Apologies for the gap between the previous blog and this - the vicissitudes of long-haul travel are such that working up the energy to do anything but have a nap after being a tourist is not the easiest of tasks.
It seems that just after we left, Dom Mintoff was admitted to hospital again, suffering from heart trouble and dehydration. That's as may be and I'll reserve any commentary about his legacy for the appropriate juncture, though sometimes it seems as if the man is going to outlive me. Actuarially, that's hardly likely, unless I succumb on some glacier or other in the next couple of weeks.
In any case, as I said, I'll leave my commentary about Mintoff's legacy to when it becomes a legacy, though technically, since he's a political corpse and I'll only be writing about the politician and not the man, I could do it now. But pleasures yet to come, as a late professor of ours used to intone when seeking to strike the fear of God into us in the run up to exam season.
It is not without sense of some irony, thought, that you read some of the comments that always seem to follow stories of Mintoff being admitted to hospital.
You get what seem to be expressions of epic piety, with imprecations to God to keep Mintoff alive, bestowing him (not Him) with courage and fortitude. This always prompts some way to make the crack, generally not in print because there are limits to the sense of humour (even of the black variety) this august journal, especially in its printed manifestation, can demonstrate, that God hasn't called Mintoff to be with Him because Heaven just ain't big enough for the both of them.
It's actually quite surprising that the people who just have to demonstrate their fervent love of Mintoff by telling the world how much they're praying for him don't realise how inappropriate they are being. Mintoff, as any student of Maltese history knows, had no time for public piety and he spent his time battling with the local representatives of the Deity to whom, presumably, prayers are being directed. I'm not aware of the extent to which Mintoff, the private man, was a religious being or not, and as far as I recall, whenever the electorate was crazy enough to return him to power, he always kissed the Cross before trotting off to uphold democracy and whatever else his gang used to call it, but this means nothing at all.
Plenty of other hypocrites kiss the Cross and then lie in their teeth, after all and in my own memory, the only Prime Minister who made a solemn affirmation rather than using a formula to which he did not choose to adhere was Alfred Sant. That's not to say that most of the others were any less sincere.
But the outbursts of "Kuragg, Perit, nitolbu ghalik" make me squirm, quite honestly, because they come from people who, presumably in the earlier days, would curse Gonzi (Sir Michael of that ilk) and all the other Bishops because Mintoff would tell them to, making their prayers just another example of our Mediterranean capacity to accommodate the sublime and the Gorblimey without even batting an eyelid.
And that's leaving out the other myth that these expressions of blind fealty perpetuate, namely that Mintoff was the Father of the Nation and that we owe our national identity, virtually, to him and him alone.
To this, bluntly, I have to rasp-berry back "Yeah, right, it's thanks to Mintoff that we're not a county of England" (in retrospect, a really loony idea, though I'd probably have liked it at the time)
Yes, he was the father of the nation, if you want to think in those terms: he was the autocratic despot who brooked no discussion and who would take the strap to any recalcitrant offspring who dared to show any independence of thought or action.
These days, they call them abusive parents, but in the time-warp where Mintoff's still faithful followers still live and breathe, this remains the way things should be done.
Ironic, or what.