Midsummer has not brought any madness along for us. But neither has the living been easy. Out at our place in Wied il-Busbies, outside Rabat, we have suffered from much too frequent cuts in the power and water supply. We have experienced that in previous years. Never so much, though.

The water cuts were explained by the Water Services Corporation. Some idiot or idiots unknown contaminated a borehole that feeds the Il-Fiddien reservoir. The WSC worked hard to clean up the resulting mess, but had to wait for clearance before allowing reservoir to resume normal supply.

The damning act by invisible hand or hands was not madness, but irresponsibility. We still have too much of that around. That said, without contamination and its effects the water supply in the Dingli and limits of Rabat areas is not much to write home about.

It is generally weak. Sometimes a mere dribble. I reckon the reason is down to the pipes network. It is as old as the Dingli and Baħrija hills themselves. I do not have information of a replacement programme by the WSC. It would help if they have one, and committed to it.

I do not think that wicked sabotage was the reason for the power cuts. These have taken place regularly, at times for around 13 hours at a time. In this case I do not simply think – I know that the power infrastructure has aged badly and needs replacing.

When will that happen? Not soon, I think. Some years ago Enemalta built a room, with careful rural characteristics, to house a new substation at Wied il-Busbies. It is intended to replace the existing one, which must have been set up not long after electricity reached Malta.

The room is there, trim and ready. The new sub-station has not arrived. The old one causes power failure with monotonous regularity.

It would be useful if Enemalta came up with some hard details regarding the renewal of the power infrastructure in the area. That it is one of the more sparsely populated in Malta does not mean that its residents should be taken for granted. They deserve the courtesy of fuller information.

Speaking of courtesy, that was there in abundance to those of us who phoned (and phoned, and phoned) the two corporations to enquire what was going on, and when might supply be resumed. The replies were invariably courteous, which helped to draw the sting from the situation. There was some mild humour around as well.

The duty officer at one central room I phoned told me that cuts were notified in the media. I told him I had a copy of the previous day’s The Times in my hand, that counted as media, surely. It showed no cuts notice. I have only just received the notice, he told me. The supply had been off for hours, which confirmed my belief that it was due to failure, not to notifiable maintenance.

The mobile teams who went around the large district to effect repairs, including in the thick of night, were invariably professional about their work and good-humoured in executing it.

• Summer time is not kind to all the flowers, though frequent watering helps those that bloom in season. We have a stephanotis that does not really enjoy that much watering. Its roots must have gone deep down to where the rich soil remains moist, sheltered from the sweltering heat of the summer days.

The plant yields an endless supply of flowers, emitting lovely scents which recall to mind The Perfumed Garden. It shows no sign of abating its heady offering to us as we enjoy it, leaving the blooms on their stalks to do their enjoyable work.

• Regrettably and rather contrarily I find that, the older I get, the less time I seem to have for reading, once I have had my rigorous fill of financial and economic journals. Somehow this summer has allowed me to squeeze in some of my preferred reading.

I returned to Paulo Coelho, and enjoyed, hugely I must say, his brilliant Eleven Minutes. It is the story of a Latin American girl who comes to seek fame and fortune in Europe. There she quickly ends up as a prostitute, working to a well-defined schedule to earn enough money to go back home and start a new life in an honest economic venture.

Coelho has a style all his own of how to take the reader with him inside the innermost thoughts and feelings of his characters. It turns out the he copied his prostitute from a real one he came to know well, in a literary and not professional sense. Emboldened I went on to start reading the author’s Like the flowing river, a collection of thoughts and reminiscences. I thought the following (The Moment of Dawn) was marvellous:

During the World Economic Forum at Davos, writes Coelho, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, Shimon Peres, told the following story:

A Rabbi gathered together his students and asked them:

“How do we know the exact moment when night ends and day begins?”

“When it’s light enough to tell a sheep from a dog,” said one boy.

Another student said: “No, when it’s light enough to tell an olive tree from a fig tree.”

“No, that’s not a good definition either,” said the Rabbi.

“Well, what’s the right answer?” asked the boys.

And the Rabbi said:

“When a stranger approaches, and we think he is our brother, and all conflicts disappear, that is the moment when night ends and day begins.”