The security has probably become more thorough than the airport. Then you go straight to the monitors, desperately hoping that the judge or magistrate decided to come in to work. Yes yes I know you can also check online before you go, but you know, shit happens, and sometimes even at the last minute….

So the next stage is desperately searching down the list of cases in the stylish gold aluminium showcases, outside each hall, hoping that your case is listed. Stranger things have happened you know, and that’s an understatement.

But that of course is only the tip of the iceberg. You then hope your lawyer turns up, that the opposing party’s lawyer does too, that the ‘gods that be’ are in the mood of hearing your case and don’t simply wave you away before you are given the date for the next sitting, about ten years after you die.

And as the time you are given is just a very wild approximation, it is best to take along with you an enormous dose of patience and what better than to sit there and people-watch? This, at least, is about as good as it gets right here and very hard to beat anywhere else.

I also find Mater Dei Hospital quite fascinating in this department, but I’ll leave that for another day, when I am equally bored and sitting there alone, as I am doing here right now.

But really, what an unlikely mix of characters, if there ever was one.

Unlike Mater Dei, where the vast majority seem to have crawled out of the Pleistocene period, here you have a fantastic mix of extremes. So here goes…

Men wearing black everywhere. The more adventurous wearing dark grey. These are mainly the commercial you-owe-me-money-no-I-don’t cases, I presume. They walk around smartly holding on to that stiff upper lip, psychologically preparing themselves for their professional and serious persona on the stand.

Women wearing trouser suits in neutral colours, obviously the close equivalent to the business men above. When a woman wants to look like a person and not like a woman, then society dictates that she has to dress like a man.

Women horribly overdressed, with more layers of makeup then a homemade mega lasagne. Enough jewellery hanging off most parts of their body to open a small shop round the corner, in Santa Lucia Street. These are the women who have deemed it more strategic to be viewed as women, rather than as plain people.

Then there are the first timers, who wander around like lost souls and headless chickens, not knowing what to expect. They fumble around with their notes and their mobiles in nervous anticipation and pounce upon their lawyers as soon as they see them approaching from afar, their only perceived salvation.

Then there are the thugs. They borrowed their grandfather’s widest, shortest and most colourful tie, chucked it over a thick denim shirt, party hidden by an old anorak which they wore in guise of a jacket, all above dirty jeans and sneakers. “It says jacket and tie doesn’t it!”, they seem to snarl at anyone who looks at them. “So fuck you that’s exactly what I’m wearing!” – you can virtually hear then say.

The old ladies who just simply have to sit right next to you, soon turning you totally suicidal. They simply insist on relating what a bastard their neighbour is for having touched their garden wall and that they even suspect he might have stolen a lemon, which was only partially hanging over his garden. So technically they should have shared it between them. And although the case has been going on for the last 35 years, it was still worth the time and hassle to see justice being dealt one fine day in the distant future.

Grown men wearing black flowing dresses proudly hovering around like divas feeling important. Many also have the heavy rimmed specs, barely holding onto the tip of their nose, just for added effect, as they seem to play a game of tag, highfiving dozens of people they obviously know as they walk determinedly through the corridor. Important people know many people you know.

Then there are what is possibly the scariest form of human being alive today. Young female lawyers! Brrrrrr. They are masters, no sorry, mistresses of power dressing, power walking, power glaring, power posing and power talking. They stride around with a marked air of untouchable arrogance, an invincible aura which screams out “I’m hot, I’m desirable, I’m in infinite demand, but I’m also smart, I’m indestructible and above all I’m also a lawyer, so try and ever make one single move against me and I’ll have you hanging upside down by the balls before they call your name three times.

Oops, speak of the devil, there you go it’s my turn, fingers crossed….

And here I am back out in 30 seconds flat. An hour and a half to get ready + one hour to drive to Valletta, well Floriana actually + 30 minutes to park and walk in + one hour and 15 minutes waiting on the bench, then of course 15 minutes walk + an hour to drive back = 5 hours, and all for 30 seconds.

