Babies abuzz

Now that, comfortably inside EUR II, we are brimming with confidence about the prospects for economic growth, it is quite natural for our focal point to shift elsewhere.

By golly! "Babies" seem to be gaining ground. The media is buzzing with pre-babies, for or against any scientific aid in introducing the sperm to woo the egg (IVF). When these somehow manage a union with each other, the people are being urged to ensure that under no circumstances whatsoever would anyone dare spoil it all for them, even to the extent of invoking the national charter in defence.

As if these are not enough, there are others who want to protect the babies from the irresponsible gentry who permit them to be strapped with their own safety belt while driving them around. Before you think I have gone bonkers, just read what has befallen me lately.

On Sunday, April 17 at 10.57 a.m. the camera outside the Regional Road tunnel caught me overspeeding. I was fined Lm30, which I paid up unhesitatingly forthwith (receipt dated April 26).

It took the St Julians local council's prosecutor another five weeks to ask Sherlock Holmes to try and make out what was that black shade at the rear of my car: I was charged with having a baby strapped onto an adult's safety belt. If, however, I coughed up another Lm10, all would be fine and my abuse of a baby would be forgotten.

I wrote to the prosecutor asking whether it was a joke or a plea for a tenner contribution to the St Julians local council coffer. I pointed out that my last connection with a baby had been 40 years earlier. Perhaps he would have the courtesy to send me an apology. Wishful thinking.

If I decline to admit my alleged misdemeanour by not sending him a tenner cheque, I am ordered to appear, all dressed up in jacket and tie at 3.15 p.m. on July 6 before the Sliema Commissioner of Justice and warned that, if found guilty (one never knows!)I would be fined the tenner plus the "maximum penalty imposed by the law" (not told how much) and, in certain contemplated cases, also "the sequestration of the object used in the offence/misdemeanour (the baby, the seat-belt or the car?) as well as "the revocation or suspension of the driving licence".

How intimidating for a measly tenner!

Seeped as I am in management matters, I have formulated a matrix: Plead guilty and bobs-your-uncle or fight my innocence? Will I receive the requested apology or will the esurient prosecutor continue harassing me? (To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail - a German proverb I heard last week in Bonn.)

Should I uphold the truth at my expense or should I turn pragmatic, as I advise businessmen to do, and thus save myself the hassle of going round Sliema in search of a parking spot on a sizzling July afternoon, walk the distance in jacket and tie out of respect for someone who seems to be amusing himself bullying me for the price of a pizza-and-wine-for-two, probably queuing up behind several other traffic offenders (abusing babies, like me?)? Does the prosecutor consider me a 21st century Charles Lindbergh?

Come to think of it, in a real court, even if I were found guilty, I would probably have my sentence suspended without having to pay anything. Possibly the police would be instructed to warn mums to keep babies away from my sight. Ah, well....

Any guesses on the denouement?