So how did you know that we were at Prego? Gorg was transfixed.

So he didn’t even have an egg mayonnaise sandwich (sliced French)?

The total lack of culture, coherence and intellect, that’s what’s not to like.

Filghodu l-qorti, f’nofsinhar naq’a tuna toast, wara nofsinhar l-ufficju, lura d-dar naghlfu l-kanali, filghaxija a bit of rough on the side. Il-Hadd nohorgu bil-cabin cruiser.

What’s not to like about it?

Many people actually choose to remain single.

There is such a thing as an inner life, and without it, everything deteriorates into nihilism. The essential problem with men like Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino (another prominent example) is that they have no inner life and are nihilists.

They are plagued by existential despair, even if they can’t put a name to it and so are unable to identify the source of their misery.

Franco Debono is a 42-year-old man who still lives with his parents in the house where he grew up.

He is not at all wealthy, because if he were, he would not be so thrilled to receive a retainer from the government as a mainstay of his income.

His main company comes from caged birds, with which he is obsessed. He appears to have very little interest in the company of women or in physical connectivity with them, but has no male friends either.

He spends his professional life defending petty criminals, drug dealers and prostitutes, and the like.

He has reached that stage in life where he is clearly asking himself ‘Is this all there is?’ and the answer, which is ‘Yes’, frightens him.

Because to them I am not/was not a complete outsider but somebody they thought whose admiration was necessary. And also because they probably admired me themselves and freaked out when the sentiment was not reciprocated. That’s generally how it works with this particular kind of male psychology. It’s the same male forma mentis that has certain kinds of men (and earlier, boys) go around tearing women to shreds or saying that she’s a lesbian if they ask her out and she turns them down.

There’s some pretty deep psychological mechanisms at work there, and I’m still not sure I understand.

Why would anyone want the admiration of a complete outsider? You’re not a boss or a colleague, nor a potential girlfriend. Nor their mother. They make you look like the Arbiter Of All Things. Then they go on about sahhara.

Besides which, admiration is worth nothing without material reward.