Reel people

A friend's son, without either of us knowing they knew each other, was on the phone with one of my children. I found out when I overheard him repeat her somewhat unusual maiden name in passing.

A cousin turned out to be married to the cousin of one of my neighbours. During a telephone conversation, I passed on a recipe and because in our household we automatically refer to his wife by her name and surname to differentiate her from someone else, my cousin made the connection.

My mother's friend's daughter lives in Naxxar. So a mere phone call took care of picking up a particular item from a specific outlet, my fingers did the walking, and the rest was pie.

In Malta, everyone knows everyone else, albeit maybe twice removed, so a couple of phone calls will usually bring results. So imagine what a tête-à-tête can do.

That is why I took the Broadcasting Authority's decision not to broadcast two Xarabanks, almost personally. Whether this decision stands or not is of no consequence here. This was, indeed, a black day for all of us, unto students who are set essays by astute English language teachers entitled If You Want to Get Educated, Switch Off Your Television Set: Discuss.

We all know how boycotts - and block votes - systems work, be it in the workplace or on a national scale.

The Broadcasting Authority has practically given carte blanche to dogs in sundry mangers to prove that their bite has now overtaken, in things to be wary of, the usual "merely" stroppy barks.

And of course, the canine allusion is eminently suitable here, seeing that the Broadcasting Authority is described as a "watchdog".

The Americans have just taken this type of reasoning to extremes; when Iraqi television showed clips which went against human dignity, and the Geneva Convention, there was "nothing left to do" but disable its capability to broadcast to less than one pixel's worth. And it came back on air anyway.

But, alas, other television stations were not terminally censored, or even jammed. So despite advice meted out by psychologists to shield our children from graphic scenes of war, it would have been enough for them to watch, for instance, Canale 5 news bulletins to hear the phrase "summary executions", with accompanying Tekken-style video clips.

One Filipino mother, an immigrant in America, chanced upon her son in the saddest of circumstances as she idly tuned in to her homeland's station by satellite.

And the shot of her showing his photograph, which made the front pages of several newspapers, will vie for the Pulitzer Prize with the one of the American holding a gun to an Iraqi soldier's head while a comrade carries out an act of mercy, and the other in which a soldier is tearing down what remains of a gigantic personality cult poster of Saddam Hussein adorning a wall somewhere in Iraq.

An eternity away from the woman from Fort Stewart, in Georgia, who described as "great" the clips she taped of her husband as he drove a tank on the battlefields, caught on live television coverage.

Ironically, some weeks ago several; American television stations had issued statements to the effect that they would not be giving live coverage of police car chases, since this accorded villains folk hero status, just as, perhaps, some people consider soldiers to have become today's cowboy crusaders.

An old Moscow Radio news bulletin told of how five million Russians filed by Josef Stalin's bier in 72 hours. One Fred Baker, an accountant by profession, commented drolly that mourners, two abreast, one metre apart, would have had to run past it at 22 m.p.h., or 9.3 seconds per 100 yards, the then record set by Patton, for the 100-yard dash.

One set of radio and television stations made much meat of the fact that Slovenia voted Iva. But wait; there are two ways of looking at this.... there was a 60% turnout, of which a 90% return. This means 90% of 60%, which gives a 54% Yes vote. A majority, still, but not as astounding as "they" would have us believe. Or is it that those who did not exercise their God-given right to vote simply decided that they did not care much, one way or the other? Or did they trust in the infinite wisdom of those who made the effort to vote?

But then, it never pays to put too much faith in numbers, especially when they are translated into percentages or averages. There was once a man who drowned in a river that was, on average, only 20 cm deep.

I watched the first edition of Kwizz Malti on Education 22 (Sunday afternoon). Suffice it to say that by the end of the programme, the quizmaster, Edgar Formosa, had developed a nervous tic and kept flexing his shoulders, probably itching to ease his index finger around the collar of his shirt, while his eyes glazed over and his smile became ever more fixed.

Mr Formosa, who with Amy Talbot did a brilliant job of coming up with interesting questions for didactic yet highly enjoyable sessions, came a cropper when the contestants were lobbed at him.

Far be it for me to criticise Education 22 for something I had long been praying for - the vernacular being taught in a proficient but not pedantic manner, therefore encouraging us to become more familiar with our mother-tongue - but there are a few shortcomings I must point out.

Not all viewers recognise the faces of the literati shown; a name caption would not have gone amiss.

Besides, an eraser seems not to have been provided for the whiteboards on which the students had to write some answers, or else none of them opted to use it, since they kept rubbing out spelling mistakes with their fingers.

The correct alternatives were not given to the wrong answers, except occasionally. So those of us watching the show couldn't check whether we would have achieved slightly more than the miserly score of the contestants, one of whom eventually pulled up her socks in the Literature section.

The pace was altogether slow; however, this was because of the time wasted by the contestants as they tried to remember the Maltese phrase for the word "pass".