Every morning, my cheery self gets in the car and buckles the seat belt. But the very minute my hands touch the steering wheel of the clunky (but much loved) 20-year-old Honda, I am no longer Kristina.
I transform into an anxious… Hamilt-ina.
My adrenaline starts pumping, my brows frown, my arms go into Formula One position, my mouth stiffens into a straight line and my droopy eyes turn to slits assessing the other competitors on the tarmac.
By the time I enter the pit again – that is, I come back home – my heart is pumping from all the near misses, my hands are trembling and my eyes, droopy no more, are popping straight out of their sockets.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it means to drive in the streets these days.
Everyone is out there scrambling at breakneck speed, mudguarding each other out of the way, in a furious sprint to get to the destination first.
Take yesterday. I found myself driving down a narrow street in Mqabba; the kind of narrow where there was 98 per cent chance that my car would get stuck between two doors on opposite sides of the street and, to get out of their houses, the neighbours would have to jump through my window and get out of my hatch.
As I was inching my way forward and mopping my sweaty brow, a chap in a coupe suddenly materialised behind me and started hooting his horn like his life depended on it. Maybe it did, I don’t know, but it meant sudden sweat beads even on my eyelashes, which made the inching forward even harder. After what felt like an eternity, I crawled out into a square (which led to another narrow street) and, before I had even pulled to the side, the coupe chap flew past me at about 150km per hour, roaring away like some Concorde and leaving all the purtelli of the village rattling behind him. Did he really need to do that?
The other day, the same thing happened to my sister in Lija. She had to swerve in an adjacent field to avoid a van heading towards her at 120km/hr in a narrow country lane with the van driver rudely gesturing at her for daring to be in the same two-way lane.
Same thing last week in Dingli. A walk on the cliffs’ promenade was done to the beat of a car revving for 10 minutes, then darting at full speed for a few metres and then braking suddenly and then revving again, and so on and so forth.
What on earth is happening? Sure, we always had a bit of an odd, amorous relationship with our personal cars but I think now we’re going overboard. We drive like Malta is Monaco’s racetrack. We drive like our cars are kings and queens and everyone should make way for them.
It is, of course, getting worse, because we have more roads and more roads equals more cars; and there’s more of us now. Whereas, up to 10 years ago, we were about a quarter of a million cramming this tiny island, now there’s almost a million of us claustrophobically inhabiting the same space.
Gender-based violence harms us all. It reflects a sick society in a state of mental health emergency- Kristina Chetcuti
If we all must have cars, fine, but, at least, we must understand that the thrill of speed has no place here. If you want to test your car’s performance at 150km/hr, do us all a favour and catch a ferry to Sicily. Also, drivers have to show basic road courtesy, which means that they are not the be-it and end-all of our roads: pedestrians and cyclists have to have priority at all costs.
A reader wrote in recently telling me how, a few years ago, his best friend had been a victim of reckless driving and died on the spot; the same driver had already run over another pedestrian years earlier. And the story keeps repeating itself over and over.
Paulina Dembska
I cannot stop thinking about Paulina Dembska. Her life was unjustly and cruelly taken away in the most horrific of crimes – just because she was a woman. Nothing can console Paulina’s family. We can only hope that justice is served as swiftly and as fairly as possible.
Gender-based violence harms us all. It reflects a sick society in a state of mental health emergency. It reflects a society that refuses to acknowledge it.
Paulina left us a poignant reminder of this in her writing: “You came without money, you will leave without money. That is what being a human being is like. Why so much pride, malice, hatred and resentment?”
Victor Calvagna
Last week, Malta lost a medical stalwart. Paediatrician Victor Calvagna went for a 10km run and never made it back – he was run over.
And, just like that, the nation tragically lost one of its best brains and one of its kindest souls. Children not only lost a life-saver but a doctor who went beyond his remit to inspire them to love life.
He worked magic in the wards; he’ll do so even from the skies.