Tales from the Land of Serenity Part 14

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These are tales that came into being following the brutal assassination of the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, 16th October 2017.

In the never-never land of somewhere else, a somewhere else which has no right to interfere with the quaint well-trodden pathways of serenity, a rather large number of relatively important people – 466 to be precise – began to trample over the treadmill of tranquility, suggesting (God forbid!) that here, in this Land of Serenity, all was not quite as it seemed.

A rather large number of relatively important people – 466 to be precise – launched an assault on the trappings of serenity in what resembled, if the word may be used, a witch-hunt. Although hatred was unknown to the god-fearing law-abiding citizens of serenity, witches were, to put it mildly, hated. And rightly so. Their potent spells were forever throwing a spanner into the works and getting in the way of those who were simply trying to go about their daily affairs in a devil-may-care kind of way.

Not only did the devil care but so did a rather large number of relatively important people – 466 to be precise – passing a resolution on the rule of law in the Land of Serenity which called into question every single thing which had been taken for granted about how to conduct your financial transactions in a roundabout way.

This inevitably upset the good citizens, not to mention its equally fine upstanding leaders who had given nothing but gifts to the people of this land. Everybody was more than happy to rub each other’s backs because this ensured the greatest good for the greatest number and, by default, kept the land free from the barbaric and uncivilised forces of witchcraft, sorcery and black magic – although these were permitted during the festas which only lasted the entire duration of the summer and where the normal respectful worship of religious saints was gleefully overturned in a Bacchic spectacle of idolatry.

But the Land of Serenity prided itself on its lack of normality. ‘Only in Malta’ was its motto, an amusing banner under which everything could be excused: for example, extreme selfishness and recklessness when behind the wheel; turning a blind eye to domestic violence, drug-dealing, and the occasional instances of Mafia killings; the incessant granting of permits for buildings which caused neighbouring houses to subside, obliterated the heritage of serenity’s soil, placed chapels in which the plaster saints were worshipped in perilous danger or, if you were lucky, all three.

‘Only in Malta’ was the jolly refrain and who would have the heart to undermine such self-deprecating acceptance of a nation’s little quirks?

A rather large number of relatively important people, it seems. 466 to be precise. Why, oh why, are there those who fail to understand that idiosyncrasy is the life force of serenity? Its raison d’etre, its modus operandi, its elixir? Why are there those who want to poke their noses into other people’s private business (466 noses to be precise)? Who are these moaning Minnies and Jeremiahs – precisely all 466 of them – who refuse, with jeering cat-calls and the sound of boos, to acknowledge the unquestioned and legitimate status of serenity in which the rule of law as laid down by tradition is, and always must be, a law unto itself?