I’m not saying ‘don’t cry’ but ‘don’t cry in public’.

Certain things should not be done in public, and extravagant displays of any sort of emotion are unseemly.

Save it for home and those closest to you.

I can’t see what abortion has to do with it.

I am talking about facts, not opinions, still less my opinion: making any kind of emotional, weepy scene in public is not acceptable except among the lower orders in southern Europe and the Middle East.

I never mentioned screaming and rending of clothes. Those civilized Europeans who murder their unborn children have certainly enough self control not to cry in public.

Ask yourself why, when you see news coverage of a tragedy in the Middle East, everybody is crying and screaming and rending their clothes, but when you see news coverage of a tragedy in a European city – say, a bomb on the underground – nobody is crying and everybody is in stoic coping mode.

Crying and screaming in public and wailing at funerals are associated with southern European/Middle Eastern peasant culture.

So is dumb and pointless laughing, unless the context warrants it (e.g. somebody has told a joke).

However, loud laughter at table in a restaurant is bad manners because it annoys people at other tables.

I really don’t know why I’m explaining this – I thought everybody learned these things.

Crying in public in considered unacceptable because it creates awkwardness for others.

Crying in public is not acceptable and is excused only in certain extreme circumstances.

Anything else is considered showing off and attention-seeking, inappropriate behaviour.

This is for ordinary people, let alone the head of state, who has to maintain composure at all times in her role.

Crying is nothing to be ashamed of. Unless you are a marble statue.

It’s because it’s considered (or they think it is) socially and culturally acceptable to bawl in public.

It isn’t.

There’s a massive difference between funerals of the people of one culture (not to use another word) and the people of another culture in Malta itself. At the one kind, people are bawling, weeping and practically rending their clothes, and at the other, people maintain composure no matter how hard they are grieving.

Most definitely not.