The tragedy of Cyrus Engerer continues: kemm waqa' baxx
This is a photograph (click on it to make it bigger – and yes, I know it sounds obscene but everything does nowadays) of Cyrus Engerer with the young men from Super One and Forum Zaghzagh Laburisti, plus a prominent interloper.
They were celebrating at the feast of San Gaetano in Hamrun, yesterday, with Labour communications coconut Kurt Farrugia – who can just about be classified as young – and the highly incongruous presence (at least, to the uninformed) of near-pensioner and Lorry Sant henchman Ronnie Pellegrini, who doesn’t appear to favour the company of men his own age.
Trust Ronnie to be first in line to get a grip on Engerer.
Some words of advice from an old lady, Cyrus: watch out for somebody called Jason, or it will be your photos doing the rounds by internet next.
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Labour’s past, present and future drinking in the streets in celebration of a statue. Why does one’s heart sink at the thought of this lot being in charge?
The Nationalists were there too drinking in the streets and getting sloshed, including representatives. No one gives a shit about the statue until 11.30 in the evening.
[Daphne – This is not about the feast but about the company he’s keeping. But also the feast, given that Cyrus doesn’t come from a social culture where that sort of thing is considered entertainment.]
Daphne, this may come as a shock, but it is not untypical for someone of Engerer’s social culture to be deeply involved in hamallu-type activities, especially as part of the political breaking-in process (kazini, baned, murtali, fenkati, majjalati, clubs tal-football, the works).
[Daphne – Why, is he planning on standing for election on the Hamrun district? He would have been elected sparat in Sliema precisely because he didn’t go in for that kind of rubbish. People there can’t stand it. Dear God, how he f**ked up. His kingdom for Marvic Camilleri.]
” Cyrus doesn’t come from a social culture where that sort of thing is considered entertainment”
Not sure I can agree with you on that at all.
The Maltese Festa has (quite rightly) always attracted people from different class structures, and the Hamrun “Marc ta’ Filghodu’ is particularly popular with segments of the Sliema crowd (and I don’t mean the lazy corner side either !!) :)
In fact as one who has been to and enjoyed more festas then I care to remember, I have seen a huge growth in its popularity within all sectors of society.
I think this may be a post-colonial phenomenon where we stop acting all uptight and British and, at least in Summer, relapse into a more devil-may-care attitude.
[Daphne – You’ve got to be joking. The most miserable feasts in Malta are those of the three Sliema parishes, San GIrgor, Sacro Cuor and Stella Maris, and the dullest of all is Stella Maris, precisely because its parisioners (I was one for 20 years and didn’t even know we had a feast) don’t give a stuff about these things – except for my old neighbour Michael Falzon of the Labour Party, who is still terribly keen even though he no longer lives there. But there you go.]
Hi Daphne, I think you’d probably never been to the San Giljan feast, you’d see more of this type of entertainment (as you call it). Daphne, at the Hamrun feast, you can see people from all classes and spheres of the society: members of parliament, lawyers, accountants, doctors and unfortunately, yes, you’d also see the sort of scum as in the photo you uploaded. This is what makes the feast so different to any other feast on the island.
“Cyrus doesn’t come from a social culture where that sort of thing is considered entertainment.”
LOL! Oh Daphne, you kill me. You’re like a real-life version of Minne Bagehot from Bharati Mukherjee’s latest novel, “Miss New India.” I just don’t know anyone else like you.
Thanks for brightening my day.
[Daphne – Aren’t I just. And you, Zachary, regularly go down south to roast hogs, drink beer and spit with rednecks – I don’t think. Well, that’s the equivalent. The trouble is that when you come from the outside and stand there looking in, you think everything is quaint, picturesque and traditional, and don’t realise that every country has its rednecks and its redneck pastimes that nobody else would ever think of getting involved in. No, Cyrus doesn’t come from a social culture which celebrates feasts. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the only people getting drunk in the street or celebrating their saint are very, very working-class. Some of them are even what’s known as white trash in your part of the world. ]
For God’s sake, why do you have to keep giving importance to this man? Why just we dont forget he ever existed and let him fade away, as if he never was.
He is a now declared politician, and this breed thrive on publicity. Stop even mentioning his name.
