You’d be hard pressed to obtain a sabot firing gun in Malta. These are used on tanks. I don’t think our army ever envisages fighting tanks.

enader wan tudej…

CONFECTIONARY issa saret.

I used to urge my colleagues at work to read The Times biex jitghallmu naqa Ingliz sura… imma nahseb ghalhekk ghadhom jghaffgu.

Hopefully they were smoking a joint, that way they get 20 years or something… in that case they will also smoke pot in gaol, since it seems to be the safest place to do drugs without getting caught.

Many grammatical sins are committed because people use the excuse of ‘colloquial’ language.Would the queen speak like that? No. Someone from Manchester who buys clothes from Burberry which are made in a Chinese sweat shop would, though.

I just hate it when people… typically from Sliema or thereabouts use intonation instead of correct grammar to ask a question.

“You like pastizzi?” I can’t reproduce intonation here of course but you know what I mean. It makes my skin crawl because what they are doing is translating from Maltese showing that they are really thinking in Maltese and speaking in ‘English’.

As regards the use of the ‘…ing’ you are wrong. Listen to people who are intelligent and so on but are not native English speakers and you will hear them using the ‘…ing’ form with loads of verbs when they should not be doing so. I have heard several European ambassadors in Malta doing this. So you are in good company, don’t worry.

I like to mull my wine.

When someone sets fire to your door it’s attempted murder (even though with stone being the major building component in Malta house fires are rarely lethal) but shooting in a busy public place is risible. Not like you to be inconsistent, Daphne.

[Daphne – Stone is not the major building component where I live. Glass is. When you stack five large tyres, each one packed with bottles of petrol, all topped with a jerry-can of petrol, up against a glass door behind which lie carpets, sofas and wooden furniture, it is not an attempt to set fire to the door (which is glass), but an attempt to set fire to the house – at 3am with everyone asleep on the same floor as the fire.]

They’re callous, arrogant, lazy, reprehensible, ignorant scum who don’t give a pig’s burp about the rest of us. I hope they rot in gaol for a long time, but with Malta’s soft-hearted judiciary it’s unlikely.

How thoughtful of Mario Debono to give ideas to prospective van-robbers (I guess robbers is the word since one talks of the “great train robbery”).

U ajma, much ado about mull u mull over…

Have a look at The Times of 04/01/2010 page two, bottom right, Qrendi accident report – the last sentence reads:

“There was no one else in the car which is a right off”