The time to scribble your numbers against the name is coming closer, an exercise on which will depend the gratification of Joseph Muscat's gasping aspiration to trip daintily up the steps to Castille.

If you wish go grant him this wish, well, what can I say, that's democracy, but at least vote for people to join him in the Cabinet Room come Tuesday week that won't take us headlong back into the dark days of Mintoff and KMB.

What do you mean, there aren't that many to choose from if you leave out the dinosaurs, how is that my fault?

The mantra being chanted, albeit because they've been fed it by Muscat's Lil'Elves and Peculiar Pundits (meet them below, they're the ones making oblique threats to me on "come the day" lines, for some weird and wonderful reason known only to them) by some people who are natural PN voters is that "we need a change, marelli".

That's as may be, though you'll forgive me for not agreeing that it makes any sense at all to dump a Government that's seen us through two massive crises, one to the South and the other all around us to the North and other points.

But if you really want a change, you do realise that there are choices within the PN lists that will give you this.  I'll give you a few fr'instances, friends of mine, mainly, but no less worthy of your vote for all that (actually, if you think my friends aren't good enough for your vote, you're probably going to vote Labour anyway)

In the Sliema area, you can consider, for example, supporting Joanna Agius's candidature.  She's new, shiny new, and has given ample evidence that she's thought it through.  It would be churlish of me not to direct your thoughts towards Francis Zammit Dimech, admittedly one of the old guard but a gentleman whose comportment has been exemplary and, in a sense, a great change from the bitterness shown by those who need not be named any longer, thankfully.

In another area of the country altogether, if you vote there, you have a technocrat of the calibre of Manwel Delia.  I had the pleasure of working with him in a number of areas when he was a backroomer and he's a doer.  Like all doers, he is totally unlike those who do nothing and therefore make no mistakes, but carp and cavil all the same.

I'm glad, in closing, that I'm not voting in Gozo, where I'd have to make a choice between Chris Said, Kevin Cutajar and Samuel Azzopardi, to say nothing of the others, solid candidates all.  Said isn't brand spanking new, but his attitudes surely are.