Can’t you see even the P.L are not featuring him so much so why should we?
This is not about the feast but about the company he’s keeping. But also the feast, given that Cyrus doesn’t come from a social culture where that sort of thing is considered entertainment.
Contradiction?
Ricotta Mk VIII or IX.
Enjoying archetypical hamallu stuff is a pépé thing, especially among the rising your stars of PN. As for MLP, they’re il-partit tal-poplu (i.e. tal-hamalli) by definition, so it goes without saying.
Think about it. Simon Busuttil was pretty much the only candidate who was elected on a PN ticket without mixing in with the hamallu crowd and indulging in assorted festi, baned, kazini and majjalati.
You can see them planning the next outing on the airwaves, with their put-on throaty baritone voice and awful mangled English. It’s all down to the dearth of anything interesting on this barren rock.
Mark-Anthony Falzon might like to write a column on the embarrassing truths which this country keeps hiding from itself.
‘Some of them are even what’s known as white trash in your part of the world.’
Are Maltese white?
[Daphne – No.]
I’m sorry, correction: Ehm Baxxter, I’ve never been to a majjalata but by just reading that word makes my mouth water.
Dalle stelle alle stalle!
Cyrus has been posting about the Sliema Local Council and the by-laws about dogs on his Facebook Wall this morning.
I was expecting more like “Had a great weekend celebrating the feast of San Gaetano in Hamrun with Lorry Sant henchman Ronnie Pellegrini and Labour’s communications coconut Kurt Farrugia…”
This would of course have been more in tune with his posts “Just returned from a BBQ with Labour” on the previous two weekends.
Oh, kemm nithassrek Ciru! Issa ghal qalbek ma dawn ghax issa sibt l-identità tieghek hux. Oqghod attent x’ritratti tiehu u ma’ min ghax malajr igibuk fuq Twitter jew Facebook. Nawguralek li tkun kuntent u li issa li tinsab f’postok nissuggerilek li taqleb RedTouch ghax dik ‘made for you’.
Ifimni jekk jaqleb ma’ RTF mohhu mistrieh li mhux ha tfalli bhal Ping Pingu….
Ghaliex, Joanne? Ghax tal-Labour hadu xi kemmxa flus minghand il-Count of Montekristo?
For the time being, Cyrus can be happy he got the RonnieTouch.
Imbaghad ahna Malta nsemmu l-ghatba tal-qorti.
Kemm jidhru ferhana! Vera Ciru ma jisthix. Taf li ma rridux lura mal-PN, huduh b’xejn……
Insalvaw il-festi hbieb, bandalori, bnadar, bombi tal-gelatina , birrer u f*** the rest.
And is that Dominic the Paola Mayor embracing Cyrus?
Kif iddendel ma spallejn Cyrus!
So finally our mayor Dominic decided to leave the closet.
Is it that easy to change your lifestyle, friends and way of living? What a shallow and sad person.
From the expression on his face, his body gestures, and his position in the photo, I can tell that Cyrus was not enjoying himself at all. The same cannot be said for Ronnie.
Ronnie? He’s getting ready to receive, striking an inviting pose with that mouth. Even a Manu sausage should be able to fit into that.
Hypocrite.
Labour hasn’t got a closet. It’s got a ruddy great walk-in wardrobe.
Huta barra mil-ilma.
That’s what I thought! He doesn’t seem to fit in.
Was that the festa of San Gaytanu in Hamrun?
Well, it isn’t ancient Greece with finely hewn discus-throwers and admiring senators, that’s for sure.
“The Nationalists were there too” Well, bully for you for noticing, but I thought that the point of an opposition party is to offer something different, not more of the same.
11.30 or not, it is absurd that people seek out this sort of entertainment, indulge in it for profane, rather than sacred reasons, claim it is “our” culture (count me out), and then lay equal claim to a place on the international stage.
If the world were a travelling circus, then they’d be correct, but it takes more than a penchant for beer and bawdiness to make sense of the world and to make up for Malta’s small size.
