“Oh, I love the countryside,” says Lucy as she runs ahead of her parents, Raymond and Mary, and grandparents Pawlu and Ġuża.
“It’s wonderful here, isn’t it,” Raymond says as he launches into a soliloquy. “Yes,” he says with great excitement. “We’re so lucky to live so close to this place. It makes me so happy to be out in the open, breathing fresh air and being able to run around! If we all took better care of our countryside, our seas and our towns and villages we’d all have such a nicer environment…”
Probably to bring to an end her husband’s monologue, Mary “interjects” with her insights: “And, ultimately, it affects how we feel too. Without access to the countryside we can’t live happy lives.”
This is an extract from a booklet sent to all households last week by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, also known as Chris Fearne’s health ministry. It’s illustrated, so we know that orator Raymond has his hair in a ponytail and wears Jesus sandals; and gushing Lucy is no little kid, she’s a twentysomething.
According to the preamble, it is part of a project aimed to tackle the “social determinants of health” and bring about “a positive change for all”.
Remember the song It’s Raining Men? Well, this booklet, part-financed by the European Union if you please, is raining adverbs and exclamation marks, even though the target group is not five-year-old kids.
The storyline was definitely inspired by Enid Blyton and her Famous Five. And, clearly, the health ministry believes that we are all children living on the lusciously green Kirrin Island instead of the Maltese islands. All that’s missing is some ginger beer lashings, egg and sardine sandwiches, a fresh creamy jug of milk and Uncle Quentin.
In the preamble, the ministry encourages us, with a flight of fancy words, to take “small, yet decisive steps towards being healthier and feeling more fulfilled”. What can we say? Raymond is indeed very lucky to be “able to run around” (in manner of dog?) in the countryside and we’re immensely grateful that Mary tells us without the countryside we can’t be happy.
However, maybe Raymond and Mary, in their excitement, left out the bit where they got stuck in traffic to get to the countryside. And maybe they forgot to mention that it took them an age to find a spot for their picnic because everywhere was marked as ‘KEEP OUT! RTO!’ And maybe they failed to look up and see that, a few metres away from where Raymond was “running around”, there was a crane and JCB ready to dig up and asphalt that bit of countryside into a road. And maybe they missed the despairing farmer, with his head in his hands, who had just been told that he could no longer till his land as it was being sold to build a block of hundreds of flats.
Those EU funds would have been better used to send booklets to the cabinet ministers and to all of Malta’s construction godfathers- Kristina Chetcuti
This booklet (the third in a series of five) is mocking and derisive. We all want, like Raymond, “to take better care” of our countryside, our seas and our towns and villages, so we have “a nicer” environment. What’s the point of preaching to the converted? Those EU funds would have been better used to send booklets to the cabinet ministers and to all of Malta’s construction godfathers and have Raymond and Mary explain to them, in that same baby language, that their daily anti-environment decisions were an irreversible detriment to our health.
In case you were wondering, the story ends with the family driving back home, even though, I suppose, they could have walked it seeing as they lived “so close” to the countryside. Once home, we witness the weirdest non sequitur in literature: Raymond shows his mummy a cabinet that he had painted.
“It’s a new hobby I’ve taken up,” says Raymond proudly (you can almost see Mary rolling her eyes in the back of her head). “It’s really helped me to relax when I’m feeling stressed. This way, I get to do something I love while giving new life to old things. It’s a win-win situation.”
I’d say that’s such a positive idea! As the countryside shrinks, and as the concrete jungle grows, and as the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister sends us Enid Blyton fairy tales, we should all excitedly get our chalk paints out, for everything will be okay after a lick of paint. Jolly good indeed!
Vive la France
On Sunday evening, soon after the presidential election result came out, French President Macron walked hand in hand with his wife against the background of the Eiffel Tower. They were surrounded by a group of children and teenagers – representing the future and representing education which was the focus of Macron’s election manifesto. They walked solemnly, silently and untriumphantly, to the track of the EU’s anthem Ode to Joy.
My eyes welled up, partly because of the relief that French voters managed to stave off a far-right chaos for another five years and partly because I identify so much with Macron’s Europeanness.
The next day, critics scoffed that France thinks that it is the European Union. Well, if that is so, good for France. If only all the EU member states thought the same, then the EU would be stronger, more compact and a thriving space for common good.
We too should first be European and then Maltese.