Glad you said that. Doesn’t it however place some responsibility on the established left? Especially when you mention internationalism and globalism?

I’m trying to fathom whether you’re talking to or at Yeled Shovav.

Yeled also asks why local traditional pursuits have been scorned, I put it down to a successful attempt at politicising these as well. Any cultural artefacts seen as innately valuable have been re-proposed as belonging exclusively to the lower classes. The best example was tampering with carnival, regulating it, prohibiting any political satire and even changing its date. The end result was a fancy dress May day parade. Not exactly Venetian and its use of masks allowing nobility to interact with the working class, allowed all year round.

Any occasion for social interaction and subsequent development was closely monitored.

Our festi in their present manifestation have nothing to do with similar religious festivals in Spain, Italy or southern France. A morning band march in Malta is in no way comparable to the Santa Rosalia pegeantry at the Quattro Canti in Palermo or the gitanes celebrating Mary Magdalene in the Camargue.

The latter are about roots and community, ours are about pique and the barbarisation of our Latin creativity.

Baxxter, easy man – drink something soothing, a camomile tea or Horlicks. You will feel better.

Not true. We ARE abnormal. We are a tiny country, for a start.

We have a sense of historical entitlement because we are now an independent country whereas before we were always part of something else.

And genetically, we are the pits.

I mean we’re not properly European – we already speak an Arabic dialect – and it’s not just because we’re not Nordic blondes. Latinos, we ain’t. We’re not even black, or Berber (they produce their fair share of athletes and models). No.

We’re short, pudgy, Semitic mongrels.

This isn’t a fish bowl. It’s a cereal bowl, with everyone crawling up everyone’s arse.

You can’t move for the sheer mass of bodies.

In your average committee everyone will have slept with everyone.

It’s no wonder jobs and positions are handed out on a “per quim” basis.

The best budget measure the government could enact this year is to distribute cyanide tablets so we could end this charade.

Or buy up some dictator’s stock of chemical weapons and gas us all to death.

No, Baxxter. However, I was once told that, as one grows older, everything shrinks, except your nose.

I grew up in the 1990s so my perspective is, I think, slightly skewed. My perception of Malta during my childhood and teens (glossing over personal struggles) was pretty darn utopian and the people I knew were in that boat too.

There wasn’t a sense of perceptible struggle, all the wars had been won, and (barring 1996-8) the sense of social cohesion was a force to be reckoned with. Everyone was “on side”. And it took a while to realise what dangerous mythologising that was.

I’m sure that everyone has a tendency to look back nostalgically at their childhood and adolescence, but the reinforced bubble that became somehow normal throughout that decade (and into the early noughties) has, I think, coloured my generation’s perceptions in some fundamental ways.

I’m not sure it’s just a youthful sense of “seek(ing) out the familiar” that made people cluster together. It was a commonality of experience that cut across certain barriers and sharpened divisions which would have otherwise never been an issue. If our parents hadn’t gone through the substantial trauma of Labourite excess, we wouldn’t have been formed in that very peculiar way.

Anyway, I’m not sure this has anything to do with my previous comment, or your blog post, so excuse the ramble. I think it was prompted by your remarks about school identities, and the sudden shift from a “submissive” middle class to one ready and willing to bare its teeth (playfully or not) at a conquered enemy.

Silvio, those who are older and wiser should know that it is wrong to take advantage of the young and inexperienced, however skewed their dress sense is. If you are of the same age and mental outlook, then good luck and have fun.

Daphne, your words ‘more comfortable’, I feel, are key, even internationally.

I once worked for a large multinational as their chief economist. I, therefore, presented the economic outlook at the annual sales conferences. Sales representatives were invited from all over the world. The best description of
the gatherings would be a mini UN,

At lunches, dinners etc., I always found it remarkable how difficult it was to separate the representatives from each country from each other, even though English was the working lanquage.

Although all were loyal to the corporation and it’s goals and targets, we could never get them over that comfort factor of being with their ‘own’.

“furthering their studies and choosing a well paid career”

What the fuck are you on about? You can make shitloads of money as a party promoter, DJ, or even exotic dancer.

Were you born so? I think not. The sooner this nation confronts reality, the sooner we can move on: We are an ugly people. Life in the EU is that much harder when you’re at the opposite end of the scale from the Grecian ideal.

Go easy, Baxxter! I’ve got a pert bum (kind of) but one hell of a big nose.

Think I’ll sniff you out and give you a thump.