
Ridiculous! But in order to steal a march on some of my more sedentary colleagues, I go round to my parents’ house and dig my old bike out of their garage. But after half an hour of wobbling around their back lawn – and falling off at least 10 times, the only things that are green are the grass stains on my trousers.
Wednesday
Am shocked to run into my minister actually in his ministry. I’ve never, ever seen him there when the House is in recess. He looks fit and tanned.
I ask him how his freebie... er fact-finding mission to Goa and The Maldives went. He replies: “It was damned hard work. It’s not all lying around the hotel pool sipping cocktails, you know.”
No, Onorevoli, I’m sure it was hard graft... well, graft anyway. Swanning around Indian Ocean tourist paradises... first class travel and five-star hotels must have been an exhausting experience.
He gives me a very old-fashioned look.
Thursday
With all these fifth columnists stalking the corridors of power, today I am hauled before the Castille capo, to ascertain my own loyalties.
I protest vehemently that my support for both the government and the PM is unequivocal and my loyalty is unwavering... and always has been.
I think I totally convince EGC that I – if no-one else – am, of the essence, a team player. And I seal it by adding: “Anyway, nobody’s offered me enough money to defect... yet”.
Friday
Today my Nanna celebrates, if that is indeed the right word, her 94th birthday. So I, minus my brat-watching wife, but plus my parents, take her to lunch at the Deep Cut Carvery at the Grand Intercontinental Palace Hotel.
All goes well until they serve the dessert. It’s at this point that Nanna looks down at her feet and announces – in a voice that could be heard in Tripoli:
“Oh dear, it seems to have rained in here.”
And indeed the carpet beneath her chair is well soaked.
I hear my father mutter: “I thought this was the Intercontinental Palace Hotel – not the Incontinence Palace Hotel.”
Saturday
Constituency surgery:
With the Eurozone in meltdown, Greece almost extinct, and Europe generally in one hell of a mess, the main concerns of my constituents are a long way from these problems.
One of them, the septuagenarian Mrs Grima, demands to know why, at the last ladies’ coffee morning I organised, she only got one cup of coffee and two cakes, while her friend Mrs Farrugia managed to get three of each.
I despair of this country, I really do.