Some attempt was made to restore parts of the Burmurrad-Wardija-Żebbiegħ road by filling in potholes. At the time of writing, some areas have in fact been badly filled with concrete and another stretch has been blessed with a tarmac topcoat. This leaves a middle section that may well belong to yet another council and the end 400 metres which fall under Mġarr.

On April 6, as some sort of Easter Egg, the Times of Malta front page highlighted potholes, claiming that Mosta and Żabbar are the worst hit along with Naxxar, Lija, Qormi, Msida, Birkirkara, San Ġwann, St Paul’s Bay and Marsa, and that various people had made claims of which one-third had been successful, amounting to €26,000 being paid in compensation.

Having driven along 40 km of roads in the glorious south I found those roads just as evil as their northern brotherhood. As we used to say in more cultured times: extractum digitum.

Times of Malta also mentioned distributor and arterial roads, which, as far as I know, are the only ones looked after and maintained by the Transport Authority. Also as far as I know, only secondary roads and lanes are council responsibility.

This is, of course, where the whole complicated process blows up around our ears. Councils often try and maintain that important, wide and expensive link roads are really Transport Malta’s problem. A grand example is the road from Żebbiegħ to the Għajn Tuffieħa/St Paul’s Bay road.

This disgusting and painful motoring experience is obviously far too expensive for Mġarr local council to be able to do anything at all with.

The combination of Transport Malta working in conjunction with a local council couldn’t organise a blow-out in a brewery, as their combined ingenuity is far more scientifically programmed into avoiding repairs and complicated expenditure than in realising that 220,000 motorists should be able to expect safe, non-damaging road surfaces.

Twice in a month I have found trouble parking in the airport car park

Twice in the course of a month I found trouble parking in the airport car park. First time around in desperation I parked with great dignity out of the parking boxes. On March 18 at 12.45am airport security stopped us from entering the car park, saying “it’s full”.

On enquiry he instructed us to park near Departures or Arrivals. Here we experienced a classic Catch 22 situation. Park we could, leave the car we could not. A couple of female traffic wardens, extremely bellicose and, truth to say, without a scrap of common sense, insisted it was ‘the law’ not to leave the car. I reasonably said that it was my right and probably a law that I could, nay should, park in the airport car park. They then went on to book as many people as they could, even those who had left booth and driver’s door open. I tried to explain that as airport security had instructed us where to park I had no option but to leave the car unattended to meet my daughter.

Things got ‘shirty’ and one warden demanded that I contact my daughter on a mobile phone. I replied that it was most certainly not the law that I own a mobile phone, and after a month she would not be able to answer.

Seconds later the two mobile ‘goons’ left and shortly afterwards a warden on a motorcycle drew up, had the situation explained to him and was entirely reasonable with the dozens of us stuck in a stupid situation.

He was followed by a couple of friendly airport security officers who wanted to know whatever was happening. I was lucky enough to explain things to them and they established that there was parking under the Sky Parks building and tried to come to grips with the fact that they were totally unaware that another security type had closed the car park.

It must surely be apparent that if airport security staff instruct a visitor to park in a certain area, local wardens have no remit to ‘willy-nilly’ dish out parking infringement tickets without establishing why. In this case dozens of motorists were ‘breaking the law’. So much for ‘friendly’ roving wardens, explaining first, listening to reasons and where sensible ‘backing off’.

Vehicles cannot be stopped on double yellow lines unless it’s a case of force majeure (engine stoppage or a mechanical breakdown beyond the owner’s control, or the driver being instructed to stop on the lines by a policeman). You have been warned.