Jose has trouble with names – just like his sister

Consuelo thought that Michael Cassar, the head of the Vice Squad at the time, was a corrupt police officer who sent drinks to her restaurant table.

And now her brother is having trouble with names, too. Poor man.

I thought I’d give you a little time to digest the report of his awful diatribe on Super One (see previous post) before I put a rocket under his rubbish and point out that he’s confusing Sir Arturo Mercieca with Sir Michelangelo Refalo.

The trouble with Jose Herrera is that he’s basically a chav from the sticks whose father became a judge and bought a house in Stella Maris parish, Sliema. When you come from that background, you have no idea of the Old Sliema and Old Valletta networks that people like me (oh, how I love saying that to arriviste chavs like Consuelo and Jose, whose idea of a social network is other chavs like them) know from birth as a matter of course.

Here’s the Malta Today report:

The Labour MP also recalled how the former pre-war Chief Justice Sir Arturo Mercieca had purchased a huge house close to the British Governor’s home, apparently in a bid to compete on the social circuit by hosting regular, lavish parties.

“My father had also bought a big house in St. Vincent Street in Sliema, and used to host regular dinner parties,” he added. “But why should the Commission ever have to delve into the social lives of the members of judiciary?” Herrera asked

When I read that, I laughed out loud at the utter stupidity of the man. Quite frankly, he and his sister haven’t many brains between them, just plenty of arrogance to make up for their lack of breeding. ‘Dinner parties’, indeed – who says that, for heaven’s sake? The last time I heard it was in court last week, when Consuelo was under cross-examination and, in describing some supper for friends at her house, she said, in precisely these words: “KIENET A DINNER PARTY.” And I sat there in the dock thinking “God, what a chav.”

I knew immediately that Jose is confusing Sir Arturo Mercieca with Sir Michelangelo Refalo. It was the latter who lived at Villa Refalo, now the Corinthia Palace Hotel, just across the street from the Governor’s home at San Anton Palace in Attard. Helpful hint, Jose: that’s why it was called Villa Refalo and not, say, Villa Mercieca.

And how do I know all this? Simple. Sir Michelangelo Refalo’s daughter Maude was married to my grandfather’s brother, Colonel Victor George Vella. And my parents’ wedding reception was held at Villa Refalo in 1960.

Sir Michelangelo did not buy Villa Refalo to compete with the Governor and to throw big parties. He had a certain amount of inherited property and Villa Refalo was part of it. He did not throw big parties and show off. He wasn’t a chav, like the Herreras. If he were, my grandfather’s brother wouldn’t have married his daughter (oh, how I love rubbing it in).

He did not ‘buy a huge house close to the British Governor’s home, apparently in a bid to compete on the social circuit’. He inherited the house, and I repeat, only chavs and arrivistes ‘compete on the social circuit’. The Governor and Sir Michelangelo Refalo would never even have understood the concept.

As for Sir Arturo Mercieca, the thought of him buying a huge house to compete on the social circuit is risible. He was as poor as a church mouse because all he had was the pittance that judges then earned. He had seven children, lived in a rented house in Valletta and then another rented house in Ta’ Xbiex. And he didn’t throw parties.

How do I know? He was my grandmother’s cousin.

I can understand why a man from the sticks would confuse the two, but that is no excuse for slandering the memory of either one of them.

Both were knighted. Both were chief justice. Sir Michelangelo was, as it happens, Sir Arturo’s immediate predecessor as chief justice. The first was appointed in 1919 and the second in 1924.

Oh, and another thing. Perhaps I should also mention that another of my grandfather’s siblings was married to Judge Antoine Montanaro-Gauci, and that the reason I saw so much of her was because she was a near-permanent fixture in my grandparents’ Valletta drawing-room. Her husband had a tightly restricted social life and demanded the same of his wife, who then socialised mainly with family.

Something else Jose ‘Chav Nation’ Herrera might wish to know. This was my great-great-great-grandfather, but certainly not his:

Ferdinando Caruana Dingli – Godson of the last Grandmaster
– from The Professors of International Law with the faculty of Law, the University of Malta, by Raymond Mangion, Dept of Public Law, the Faculty of Law, University of Malta

Professor Dr Ferdinando Caruana Dingli was the first academic lawyer and advocate to occupy the Chair of International and Constitutional law from the moment the course of law was re-organized pursuant to the Statuto Fondamentale of 1838. Ferdinand was born in Valletta on 12 January 1798, son of Giuseppe Caruana Dingli and Antonia née Farrugia Ferdinando’s father Giuseppe – son of Francesco Caruana and Giovanna Dingli, and the island’s Comptroller of Customs – was a close associate, perennial supporter and regular creditor of Grandmaster Von Hompesch (Note to Jose: that’s CREDITOR not debtor. He lent huge amounts of money to Grandmaster von Hompesch, who never settled his debts after he fled Malta when Napoleon arrived, bankrupting his friend when he defaulted on the loan).
Caruana Dingli was revered as one of the most illustrious deceased scholars of Malta and long after his demise his conspicuous memory was still reverberating inside the campus of the highest educational institution of Malta. Along with Sir Ignazio Gavino Bonavita and Sir Adrian Dingli, he was remembered as one of the eminent ‘giureconsulti’ of truly great stature who emerged from the small island of Malta in the nineteenth century.

Here’s Jose again:

“I insist that whoever criticises the social lives of magistrates and judges has no background on lawyers: it is a known fact that judges used to seek homes with big halls to host dinner parties at least once a month,” Herrera said.

Spoken like a true Johnny-come-lately, though I am sorely tempted to use the H word. I may not have a ‘background on lawyers’ (despite being married to one for 25 years) but I can certainly teach Jose Herrera some lessons about one professor of international law, two chief justices and a very notable judge. And I have just done so.

Something else: I spoke earlier to one of Sir Arturo’s descendants and was told that the extended family is absolutely furious at the slander.

The trouble with those Herreras is that they measure everything by their own cheap and tawdry yardstick. They don’t even have the self-awareness (or understanding of the word) to know that what they call a ‘social life’ others like me recognise as a shoddy demi-monde of over-sexed chavs with a bit of recently acquired money or a law degree which they believe makes them the ne plus ultra of power and society.

They are so gross and unappealing that I don’t know where to begin.