You know how sometimes you wake up with a brilliant home décor idea? You think, wow, yes, if I do that, it will really make the house cosy and pleasant and I will always want to stay here and never bother going out.
Sometimes it’s just a couple of cushions, sometimes it’s a book rack. Sometimes, it’s a bit more complicated, like redoing the bathroom or painting the walls and furniture the same colour scheme or installing a skylight or two, or three.
It so happened that the other day I woke up and thought: you know what I’d really fancy? A nice wooden veranda for the roof!
It would be perfect for the summer, there’ll be a nice breeze up there, and if we set it up before August 5, it would be ideal for the Salvatur fireworks. We could watch the sunset without the stifling heat burning on our necks; and later we could watch the fireworks show under the protection of the wooden roof, without having to squint away the pesky fireworks dust from our eyes and without any renegade Catherine wheels falling on top of our heads. Ah, the bliss!
But hang on, I thought, it’ll be costly. Plus I’ll have to go through all the hassle of finding workmen to set it up, and it being l-aqwa żmien my chances of finding someone to do it before the next election would be very remote. Mmm, I thought. What could I do?
Luckily, I got a light bulb moment. I went to work and snapped my fingers in manner of Happy Days Fonzi: “You, colleagues, stop whatever you’re doing. Go to my house and build me a wooden veranda.”
“Oh, erm,” my stunned colleagues muttered. “We’re designing book covers, creating installations for the Book Fair, promoting educational books, we can’t just lea-…”
My story is fake news. Unfortunately, Minister Carmelo Abela’s is very true
“Forgetaboutit. Here’s some money to go and buy timber and beams and a chainsaw. I’m not paying you for the labour, you’re doing it during your normal working hours, after all. Now go, while I stay here editing my manuscripts.”
“But-b-but what if the boss finds out?”
“U le, don’t worry. Naqra veranda ta din.”
So the colleagues set off to my house and worked on the timber structure. It took them a while, and their actual work piled up on their desk, but this was a case of priorities: it simply could not be that I spend another summer without my precious wooden veranda.
The very same evening, just as I was sipping a mojito in the shade of my new wooden frame and admiring the belfry of the Lija church, I got a call from my boss.
“You’re fired.”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” I said. “I’m only following the example of the Foreign Affairs Minister! Why is it that he can snap his fingers and order his staff at the ministry to stop doing ministry work and go and build a wooden veranda at his house and I can’t? Why, eh, why? I’m entitled to the same treatment. If his boss – who’s the Prime Minister – did not fire him, then you can’t fire me!”
Disclaimer: My wooden veranda story is, as Donald Trump would say, fake news. At home I’m actually banned from entertaining any home décor ideas for the time being, until the men get their heads round to the changes I foisted on their cave last year. Also, I love my colleagues a lot. Also, my boss has not fired me (so far).
Unfortunately, however, Minister Carmelo Abela’s story is very true.
I am at the moment filling in my income tax return. I think I will attach a little note to it, reminding Mr Taxman that I have so far paid for Chris Cardona’s frequent luxury lad trips and Carmelo Abela’s little home decorations, and will my tax cuts be next used for a Jacuzzi bath tub on a private jet plane for the Tourism Minister please?
Speaking of wooden verandas and timber, I’d like to pay an ode to the over-100-year-old carob tree in Lija that was recently chopped off. I passed by this gentle giant of a tree every day while walking the dog – and it was a daily reminder of the beauty of age. This carob tree needed no botox, no facelift, it was just there watching us, and the world go by, in its glorious old grace.
Now, in its stead there is a deep concrete hole, and the emptiness feels like a little bit of Lija’s soul has been snuffed out.
The tree had probably seen Napoleon and the British come and go, and survived both world wars but was not given any protection from the contractor’s bulldozer. With the rot that has set in our society, if something does not yield money then it no longer holds any value.
Here’s a recommended read: Colin Tudge’s The Secret Life of Trees: How they Live and Why they Matter. It’s essentially a love letter to trees and the hidden role of trees in our everyday lives, and how our future survival depends on them. If only we cared.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti