I have just spent a day on a tiny boat, with a straw hat on, a fishing rod and a rickety umbrella for shade.
And all through the morning I watched and watched as hundreds of day trippers were dumped by ferries on the barren island of Comino and encouraged to mill around like ants.
They all walked in single file until they found a patch on the garigue, unrocky enough to perch their towels and their bottoms. Or else they queued in the deckchair area where total strangers rubbed shoulder to shoulder, sweat to sweat, with barely enough space to stretch their legs when sitting down.
Is Comino worth this hassle? Yes.
The waters are as crystallesque as the calendar photos make them out to be. It is a snorkelers’ haven and it is the perfect place to ponder on how lucky we are to live in Malta, where summers are balmy and where we can walk barefoot on the beach and dip in the sea whenever it takes our fancy.
No wonder our MPs got their act together when faced with the threat of having to work in the heat of August. Summer in Malta gives us a sense of lull – of time suspended and paused until the heat goes away.
Possibly this gives us a false sense of security. But the reality is that while I’m dipping my toes in the sea water and watching the world go by from the boat, not all is well with the world.
As I type, heart-wrenching photos of parents in Gaza holding dead children in their arms are pouring into my newsfeed. Their faces are marked by the shock of anguish. The rubble of war in the background makes the pointlessness and the helplessness unbearably stark.
The whole saga is beyond taking sides now, and it makes me just want to throw up; instead I dig out a book The Kites are Flying by the brilliant children’s author Michael Morpurgo.
I recently read it to my daughter; it’s about the ongoing conflict, and can only be described as a lesson in politics for children. The story is about a journalist, Max, who travels to the West Bank to witness first hand what life is like for Palestinians and Jews living in the shadow of the dividing wall.
While I’m dipping my toes in the sea water... heart-wrenching photos of parents in Gaza holding dead children in their arms are pouring into my newsfeed
The journalist strikes up a friendship with an enigmatic Palestinian boy, Said, who does not speak. Together the two sit under an ancient olive tree while Said makes one kite after the next. When the boy takes the reporter home, he learns of the terrible events in the family’s past and begins to understand why Said does not speak. It is a beautiful tale of friendship and suffering, of hope and tragedy.
As we read it, my daughter kept asking me: “But is this story for real mama? But can the children stop the war when they grow up?”
Can they? I don’t know. If you are buying one book this year, get this one and read it to your children. Maybe, just maybe, if we can all get them to believe in the possibility that kites can fly side by side, irrelevant of the race and nation, then maybe we would have at least contributed to the possibility of spreading balmier summers elsewhere.
• Meanwhile, as a backdrop to this Palestinian-Israeli tragic reality, last week, we had the summit of EU – the perfect terrain for stage-managed fakeness.
David Cameron ‘high-fived’ Jean-Claude Juncker – this after he’d led a campaign to block the Luxembourger from becoming EU Commission president. Apparently, Cameron is a bit wimpy about raising hand in the air and such stuff, because the high-five was an almost miss, and because Downing Street was quick to point out that, ahem, there was nothing he can do about it because “that’s how Mr Juncker greets guests”.
Then the summit celebrities all gathered round and signed a German football T-shirt to give to Angela Merkel for her birthday. And they all – including our Prime Minsiter – tweeted about it.
I am now tired of stage-managed attempts at bonhomie. I wish they would all dump their marketing gurus and go about their proper job of solving the world’s problems.
• Here’s another stage-managed act: The Malta Police Force on Monday released a video to commemorate their 200th anniversary. If you haven’t watched it yet, please do so, armed with popcorn and 3D glasses, for this is stuff of Hollywood. It’s a feast of abs and muscles. Policemen explode buildings, hunt down balaclava-ed robbers, scramble up roped walls in nano-seconds… leaving you, well, breathless.
The only thing missing is Angelina Jolie, but they’ll ask her to do a cameo for their sequel when she’s over at Mġarr ix-Xini.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti