Horse Sense

All the seats on the bus are free and he has to sit next to you. Why? That's right, I'm talking about Austin Sammut. Happy as you go, you're turning the pages of The Times towards the latest instalment of the Wizard of Id and a happy half hour on the wordwheel. Maybe even a quick look at which famous people were born and died on the day. Yi Sun-sin, the famous Korean admiral, born today? Wonders never cease!
And what's on Prime tonight? Ah, Keeping Up Appearances. That program will literally never cease to be rip-roaringly funny. Which is just as well, as people from Cape Town to Kowloon must have had to watch the damn thing more than a thousand times over the last ten years.
And so on and so forth.
But then that wretched Austin Sammut had to ruin it all. His column on Tuesday, mostly about scratched pavements, believe it or not, was partially redeemed by this snippet, which has something ever so slightly Beckettesque about it:

"I had one relief. There was no horse excrement around. A miracle indeed."

He had one relief, ladies and gentlemen. If you listen very carefully, you may just be able to make out the sound of a bead of sweat sliding down his clammy face. A miracle indeed!
And on and on and on he drones. Next, as you wish you could whisked away by death's munificent grace, he begins to bang on about rubbish, like some kind of pantomime mother-in-law:

"The latter council cannot even keep garbage away from our capital city's noble street corners (I wrote to them about this months ago and have been totally ignored) - but perhaps that's the wardens, and, again, more later. Explanations from all and sundry would be most welcome. I have seen excrement bags under the backsides of horses all over Europe, but why not here?"

Or to put in other way:

"I told about her about the state of that road. It shouldn't be allowed, I tell you. I told 'er about that road before, it wants cleaning. What are the neighbours going to think? Oooh me back. Been to the doctor. No good. Says it's psychosomething, bloody cheek. Mind you, I told 'er about the road, you should have seen it last Sunday, covered in rubbish it was. It's no skin off my nose, but what are the neighbours going to think? And them horses. Without the bags. It's a disgrace. Mess all over the shop. What are the neighbours going to think? I can't see what she ever saw in 'im."

The column is written from beginning to end in this bumbling, but ultimately hard to dislike, fashion. Who could be so stony-hearted as to fail to fall about laughing at Sammut's low comedy depiction of street wardens' antics? In my mind's eye, all the action he describes has been speeded up in the style of a Keystone Kops comedy, with Sammut playing an irrepressible Harold Lloyd-type character, one moment being pounced on by a street warden, the next he is running along the street holding a bucket under a horse's soiled bottom, and some day perhaps he'll be hanging off one of the clock faces of Mosta Cathedral.