Yesterday I was in Zebbug. I stopped at a service station to fill up my car. The bloke at the station was visibly Arabic and while he was assisting me, two Muslim women walked past wearing veils on their heads. Big deal.

As I then had about 20 minutes to kill before my next meeting, I parked my car next to the parish church, entered one of the typical band clubs there, and had a bacon and eggs ftira. Big deal.

These tiny mundane non-incidents led me to think what an absolute bore everyone has become. The sheepeople around us just keep being pulled into one inconsequential affair after another, getting their panties in a twist over absolutely nothing. This week it was all about burqas and bacon, next week it might be about dodos and dildos.

For all I care people can walk around stark naked, or topless, or wearing three piece suits, or yes totally covered. I know several who would gain a lot, or at least do everyone else a big favour, by covering their faces up completely…

And the arguments you hear can be so pathetic. I have heard several say that they could be caring bombs. Well unless they are carrying bombs on their cheek bones, then any Western woman wearing a skirt can equally be carrying a bomb, for what shocks people is that their face is completely concealed. So I really don’t get the bomb argument.

Others say that they could come into your home to burgle you, without being recognised. As far as I know, many Western burglars wear a burqa mask of sorts when they burgle too, so really no need to be Muslim for that.

While others still, repeat that they should be made to remove it when entering a bank. Well fine, when I will be opening my own bank, then I’ll have to contemplate this eventuality, but meanwhile it really isn’t my problem and no, I really and truly don’t care.

As for bacon, well what can I say. Isn’t virtually everything supposed to give you cancer, so why not bacon. There you go, that was my full analysis on the bacon issue.

And if you think I am being shallow and trivial, I very much beg to differ. I think it is those who bother about such nonsensical issues who are extremely shallow. While I ponder the meaning of life, the big bang theory and other cosmological models of the universe, as well as down to earth issues such as how to look after my family, you can discuss these meaningless and transient fads of the moment.

Social media is no different to anything else, insofar as it can be used for enormous good, it has endless potential in so many ways, but it can also be wasted on such trivial and pointless crap, which so many unfortunately choose to follow.

Yet ironically, it is not even this unsavoury aspect which still somehow puts off the odd remaining troglodyte, who does not even have a Facebook account yet, to consider finally joining the rest of the social media world. Oh yes, although this is an extremely rare specious, it is still not totally extinct. These are the same sort, in spirit at least, who many years after everyone else had a mobile phone, still called the rest of the world showoffs and posers, as they resisted what was more than inevitable. These are the same as those who decades after everyone else was using a computer, still did everything manually, thinking that it was they who were in the right.

Unfortunately these people will always exist. For them Facebook will automatically reveal all of their personal and most intimate of secrets, without them ever wanting it to. It will inform the burqa burglars when they are abroad, and will generally expose their every movement to the world at large.

I just had the dubious pleasure of spending an evening in the company of one of these dreadful dinosaurs, along with his much more contemporary wife and friends.

Yet although he is still not on Facebook, he is more than aware of my constant scribblings here and seems to hold dear a strangely harsh and passionate criticism for everything I write.

I must first make it clear that I am now fully used to spending much of my time discussing my rants, whenever I am out. As we very well know, Malta is a very small place and you tend to make a name for yourself very quickly. So of late, wherever I go, the subject tends to automatically revolve around my writing, which is now what I am most known for. I must also say that I constantly receive great encouragement from all and lovely words of praise, from literally everyone, except from this envious gentleman.

So as he has taken it upon himself to belittle my writing, he first seems to obsess on petty issues of grammar and spelling. I tried to explain that unless you are doing pure journalism and reportage, there is such a thing as poetic license, and that he needs to look at the bigger picture. I don’t do perfectly replicated landscapes and portraits, but I paint abstract, and as such I feel free to write in the way and the style I personally prefer. I even sometimes purposely ignore grammar and traditional syntax and deliberately put it the way I feel it and simply the way I want it, so as to add my little bit of personal flavour. But this seemed to be a concept that he couldn’t grasp. In his blinkered vision and Victorian reasoning, I required an English Literature Ph.D. to be entitled to write in the first place.

He mockingly even advised me not to touch politics and other seemingly serious matters, as in his own words I wasn’t of the required echelon to debate such learned topics.

This provoked a rather loud laugh from my side. For me at least, there is probably nothing more boring, basic and mundane than local politics. It is about the very last thing I want to write about, but for very much the opposite reason.

But the evening’s discussions fully confirmed the mindset of my afacebooked friend. We painfully went through all the common fears and phobias of local economies, the EU, immigration, Muslim invasions of Europe and holy crusades. About the end of civilisation as we know it, immigrants taking all our jobs. Today’s children having lost all sense of values and about a doom and gloom scenario when the Internet’s main cable is purposely cut, leading to panic, looting and general strife. This all ended in the dreaded topic of local petty partisan politics, just to round off the evening nicely.

Not quite my discussion of choice, and not, as he might think, because this is beyond me, but because I really and truly have no time to waste on such mindless matters.

His friend, who similarly to everyone else on Earth has a much more positive outlook on my scribblings, confessed that he thoroughly enjoys my humorous pieces. He admitted however that he found certain others to be quite introspective. I explained that in reality they were all introspective in one way or another, as they were all a direct reflection of my mind.

My friend’s wife, on the other hand, might have made the wisest comment of all. She remarked that it took a lot of courage for me to speak openly and to totally reveal my inner feelings and emotions to the world at large. I am not sure if she read the current cover picture here, but I would think that this were really her own feelings. I explained that I had absolutely nothing to hide and that I was true to myself as I was to others. For me at least, deep and contemplative writing comes straight from the soul with no suppression or censorship.

I really write for myself and although an audience is required, it is truly required for me to write for myself, if you see what I mean. I believe that all performers of sort need an audience, but ultimately they have to inspire themselves and do it the way only they themselves can feel it.

I must say that in spite of his disparaging ways, I still somehow enjoy his company. I like his wit and humour, and even his more than quirky cynicism, even if in many ways he is still stuck in the cretaceous era.

It wasn’t quite burqas and bacon, but sadly at times we really weren’t that far off.