I’ll open with the non-political stuff first because it deserves pride of place this week. If you have a single cultural bone in your body, even if it is as teeny-weeny as Wayne Rooney’s metatarsal, you have to take yourselves to Bank of Valletta’s head office in Santa Venera and look at Debbie Caruana Dingli’s retrospective exhibition.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is very good stuff, even a rank Philistine like me knows it. And, for the record, that great portrait of a biker isn’t of me.

The exhibition was curated by Francesca Balzan, who, in her brief words at the opening of the exhibition, put her heart right out there on her sleeve and said it like few others have said it before: it’s about time we moved away from the mediocrity of the ‘everything goes’ mentality that has blighted this country and, instead, started demanding of ourselves that quality and intrinsic worth go beyond the shallow reasoning that allows superb buildings and first-class venues to be polluted by substandard work and garbled ideas.

We’re getting a touch of this - sadly - within and without the magnificent building that now houses Parliament. There’s this moronic idea floating around, if I might be euphemistic, that the tat-fest that people politely pretend is a market should be located around the Renzo Piano building, while on the inside, there’s already been one exhibition that was something of a mistake, and a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against school kids’ art exhibitions, for instance, but there was one at the Palace a few months ago and it was dire, not least of the reasons being that the items on display were left to stand there without anyone ensuring that the labels remained in place.

Likewise, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with inmates of the Corradino detention centre being given space to show off their skills, and make a small amount of cash on the side for that matter, but for Heaven’s sake, not in one of the most prestigious locations in the country.

So, go to Santa Venera and restore your faith in the depth of artistic merit that can be found when you scrape off the ‘let if ride’ veneer that some - but certainly not Debbie or Francesca - have applied to themselves.

Our normal service will now be resumed.

I’m not in the habit of reading The Malta Government Gazette, this being ever so slightly less captivating than watching paint dry, so I’m not sure whether any notice was put up telling the wondering minions (that’s us, folks) who has taken over Sai Mizzi Lang’s husband’s ministerial duties while he is away.

For that matter, I’m not even sure he’s away at all but he certainly has been conspicuous by his absence.

It’s astounding how quickly and deeply the country has plummeted into the depths of 1970s’ and 1980s’ flavour Labour mediocrity

Murphy’s law being what it is, literally as I was typing out these words, my Twitter feed popped up with a tweet about how the dear chap had testified in court and “vehemently denied ever kissing Ms Gambin” but on reading the report from Times of Malta it is less than clear whether Mizzi’s husband had testified today, in fact.

Be that as it may be, we have certainly not been overburdened with the sight and sound of Konrad Mizzi, whether in the House intoning mantras involving not being fit for purpose in the general direction of the Leader of the Opposition or outside the place where he enjoys his privileges, (not) telling us about power-stations being built by the end of the month and whatever.

Presumably he’s taking a well-earned rest from the exertions of the past weeks.

I suppose it’s because summer is approaching and everyone is looking forward to their own well-earned rest but I can’t help but be amused by the way Minister Owen Bonnici, who, sadly, is becoming very much like the rest of them, tore a strip off this very newspaper because it pestered him for an answer about something or other when he had already answered the question in the House, only for it to become known that he hadn’t, erm, yet actually given the answer in the House.

What’s his name McFly would have been proud of him, being able to dart hither and tither within the space-time continuum with such fleetness of foot.

You wouldn’t want to be Premier Joseph Muscat, though, would you? He’s got to do it all himself because his little helpers really don’t have their act together, back to the future Owen and all the rest of them.

I mean to say, Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech is so rarely seen that ornithologists have taken to camping out near where his ministry is reputed to be in order to get a snap of him migrating from wherever it is he hangs out.

Sai Mizzi Lang’s husband’s absence from the scene has already been remarked on and the guy in charge of government property, when he’s not taking pot-shots at birds in Argentina with the guy who makes Gaffes in the arena all the time, appears hell-bent on coating Premier Joseph’s already not-exactly pristine image with a seriously thick coat of mud.

Minister the other Mizzi, meanwhile, seems to have taken it upon himself to create the illusion that traffic actually moves in this benighted country, having given up, despite his pre-electoral vision that oil is about to gush from below our posteriors, on actually achieving anything.

The guy responsible for the environment and the other one, the one who should be promoting animal rights, seem to have taken time off to audition for Laurel & Hardy the silent remake and the lad who is responsible for culture is taking curtain calls and looking for the bloke who’s looking for garages for combos to rehearse in, so that they can take part in a cheesy rock-fest commemorating the 13th anniversary of the fourth decade after the fifth year in which La Vallette’s aunty had celebrated her 15th birthday.

Or something on those lines.

It’s astounding, really, how quickly and how deeply the country has plummeted into the depths of 1970s’ and 1980s’ flavour Labour mediocrity. All we needed, to propel us even further downwards, was that vulgar youth Ian Borg telling us all about what doesn’t turn him on in Parliament. I like a vulgar crack as much as the next lout but this bunch of yobs are taking things to a new nadir.

To conclude, as I started, on more uplifting matters, those culinary this time. The Medina in Mdina is somewhere we hadn’t been for quite a number of years and I have to report that standards remain high, though a touch of the more snappy in the service department would have made it that much better.

At the other end of the nourishment pecking order, Trattoria Taranto (or something like that, anyway) in St Paul Street in town serves up a distinctly decent pizza, though if amusing yourself by tail-twirling a feline is important to you, don’t bother because it’s tiny.

imbocca@gmail.com

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