As to Cyrus Engerer, I do not know him personally but he strikes me as the sort of person who values higher education in itself rather than as a means of decorating his name. Sadly, I don’t imagine he’ll find much by way of intellectual conversation among that red-shirted crowd, especially not from the bald-headed vulgarian with the inflatable-doll pout.
‘Inflatable doll pout’: well, as long as Ronnie hasn’t had his teeth removed to make it easier……
Kurt Farrugia the communications Coconut (for those who do not recognise him) is the one tucked beneath Ronnie Pellegrini’s (the bald one) left armpit. My God, he really IS a midget.
Did the Dwarf Jester leave his stool behind at the Kazin tal-Banda?
Depends which ‘Kazin tal-Banda’ you are referring to.
San Gay Tanu
Peter ma inqazuwiez ta issa! Hallieh lil-San Gejtanu fil-kwiet. Taf x’naf li kull politikant min kull naha jiegi il-Hamrun ghall-festa…u kullhadd kien jiegi Sur Borg Oliviier! Ghallahares ghadu haj De Marco ghax ikkellimkhom wahda sew!
A few days before Cyrus was celebrating at Sacred Heart Feast in Sliema:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZbWZigRlbY
[Daphne – Sacro Cuor: the arse end of Sliema.]
Just as I said, he doesn’t fit in with such hamallagni. He just looks at the crowd and tries to sing along so as to be seen as going along with all the rest.
I thought he was on his knees.
[Daphne – He doesn’t need to get on his knees. That’s why Ronnie finds him so convenient.]
Bniedem bla principju tnehhilu l-irgulijja kollha.
So Cyrus is “Independent”? I say get out of the Sliema Council before you are kicked out as you deserve.
He may call himself independent for now, but he surely cannot claim to be liberal. He resigned from his party because he thought it was “confessional”. And now, there he is, celebrating San Gaetano.
It just hurts, when a person like Cyrus goes to waste.
Could some Sliema resident please confirm –
Before the elections for the Local Council we received promotional material from the various candidates. But they were all just a paper or at most a simple leaflet. I am under the impression that Cyrus had sent a whole booklet which I thought rather OTT.
L-iskip li hemm fid-dar tal-hgieg nittnet il-Hamrun kollu.
Seems that Cyrus is now cyriously into ‘Tamal’.
The “red” band club in Hamrun is the St Gaetan one and is known as ‘Tat-Tamal’.
Kiwis anyone?
Does that mean that those in the photo are a bunch of “Tamalli”?
@ Daphne
I personally do not really like feasts – but many people in Malta like to attend many of them not for religious reasons just to meet up with family and friends.
You give the impression that you are a really busy woman yet you still find time to waste on such petty issues and don’t tell me that this is an important issue.
Maybe you should learn what it means to live and let live – and I’m writing this not to defend Cyrus or Labour, it’s because I find comments such as these as really annoying and distasteful.
[Daphne – It’s a free country, Jake, no thanks to Labour. You find my comments really annoying and distasteful, and I find the following really annoying and distasteful, in no particular order: Cyrus Engerer, Kurt Farrugia, Alex Saliba, Ronnie Pellegrini, people who steal their lover’s sex pictures and email them to The Boss, drunks in the street, too much false paganism linked to feasts, feasts, murtali, large crowds of white trash and over-concentrated masses of working-class people in a confined space, the smell of burgers and chips cooked in rancid oil, noise, noise, loud working-class voices, women with plum-coloured hair cut like a box, synthetic ‘don’t light a match in my vicinity’ clothing in black, beige and pale blue on sweaty women who have never heard of antiperspirant…..]
Oh look, totally insignificant people commenting about a stupid article from a totally insignificant blogger about totally insignificant people of a totally insignificant party in a practically non-existing country in the middle of nowhere.
I envy you…
http://s3.amazonaws.com/files.posterous.com/maasmeier/ltCwqCkgytbEnzzGhnanFIxdjnCfzreBsyudzgAhecHtHmHzdEajbmkaFeBo/Karl-Lagerfeld.jpg.scaled500.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJFZAE65UYRT34AOQ&Expires=1312881846&Signature=xc1RD2AGvuIz%2FeXuFN2JcG9H2UM%3D
Dear Daphne,
this link doesn’t work!
