I think Malta should ask the EU to move the EU Mobility Week to January or February. September in Malta is just not viable; plagued as we are by prevailing southerly winds that enervate, irritate and make any other option other than sitting in the comfort of one’s own car, air-conditioned or not, an exercise in pure masochism.

Car Free Day came and went with the Cabinet setting the example by using public transport, electric cars and in the case of the Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, his own legs, which of course, was the “ideal” option. I had a meeting scheduled in Valletta; a briefing for a group of volunteers taking visitors round the National Museum of Fine Arts during Notte Bianca. I agonised all night about what to do. The rather nasty bug I picked up in Berlin the week before, in the end, prevented me from attending, however, I could not imagine myself as having been very popular on a crowded bus while being racked by painful coughing bouts and sneezing fits; that is apart from the acute discomfort I would have been subjected to myself.

I enjoy using public transport whenever possible; and I stress the “whenever possible” aspect. If I am in a hurry it is out of the question, if I have things to fetch and carry it is also inadvisable, if it is hot and sticky it is torturous while if you intend staying out till after 11 p.m. it is impossible. Be that as it may, many times I get into Valletta by bus for a late morning meeting and stay on for a bit of shopping, exhibition-hopping and lunch and I have, from November to April found it most congenial. Walking anywhere is, most of the year, inadvisable. It is acceptable to take one’s constitutional walk and look as if someone threw a bucket of water on your head but not if you are turning up for a meeting and must look crisply smart and alert. I am, unfortunately, one of those people who are affected most forcefully by the heat. Sometimes the effort of just thinking a little too hard translates into my body turning into a squishy mess. Many times I dream of being an Eskimo sitting happily in my little igloo training pet seals but Fate decreed that I was to be Maltese and be part of an island nation community of 400,000 who all think that we are the bee’s knees and the cat’s whiskers to boot. It must be something in the water.

“But we are!” I hear you exclaim. Maybe you are right; however, there’s a great wide world out there over the tranquil horizon full of teeming millions all toiling and coexisting in so many different ways. Watching the Travel Channel is, after the top grade classical music offered by the Mezzo Channel, one of my favourite pastimes. Places one has been to, knows and loves like Rome and Paris are revisited along with out of the way places like Mongolia, Ladakh and Zanzibar, exotic destinations like Morocco and Sri Lanka and the magnificent wonders of the world like Giza, Machu Pichu and Angkor. Today one need not read and imagine, helped by a couple of illustrations as we had to make do up to a few years ago, but we can travel The Silk Route through television.

Through our PCs in virtual reality we can visit the Louvre or the V&A and the cultural isolation many Maltese sometimes feel, cut off as we are by those 60 miles of sea from mainland Europe, need not exist as the world has made its way, like Mohamed and the Mountain, to our living rooms. What intellectual and aesthetic luxury is ours in a world where we can, at the drop of a hat, send an e-mail or Skype someone in Australia and communicate better than with our next-door neighbour. But as usual I am distracted by the technological marvels of modern living and have digressed from the main argument which is a reasoned assessment as to why Car Free Day in Malta is destined to flop, year in, year out.

Despite our size we are a prosperous lot. Had we not been so, Car Free Day would have been an everyday occurrence and not a form of abstinence comparable to a Lenten fast. If we could not afford to have our own private transport sitting patiently on our doorsteps 24/7 then we would all have to use the buses whether we like it or not. It is said that statistically every household in Malta has two cars which prima facie looks pretty excessive but along with the fact that we are a well-off nation is the fact that we work very hard for what we have too and that’s kudos to us. Therefore should the public transport not be up to scratch and not conducive to running our business; then forget it. That is the fundamental difference. Of the people interviewed on Car Free Day all implied that using public transport was inconvenient because it is time consuming.

There have been, and will be, many proposals to diversify public transport. I had particularly liked an underground train running from Madliena through to St Andrews, St Julians, Sliema, Gżira, Valletta and the Three Cities ending in Paola. Imagine getting from St Julians to Valletta in eight minutes flat! The alternative today is to wait for a bus in Spinola and miss three or four as they are already full-up by the time they pass three stops from the terminal, then hang on for dear life as the bus crawls through Sliema, Gżira and Msida traffic and stops, agonisingly, at each point while the bus driver gives change. The noise of the bus’s engine drowns out even the loudest bit of music on your Ipod. Eventually as one speeds, quite unnecessarily, past the Mall with Valletta in sight one realises that it has taken up the best part of an hour… Need I say more?

kzt@onvol.net