“Case number 25.35 billion. X versus Y. Lawyer A? Present. Lawyer B? Present. Any representatives of parties here? Yes but only one idiot wasted 5 hours of his life to come here. Ok just stand there and shut up idiot! Lawyer A you had to present an affidavit? Yes here it is. And yours Lawyer B? I didn’t bring it with me today. Ok present it during next sitting, errrr emmm end of May ok? (Like we have an effing choice!) Now get the f out of here! Oh thank you your majesty, thank you.”

Oh how I look forward to Mater Dei…

It has been a traumatic time for us all. France under attack, Lebanon, Mali and now a distinct feeling of impending doom in Belgium. All eating away at our psyche, eroding our morale and putting us down.

We desperately try to find reason and solace, each in our own way. And inevitably we all come to our own personal conclusions, which vary greatly according to our own subjective judgement and sensitivities.

There is hopefully one main thing we all agree upon however. That tolerance and freedom must be resected and that imposing our beliefs on others is a ghastly and terribly undesirable thing. We all have every right to our own convictions and no amount of terror will ever change that.

Good, so hopefully we agree upon that!

But why then do we all squabble and fight and argue between ourselves simply because we take a different stance and arrive at a varying conclusion. Although our actions are infinitely benign in comparison, we still act like mini terrorists with each other simply over diverging opinions.

So many have battled away with their so called friends on social media and elsewhere, so many have fought and cursed and insulted each other, simply because they have a different take on the situation. On Facebook many have fallen out, unfriended each other and even blocked their previous friends.

And why? Because in a terrorist way, they too are unable to accept different views to theirs.

I have friends who vary from totally racist, to moderately racist, to not racist, to fully liberated global citizens who don’t even believe we should have borders, like me. And you know what, I respect all of their opinions and think that they have every right to them and also to express them.

If they went out on daily killing sprees shooting anyone slightly on the dark side and closely resembling Arabs and Indians, which incidentally would include most of the Maltese, then it would be an entirely different issue. But as I do not discriminate by skin or by religion, I will not discriminate by opinion either.

I haven’t got one atom of racism in my body, however I accept friends who simply cannot stand the sight of an Arab and would want every single one of them deported, visa and residents permit or no visa and residents permit.

What are we to do next? Avail ourselves of a clipboard with a questionnaire before we accept anyone into our circles? Who do you vote for? Wrong party sorry – out! Religious? Oh no I can’t accept that – bye! Do you believe in ghosts? Oh yuck I can’t stand that! And every other opinion we may have must be matched by everyone else in our entourage, before we start to consider them?

I love diversity, I love variance and I hate monotony. I really and truly do not want everyone else to agree with me on everything. What a dull and boring world that would be.

Similarly with religion, although I have been an atheist for over 35 years, I fully respect everyone else’s opinions and have a lot of time for those who have chosen to retain their faith. This is why I do not subscribe to the current angry atheist movement who constantly disparage religion and religious people. For me they too are taking a very religious standpoint by crusading for their own atheistic beliefs. In my world why should I even want others to be atheist? Nobody will ever give me brownie points for ex-converting people anyway.

I fully understand why religion came about and why so many people still need religion in their lives, so who am I to deny them that option? Similarly I understand that racism is in many ways a natural protective reaction based on the fear of the unknown. Well in any case these are my own theories, but of course feel free to disagree.

Since when do we expect to inhabit a planet populated only by our own clones?

Accept and respect everyone else’s opinions in the same way that you want yours to be respected.

These are the main thoughts and reflections I have come away with from the terror of recent days. Let us not add more aggression and unnecessary grief. The whole battle is about the acceptance of others remember!

N’ayez pas crainte, je ne vais pas parler des atrocités de la semaine dernière, mais tous simplement de la splendeur de cette ville unique et magnifique. Je pense que nous avons assez entendu de malheur et le simple fait de traiter des idées beaucoup plus agréable nous aidera à soulager la douleur.