Regards, Andrea
http://www.fraulangstrumpf.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/karl_who_bag.jpg
@ Daphne
I agree with most of what you find distasteful and annoying about feasts etc, but what should we do? Go to the streets and do a “Norweigan” style correction so maybe we will then have a “better” society?
[Daphne – Just ignore them. Live and let live. Laugh at them, whatever. My own preference is to sit somewhere high where I can’t see the mob in the street below, lay on some food and drink, and look skywards at the best bit: the fireworks.]
Regarding your comment about working class people – tell me in which country in the world the majority is not working class and if there is any such country why don’t you go and live there, I guess you have enough knowledge, experience and means to do that but you are still living in working class Malta.
[Daphne – Actually, Jake, in most developed countries the majority of the population is not working-class and the working-class does not feel in duty bound to make its presence felt through very loud noise, space-claiming behaviour and plenty of trash and litter and other anti-social behaviour like shouting and playing loud music. That’s the underclass. And that’s what I and so many others can’t stand: the way 10 Maltese working-class people in a public space look, feel and sound like a hundred.]
Ironically it’s the typical working class people that contributed to the various electoral victories for the PN – because they are attracted to the nepotism used by the PN in every election this notwithstanding their harsh and justifiable criticism of Labour administrations. The PN do the same things but in a “polite” way.
[Daphne – Bollocks. The working-class in its vast majority votes Labour and is still voting Labour even when it comes up in the world and gets jobs in London and Brussels, university degrees and middle-class trappings and chattels thanks to Nationalist Party policies. Why else do you think Joseph Muscat is making a definite, targeted play for the mittelkless and for ‘liberals’? He wants to vary his portfolio.]
And ironically it’s these type of people that will give Labour a victory at the next election and let us not delude ourselves that the floating voter automatically means and independent or intelligent voter – from my experience, it’s very rare to find people who really vote for what they think is best for the country.
[Daphne – No, the people who will bring Labour to victory are people from MY socio-economic group, Jake. Trust me on this. Sometimes I actually know what I’m talking about.]
You find many opportunists on both sides, it is indeed rare to find people that switch sides “genuinely” and I honestly think that’s the reality and we have to live with it.
[Daphne – It’s good to know that we agree on that, at least.]
The people who will give a Labour victory are those who would prefer to go for a swim rather than going to the polling station
Herrera johrog fuq il-Hamrun?
Once upon a time, the festa was a manifestation of community, its exhibition a rendering of ritual and form.
Artists were employed to design the public space, presumably making reference to the pieces designed by Rubens for the courts of Europe.
I particularly like the set in Birkirkara square, in a delightful 1930s stile floreale with fantastic butterflies adorning the bouquet chandeliers.
No, I’m not from Birkirkara.
Fireworks used to be moschetteria, bukketti, mgienen and l-ghajjiena; a sporadically erupting Catherine wheel, timed to set off when least expected, making spectators jump: the signature of creative individuals whose intention was to convey spectacle and entertainment to an audience, not diehard enthusiasts. Their design was loghob tan-nar, the plot seductive.
Msida had the giostra, Senglea the regatta, every town tried to distinguish itself by differentiation, the smallest places resorting to the fiera. Whatever was done acknowledged and demanded taste. The festa borrowed the techniques of the theatre, literally making the island a stage, satire included, with the use of the fotto’.
What we have today is an indolent part of society intent on elbowing for itself all the space: the deafening noise of petards, the obscene morning band marches reeking of alcohol and the rubbishy sorpriza (some gizmo welded together by a bunch of kids in time for the next ‘marc’. A rabble.
The festa was hijacked by Labour in the 50s, when Guze’ Cassar, a Labour minister with his power base in the Zurrieq, Mqabba and Qrendi area, permitted and encouraged the formation of new band clubs to antagonise the established Circoli tas-Sinjuri. Expropriation became purpose.
This essentially distorted the meaning of the festa. The former sense of occasion, sagra, a universally created form, became tasteless and aggressive pique, spurned by materialistic, revolutionary iconoclasm.
The socialist attempt at form, where meaning is an interpretation of ideology, justifies it. One can see this clearly when Labour MPs defend such horror as being naturally Maltese.
