Joseph Muscat hasn’t yet realised that he’s now most definitely a bald, portly middle-aged man with a wife, two children and many responsibilities

I suppose it’s all relative when you’ve got your head in the sand about your age. Surrounded by men old enough to be his father, like Edward Scicluna, Louis Grech, John Dalli, Karmenu Vella and the rest of the fossils, Muscat probably feels terribly young.

Maybe he should get a sense of perspective by asking a couple of 20-year-olds just how young they think 40 is. I was never allowed the deluded luxury of thinking I was young at 40 – not with two sons at sixth form college and another at university, and an endless parade of people their age to remind me what young really is and that the truly young classify 40-year-olds as My Parents’ Age.

Muscat is suffering from an affliction common in those who have children 10 years later in life than would ordinarily have been the norm: thinking they are 10 years younger than they really are. But biological age is biological age, and no matter which way you stretch and twist it, 40 is middle-aged unless you’re in on some secret that means you’re going to live to 120.

If 40 is young, then what is 20?

His fraudulent self-image as a young person, the way he relates to himself, the world and others as a ‘young person’ (when he is actually a portly and bald middle-aged man with a wife and two children and a job as prime minister) is evident in the way he is more horrified at being called old, rather than being called a friend of China.

How reassuring to know he’s got his priorities right.

‘Friend of China’? Isn’t this visit supposed to be about bringing in FDI for Malta – without compromising Malta politically?