No, I’m not going to have a rant about divorce this week, it was getting boring even to me and the powers-that-are have so started to fudge the issue that it’s pretty safe to say that it’s about to become just another manic Monday.

I mean, not even Joseph Muscat was capable of coming out and saying it when importuned by Lou Bondì last week and the clerics have now waxed and waned so much that they must be dizzy. As for the Nationalist Party’s stance, well, the less said the better: Vacillatory is too kind a word.

If I were in his shoes, I don’t know what I’d do. Would I give MaltaToday and the ladies who sneerger (combining a sneer and a snigger) so much grist for their agenda-mill? I would like to think I wouldn’t, but hey, I’m human too, so no guarantees.

I know I’d feel mightily teed off, of course, having always been morally convinced of my own innocence.

The thing is, though, that John Dalli can’t really be described as having not fallen onto his feet. It’s not as if a commissioner-ship at the apex of the EU mandarin pyramid is a job to be sneezed at, both in the prestige and in the remunerative stakes, for all that you have to live in boring Brussels to do it, and being nominated to the post by the government is quite a signal to us plebs that whatever the rumour-mill was grinding out, Mr Dalli is not considered as being beyond the pale.

Well, not any more, anyway.

The amusing thing about the Dalli affair, seen from where people like me sit, is the way the ladies who sneerger, never really enormous fans of Mr Dalli’s when he was a PN minister and, thus, the very embodiment of all that they find so very, very distasteful, are now having to revise their opinions and elevate Mr Dalli onto some plinth or other, on the basis of the time-honoured theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

That MaltaToday is charging into the fray wearing Mr Dalli’s colours comes as no surprise to anyone, though the enemy of my enemy theory holds good here too, of course.

I for one always perceived Mr Dalli as an eminently competent operator, with impeccable credentials and a steel-trap brain (is that the right phrase? Doesn’t look like it.), so, quite frankly, his departure from the local scene was not something I relished, unlike the way it was greeted with glee by his detractors, who were legion and not only in the opposing party.

Conspiracy theorists have long been having fun making up stories of how he was framed, or not framed, or whatever, be­cause he challenged Lawrence Gonzi for the leadership or because he didn’t or whatever, but the problem always was that whatever Mr Dalli had done or not done (and I don’t have evidence of anything, to be sure) his fraternal connections were never going to do him any favours.

I’ve always had this sneaking feeling that much of what was attributed to Mr Dalli was the result not of his machinations but of the envy of those who couldn’t measure up to him and if evidence of his quality is needed, just take a dispassionate look at a recording of the hearing he underwent before he was confirmed as a commissioner: He wiped the floor with them.

But that’s all as may be: In the real world of local politics, Mr Dalli’s bolt has been shot and I think he would do himself a great favour if he were to can it,now.

Yes, fine, he’s perfectly entitled to feel hurt at the way he feels he was treated but now it’s time for him to listen to what most of us are intoning, viz. and to wit “enough, already”.

And, please, basing yourself on a mystery voice in the police lock-up is not really going to get you very far now, is it? No one can blame anyone for giving credence to his own brother but, surely, discretion would have been the better part of valour here?

On Saturday, I finally got to see a full Carmen and congratulations to all concerned are in order. Perhaps four-and-a-half hours in a hot auditorium were a tad too long, but the enterprise was a noble one and all for a single show.

We went to Gululu’s last week and were mightily impressed. Starters, mains and service were excellent, the sweets merely good and the place promises to become one of those to which you return, knowing that you won’t be let down.

Shivas in Paceville (borders of Paceville, to be fair) is itself one of those places: Even after an absence of too many months, you walk in and it’s as if you’d only been there last week. And when you start in on the food, you wonder why it has been so many months, so good is it.

imbocca@gmail.com

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