I fell in love with Paris in 1986. My then ‘future-ex-wife-to-be’ and I, had hit it off and had decided to try it together. So when she asked me whether she should come and join me in Malta, or if I preferred going to live in Paris, I was at the airport before you could even say Dom Mintoff. Imagine even comparing 1980’s Malta to Paris! Even seeing them written in the same sentence seems rather odd. So upon my incredulous discovery that they even sold chocolate and toothpaste in Paris, one of my greatest and most rewarding life adventures began.

Incidentally the same odious comparison recurred in my life a decade and a half later, by supporting my second wife’s equally unlikely comparison between the far east of Russia and Malta. A form of reverse Karma of sorts. What I took from one I gave to the other…

It is extremely hard not to love Paris. I truly love everything about it and in spite of my rather extensive travels, I at least, cannot say that I enjoy any other city better.

There is that immense je ne sais quoi about it, a special feel, the extraordinary culture, the cafés and the restaurants, the boulevards, the bridges, the sites, the everything.

But most of us know Paris and can relate very easily to what I am talking about. It is rather the changing attitudes and our perception of it, which I would like to dwell on here.

The French have long suffered a lot of bias from other nations, particularly from the British. There are obviously many stereotypes and I am a firm believer that such cliches must always be based on some form of truth. However, what we believe to be common knowledge about the French is mostly British made conjecture, which is anything but shared by other nations. Being so familiar with British culture, many of us sometimes project this as being a general global perspective, which very often it isn’t.

The British have always had a love-hate relationship with France, which I have a feeling is at least partly based on envy. However there is some truth behind the many hackneyed ideas, or might I dare say that there used to be…

The French themselves have long admitted to being rather awkward in any situation which is not French. They are so immersed in their own endless culture and their own extensive network of 57 francophone countries around the world, that they can be rather clumsy when having to deal and communicate outside of their own realm. Even when travelling many prefer visiting one of the endless choice of French speaking countries, in the same way many English speaking people do with their own. Perhaps the other people who are even more submerged in their own imaginary universe and language, and who have great difficulties operating outside it, are the British themselves! As is so often the case, it is the most guilty who are pointing fingers at others.

The everlasting adage that the French refuse to speak to you in English is perhaps the most glaringly obvious example of this. Are we to imagine that the English are the world’s best linguists and that you can comfortably go to the UK and speak French, Spanish, Italian or German and have absolutely no problem as everyone there is pentalingual?

I can guarantee that the French do not reply to you in English for only two reasons. Either they simply cannot speak it, or in their typical French-locked mentality they are literally embarrassed to do so for lack of adeptness and over abundance of accent. As most Maltese are very familiar with Italians, we can very easily draw many parallels here with them too. The strange thing however is that we Maltese never even dreamt in the past to travel to Italy and expect them to speak to us in English, but for some ignorant reason when we used to travel to France we somehow did. And the same might be said when travelling to most other countries. Back in those days at least, did you expect people to speak to you in English when in Russia, Greece or Germany? Certainly not I am sure, but somehow based on the British bias many of us were exposed to, when travelling to France we incredibly did!

But things have changed incredibly in Paris and also in much of France. In fact I find it rather surreal how in the 30 years which have elapsed since my first visit there, the approach and mentality of Parisians has entirely been transformed.

I must admit that I did find them quite abrasive when I first went there. On many an occasion I was shunned, scorned at and mildly ignored, mainly due to my then very poor French and also my poor grasp of everything French. My only way forward then, was to become proficient both in language and in general knowledge, to an even greater extent than the average Frenchman, so as to gain their respect. Something I am very proud of having very amply achieved.

Today however, unless it is you who is travelling there with very heavy blinkers and totally stuck in your passé impressions of the French, you cannot but admit that they have greatly changed.

Based on our last visits to Paris, I can very safely say that the vast majority of them now speak pretty good English. They are also welcoming, friendly and smile, and are a far cry from what I had to endure there three decades ago.