The fact that Latin flair was persistently subdued by unjust accusations of its proxy to fascism, didn’t help.
Such a pity.
St. Cajetan’s exterior celebrations are not religious. They have turned into political manifestations a long time ago.
It is a showdown between the Blues and the Reds, tal-Miskina kontra tat-Tamal, St. Joseph against St. Cajetan, the Nationalist supporters versus the Labourites, the Nationalist Party’s unofficial band club against Labour’s unofficial band club. It is a show of force which many times erupted into violence.
[Daphne – Jaqq. Straight out of Gulliver’s Travels. How small a mind must one have?]
It is the rivalry and the hatred which made these celebrations so huge. There were years, when times were though, where one party needed backup support. People from outside came to lend a hand including tal-Pepe, who up to till today, attend every year and get sloshed with the rest.
[Daphne – Tal-Pepe? I think there’s a bit of confusion about the definition, so unless you’ve really widened the category to include lawyers from Hal Balzan and H’ Attard, and similar, I very much doubt there were tal-pepe people getting drunk at the Hamrun feast. Tal-pepe people are exactly like me – a very, very small category of people and one that is very specifically defined.]
We hope that when the Labour find themselves in power, blood will not be shed again like what happened in the past.
You’ll be surprised.
[Daphne – No, I won’t. Tal-pepe people get into that kind of thing as outsiders who are consciously slumming it and who see it as a form of ‘look how cool I am’ rebellion. That means they are either very young or total losers who are still behaving at my sort of age and older the same way they behaved when we were 20. And there are very, very few of those. Their defining characteristic is not that they’re tal-pepe but that they never grew up. A bit like Allan Gatt, I suppose – not that he’s tal-pepe.]
… and you’re special.
[Daphne – Obviously, because if I were not, there would be lots more people doing this job and I would be able to spend a couple of months on the beach in the Seychelles. As it is, I feel in duty bound to plug the gap in the market because nobody else appears inclined to do so, though at times I feel like the boy in the story with his thumb in the dyke. No, not that sort of dyke, but this kind http://www.pantheon.org/articles/l/little_dutch_boy.html%5D
You’re wrong. I know tal-Pepe. Don’t let me add more.
[Daphne – Add away, though please not by mentioning the sort of grown men who used to get drunk at Sliema and Neptunes waterpolo match victory celebrations because I’ll only yawn.]
.. and being whipped for this sacrifice.
[Daphne – Maltese men of a certain age are so very trying. You really have to learn how to talk to women without being condescending, flirtatious or making innuendos. Just pretend that we’re other men – that should do the trick.]
Looks like Cyrus’ mobile is still on PING because he didn’t get a RedTouch shirt like the others …
Oh, and by the way – Jason was somewhere there too.
Fejn kien? Taht xi vara? Jew igerfex fl-iskip ta’ Muscat biex forsi isib l-iskart ta’ Ray Azzopardi to make Ronnie ‘jaliss’?
The best part is that the Blues shattered the reds yesterday. At least, some hope.
Kemm hu tac-cajt.
@ Michelle. I was there and the Blues definitely shattered the Reds last Sunday.
At least for the first time this year in Malta the Blue party had the upper hand.
I am sure Cyrus had no idea what the Hamrun festa is all about but since the Feast of St Gaetan is a tradition for the One crew to attend in the Red Party, ( their first transmission was exactly done from Hamrun during the feast some 15years ago), he went along with his new friends.
By the way this also fits exactly into the picture since early this year, the red club made Joseph Muscat their Honorary President (I still have to figure out the reason yet, surely not from a musical point of view).
Daphne, you may be surprised at the socio-cultural mix at the Hamrun feast.
You may be interested to note that tradition has it that the numbers who turn up on each side (red vs blue) gives an indication of the strength of the political parties. And to add to the comparison, during the year, there was a small number of prominent defections from the blues side to the reds side… these were elevated on a pedestal on the reds side… but for each defection from the blues side there were about 10 defections from the reds side who did not like the way they were being treated (as second class to those new arrivals)!! The marc in this video tells the story… kazin tal-imlaqtin… http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ieznIeEyFbc
…which reminds me of the partit tal-imlaqtin!
AHFRILHOM