First of all, to get the readers’ bearings right, this is not Somalia (with due apologies to that beautiful country).

This was once the Qbajjar Promenade, the pride of Marsalforn in the 1990s. This is where families were encouraged to take their children on an afternoon to play in safety and take in some clean healthy air by the sea, where men and women of all ages still try to put in some exercise away from the traffic.

And this is what the Żebbuġ (Gozo) council has managed to do with a once landscaped garden and passageways left in their care. First to go was its landscaping, then the canopies, followed by the swings, the lights, the fountain, the telephones, the children’s playground, the railings, the benches, the pavements.

They have scandalously let it go to ruin.

For years, running into decades now, we have complained to them and to the ministry in person, by phone and in writing, asking them down to have a look. We have written letters to the newspapers, made petitions, cleaned blocked rain gullies with our bare hands. No response.

But now, after years of inertia, the council has suddenly gone into action. They have put up a sign, and a sparklingly new well-designed one at that, proclaiming that the once pristine gardens and walkways are now a danger to the public. The cheek!

The only thing they care about is covering their incompetence by disclaiming responsibility for any mishap falling on the passerby through the council’s own ineptitude. And while the mayor, accompanied by the minister and a parliamentary secretary, smiles for the cameras on the opening of a new playground in his own back yard in Żebbuġ, they are dispensing on us, the poor sods in Marsalforn, the ultimate insult, shooing us off the promenade and on to the road. Have they no shame?

But even then, the road leading from the promenade to Qbajjar beach has now lost nine of its 12 lamp posts!

Will they shove us into the sea next?