They have made an enormous and conscious effort to globalise themselves and their thinking, without of course taking anything away from their own culture. This is something we Maltese should try to understand. That by pushing English and firmly setting our sights beyond our minuscule rock, it does not necessarily mean that we are ousting our own language and culture. One does not and should not preclude the other.

If anyone is still rather skeptical at how such massive change can occur in any country in a relatively short period of time, then here are two examples very close to home. Malta has changed in certain cases beyond recognition in these last 30 years. And to a certain extent so has England. I distinctly remember how terribly English it was in so many ways in those days. To give just one amusing example, if you walked into a pub and asked for a glass of wine you would probably have been lynched, not that they would have known what the hell you were talking about then. Today the British too have evolved enormously to a much more open and cosmopolitan people than they were in the 1980’s, and in virtually every respect.

What many Maltese people do not realise, is that the French are infinitely more like the Maltese than the British are. They are a Latin nation with a much more Southern soul and a large part of which are even Mediterranean people so similar to us.

When I was living in Paris, I always remember thinking how unfortunate life is as nothing is ever perfect. Such an extraordinary and beautiful place, sadly inhabited by sour and inhospitable individuals.

Now even this has changed totally and this amazing city has actually turned friendly to all. How’s that for astounding news to please any visitor there beyond all expectation. Nowhere is heaven on earth, but Paris comes close enough for me.

Paris je t’aime!

As I live just outside Burmarrad, I often drive into the sprawling city centre for a loaf of bread. On such an occasion only this morning, I parked my car in a small side road in front of a small house, where a little, ogling and beady eyed man was visibly perturbed, as I took what he obviously considered to be his own private parking space, simply because it was located directly in front of his door.

I couldn’t help thinking how massively different we all are to each other.

Here we were, two men of roughly the same age and the same nationality, living within one kilometre of each other, yet apparently holding such unfathomably different views on life.

This man’s universe obviously extended only 3 metres outside his front door – just enough to park his car within it. And I am sure that that is exactly where it ended. I suppose that we all know this type, followed closely by those who still think that they have priority in their village, over those who came to live there from neighbouring towns. Then of course there is the North – South concept in Malta, similarly to so many other countries, and the people from Gozo who consider Gozo theirs and not of the Maltese.

So much parochialism incredibly still exists around us, and so many simply refuse to move on.

The next level up are the many Maltese who consider Malta to belong to them and to them only. Although technically with Schengen in place, it really belongs equally to all countries within this treaty, as all their nationals have the same rights of movement and residence as the Maltese do. This is closely followed by the rest of the EU citizens, who can still exercise their rights in Malta, which is really and truly now part of a larger territory made up of these 28 nations.

So what Mr. Burmarrad is forgetting is that a family may arrive not from across the fields opposite, as I did, but from say Stockholm, settle exactly next door to him and park their Saab right in front of his door every single day and have every right to do so.

But while so many remain firmly stuck in their provincial attitude, I personally go further that this, much further. From a very young age I have distinctly felt that I am a global citizen, or as it is beautifully termed in French, a citoyen du monde.

My direct ancestor Alexander the Great, travelled from his tiny Macedonia to invade enormous swathes of central and Southern Asia, because that was his ambition, spreading Greek culture and genes in the process.

The Romans occupied the known Western world and brought with them so much knowledge and advancement. As did after them the Arabs and the Moors who invaded almost half of Europe. It is said in scientific circles that the Mongols inhabited so much of the known world, that the majority of people living today, actually have some direct lineage from Genghis Khan himself.

Later on many European countries invaded much of the world, this time incorporating literally every continent. The British, the French and the Spanish alone, controlled most nations and territories around the globe at one time or another. And as all the others before them, they really did not do it with much finesse. They bulldozed their way ruthlessly, bearing bibles and crosses, inquisitions and long sleeves and trousers and everything European, eradicating anything which was not conducive to their habitual lore. Entire cultures were all but eradicated, such as the Aborigines and the Native American Indians, while others were totally and forever wiped off the face of the earth.

