Have you noticed recently how the size of our doors is inversely proportioned to the size of our waists?

I am a winter worrier. In summer, my only troubles are choosing the best beach to go to avoid wind and jellyfish, but even that has been solved with the very convenient Whichbeach website that I check the minute I wake up and plan my day.

In winter it’s a totally different story. The first thing I do in the morning is get my hand from under quilt and check the weather app. I don’t just check the temperature outside, but the ‘What it feels like’ option – which is my latest obsession, because I find it utterly fascinating. Yes it’s 10°C but, aha, you have to dress up for a 2°C temperature. Then, because I’m freezing most of the time, and therefore I’m rather grumpy, I spend my time worrying about forlorn national issues.

Such as why do people no longer stay at home when they’re sick? Why do they still go to work? We’ve gone from one extreme of throwing a sickie every other day, thinking it’s part of our holiday leave, to one where no one wants to stay at home to recover and instead come sneezing in my face.

People who are ill at work should go home: a) because it’s pointless being a martyr – you won’t get any work done anyway and the quality will be shoddy; b) because you will make yourself even more ill, and c) you will make others ill.

This month, author Jill Sinclair actually wrote a book on this called The Art of Being Ill. “A lot of people don’t understand that being ill is something to take seriously,” she writes. “We’ve become very impatient, but actually the clue is in the title: the thing about being a patient is that you have to be patient… we’ve forgotten that sometimes all it takes is stay in bed.”

Here’s a tip: If you want to prevent getting ill, cover your nose. In a recent study, Yale University has found that when core body temperature inside the nose falls by five degrees, the immune system does not work as well to fight the cold virus. So scientists are now telling us what my granny has been saying for eight decades – wrap up.

Which brings me to my next worry: why do so many teenagers go out wearing skimpy clothes in the middle of winter? No tights! No jackets! No coats! Don’t their parents tell them anything before they leave the house?!

If we cannot string a proper sentence, how can we even string a thought?

Don’t they know they look ridiculous walking down the street, hunched, hugging themselves, teeth chattering, veins blue? My sister got on a bus to Paceville the other (freezing) night. She was the only one kitted up in a parka and scarf – so much so that the bus driver started speaking to her in English, thinking she was a foreigner.

Teens, please note that it’s terribly unsexy to stand there teeth clicking away; just layer up. If you want to impress, then strip when you get inside a bar.

How I wish we’d pass a law on this: no one is allowed anyone to perch their koxox in winter.

Bountiful thighs bring me neatly to the next issue: obesity, which was discussed in Parliament last week. I have by now lost count now of all the trophies we keep winning as the most obese of nations, bla di bla. But have you noticed recently how the size of our doors is inversely proportioned to the size of our waists? Newly-built flats, the ones built in lieu of a terraced-house-with-garage, have doors that are all of 65cm wide.

That’s barely enough space for, say, a washing machine to go through. Why are we making narrower doors when it’s pretty clear we are becoming more horizontally challenged? Do narrow doors come at a discount? I am uneasy about this: I see us all in future entering our homes crab-like, taking a deep breath in and squashing in sideways. What if they keep getting narrow and narrower?

Maybe architects are getting confused with measurements, just like everyone seems to be getting confused with grammar. I tend to receive quite a lot of ­messages on social media from kind people whom I don’t know, but whose sentences, sadly, take me an age to ­decipher.

Examples: “exbart?!!!” (Eh, x’bard); “ticc isijjr frend tiji???” (Trid issir friend tieghi?); “Celimijni mah trijcc clim iaqau?!” (Kellimni, ma tridx kliem jaqaw?). I know that Maltese orthography is not the easiest in the world but this is phonetics phoney. What does it take to type in a ‘d’ instead of a ‘t’ when writing ‘bard’?

My concern is one: a disciplined mind leads to disciplined thinking. This is writing with no sense of rules and no sense of structure. If we cannot string a proper sentence with the correct grammar and syntax and if we cannot get spelling that’s drilled at school from age five right, how can we even string a thought? Xinkwijt!

Come, summer, come.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti