YOU CAN TELL IT’S SUMMER

They call it the Silly Season, the Dog Days and various other epithets – I just call it “I wish it was over” – but you can tell it’s summer by the way the papers seem to have to fill themselves up with stuff which is, not to put too fine a point on it, marginal.

Actually, the Sundays are usually pretty full of that sort of stuff anyway, given that the editors have to source what seems to be skip-loads of produce in order to fill up around the advertising. What with Sunday Supplements falling out of the main body of the paper like leaves on a windy autumn day and all those colour mags telling us who married whom (perhaps a follow-up series, Who Left Whom, would be an idea – they can advertise second mortgages and swinging single bars) there’s an appetite for the printed word that seems to be unquenchable. Or is that unsatisfiable? I’m sure Pedants-R-Us will let me know.

That being as it may be, on the long trip down to Sa Maison on Monday morning, which is when I am writing this, it having been deemed a nice change to take the longer boat ride back from Gozo, I glanced through the Other Sunday, which ‘Er Indoors had brought along for the ride.

One of the full-pagers that appears to be a new feature was something written by a Robert Cachia, which at first glance seemed to be a travel advertorial, one of the ones I tend to skim through. I was wrong, though, because he was having a rant at Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had been having a rant about the Maltese language. It sounded a bit like a philosophy exam I had once written, where I had the nerve to criticise people who had criticised Freud, mainly because I had only ever read the critics and not the original. This chap was lambasting DCG, who needs no defence from me whatever the Lil’Elves might say, and to bolster his argument he regaled us with a couple of nuggets in Minglish from ladies of the type I would classify as “ladies who tennis”.

Sadly for Mr Cachia, his argument fell down somewhat because the nuggets were so abysmally horrendous that they fell into the “you couldn’t make it up” category, prompting people like me to think that they were, actually, made up. We then got a couple of columns about the development of the Maltese language and why goal should be spelt gowl, as if couching this in quasi-academic terms made the horrendousness any less horrid. The dear chap went on to laud Ryanair to high heavens and to moan and groan about the racket that ensues whenever a saint is praised – he was talking about the fireworks, not the blasphemy, though the line was not entirely clearly drawn.

On the facing page, a more prestigious one in lay-out terms, one Max Farrugia had drawn himself up to what one assumes was his full height to defend Medjugorje in the light of attacks on it by the Brit tabloid press, which itself was reporting what itself (i.e. the tabloid press) had reported to be attacks on the place and its attendant miracles by the Vatican.

Precisely what, why and wherefore all this fuss escapes me: anyone who wants to believe the miracle of Medjugorje will believe it, come hell, high water, His Holiness or the Sunday Sport, while anyone who doesn’t, won’t, whether he or she is told to by His Holiness, the Sunday Sport or me. For myself, massed hysteria and mysticism by the coach-load lends itself to summer diversions in the form of Dan Brown-style novels, the ones that you read, enjoy and then consign to dust-gathering duties in the bookshelf. There’s some enjoyable stuff by Steven Berry on these lines, which actually takes the Medjugorje apparitions (or whatever) as the basis for revealing the Third Secret of Fatima. I won’t reveal the ending, since you might want to have a read of it: suffice it to say that His Grace the Bishop of Gozo might find the bases for his recent sermon somewhat eroded.

Moving on apace, on the next page, back-to-back with the potted theology, there’s the slightly smirking visage of Howard Hodgson, who I find mildly irritating in the way he seems to know everything about everything and seems to have made it his life’s mission to tell the Prime Minister how to run the country. That’s his right, of course, as it is every columnist’s, but what Smiley should realise is that there’s only room for one know-it-all in this country, and it ain’t him.

There’s plenty more, but the ferry is about to dock, so that’s all for this week, folks. I know this is a shorter blog than usual (contain yourselves) and there’s not much with which the Lil’Elves might amuse themselves, but hey, it’s the Silly Season.