Some went in war and some went in peace. Millions of Italians, Greeks and Irish, just to mention a few obvious nationalities, left their countries bearing only hope of a better life, as they emigrated to countries like the USA, Canada and Australia.

Similarly the Maltese left by the shipload, first to North Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, ironically settling in places such as Alexandria, Benghazi, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers and Oran, then mainly to the UK and to other English speaking countries after the war, and until very recent times.

People have always moved and travelled to better their conditions from time immemorial. We are all a big mixture of nations, of peoples and of origins. We really do not have to look very far to find a perfect example of such total integration. Our own country is a great melting pot made up principally of Phoenician – which is present day Lebanon close to Beirut, Turkish, North African, Italian, French, Spanish and British lineage.

Suffice to say that we speak a semitic language, we greatly resemble Arabs and Turks both physically and in so many other ways, however we now form part of Europe from a cultural and political point of view.

This natural process of human movement continues today, as it always has, mainly with people from Africa and the Middle East moving into Europe, and with people from Latin America moving North into the USA and Canada.

Nothing has changed and nothing is new. It has always been the poor and the wretched trying to upper their status and to improve their plight and unfortunately they have always been looked down upon by their richer host country.

The situation was the same for the illiterate, exclusively Maltese speaking immigrants in Australia and elsewhere, some of whom still struggle with English forty years later. In England for many decades the word Maltese was synonymous with low down thieving pimp, and for good reason. In many communities the Maltese were generally considered as second class citizens and poor immigrants for so many years. And as everyone on this planet tends to do, possibly especially Europeans, they take their customs and their newspapers and their pastizzi and their language with them. Yes we all do that, hence Chinatown and any-other-country-town and Little Italy and little this and the other!

However if we really consider this issue, nobody on earth has tried and succeeded in imposing their language and their customs on other nations more effectively than Europeans.

But even up to this day, the West, which we look at generally as the good guys, simply because we are part of it, still does not always travel in peace. It still continues to forcefully invade and take over, or in certain cases it tries and it fails, to occupy entire countries to the South and to the East. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq instantly come to mind.

The West meddles in the affairs of most countries. It supports Israel and suppresses Palestine. It manipulates dictators and puppet governments, putting them into power and then toppling them. It supports and provides weapons to the factions and the terrorists of choice, who happen to be favoured at the moment. It makes all sorts of deals, often double-crossing both sides, as it secretly assists all of them, so as to retain a total position of force. It strives for power and oil and influence wherever it can, unlike Arab, Asian and African countries, which do not have the resources, or the clout, or the desire, or the ego, to do this to any Western nation.

In my eyes nobody owns the land, in the same way that nobody owns the sea and the air. We have not only a right but a duty to seek better conditions for ourselves and our families. In the same way defectors from the previous Eastern Block risked their lives to escape their lack of freedom, in the same way so many Maltese left their homeland simply out of ambition, people living unimaginable conditions of poverty, murder and rape should and must find a way of surviving. And in many cases the only way is to make the perilous journey to Europe.

My one biggest argument is this – I would do exactly the same!

We face today horrific incidents such as Paris and Beirut, byproducts of our meddling in other people’s affairs. It is extremely unlikely that Isis would ever have existed if the Americans had never invaded Iraq, in search of the mythical weapons of mass destruction which never even existed. The Muslims themselves are by far the biggest victims of terrorism and what the Parisians just went through would be a quiet day in parts of Syria and Iraq. And naturally I say this in infinite respect and compassion with my French brethren.

Yet in the face of so much horror and human suffering, we slam our doors and close our minds. We do not even let them park their car unless they live in our same road. Some obsess about the colour of their skin and others about their religion.

Human migration will never stop. We ourselves have sought to share and enjoy the riches of other nations by traveling there in hoards. We are proud that we went there with nothing and came back with a small fortune.

Now it is our turn to give a little bit back.