Malta? 'Yes', please!

After the Paris trip, I did not bother shoving up my suitcase in the limited storage space we have; I was going to fly to Malta in 2 days' time! This was no ordinary trip, on many levels. Firstly, it was to be from Heathrow and thus no need for painful mid-sleep commutes to Luton, but an easy Tube ride after getting up and having breakfast at a decent hour. Secondly, it was partly funded by the Maltese Government, a sweet 35 euro return deal. You might be asking why? The answer is simple and brings me to the next point: thirdly, I was going down to the homeland to vote in a referendum!

Since my country can afford to subsidise 1,000,000 euro worth of flights (erm, not!), whenever there is an election/referendum, the government offers cheap flights on the national airline for people abroad, like me, to get home and vote. I had done this in the 2008 election (it was Lm15, back then) and this time round I decided to go down again. Not that I was too concerned with the vote itself, but it was a good excuse to go home! The referendum concerned the much-debated divorce bill presented to Parliament a few weeks before...

I am writing this after the referendum results are out but let me assume that the outcome is not known yet. So, to date, it is only in Malta and the Philippines (and in the Vatican, of course) where divorce is not possible. I will not even start discussing this issue (I have had enough of the debates!) but what happened, in a nutshell, is that a backbencher from the (conservative) government's side presented a bill to introduce a mild divorce law in Malta. As one would imagine, this brought about a massive state of turmoil in society and although not politicised and bi-polarised as the 2003 EU referendum campaign turned out to be, this was still as amusing as ever.

Back to the trip itself...I left London at 11am, comfortably from Heathrow but not without the usual "enhanced security checks", 99.9% brought about by my beard and the Libyan visa on my passport. Talk about anti-racism and equality...anyway. The take-off was bumpy and scary (it was terribly windy) but then all was smooth and punctual; my latest book purchase The Lady Elizabeth kept me company with its Tudor-set adventures.

Once landed, I was welcomed by the heat and damp of dear old Malta. After greeting my parents and the in-laws, I headed home for a nice lunch and then a very relaxed afternoon and evening. The latter marked the end of the campaign and I thank God for that since a half day's worth of hearing debates and whatnot was more than enough!

On Friday, I headed off the my favourite place in Malta: the capital city. I made a visit to the ex City Gate site to "inspect" progress and then lingered about the busy streets and shops. By the end of morning, I had to go back home and shower! I made a short stop at my "old" Uni and met up with 2 of my lecturers for a quick chat about progress here in London and then in the evening headed back to Valletta with a friend. I made a wonderful discovery of a very chilled new location literally at the water's edge, where we enjoyed pints of Cisk, gentle breezes and ample chit-chat. And then headed home.

On Saturday, I then made a visit to another favourite place of mine: Birgu. The sun was far more unkind today and I ended up with a slight tan too. I spent the rest of the afternoon quite relaxed since my toe decided to develop a blister and it was rather painful. In the early evening, I headed off to do my civil duty (and the ultimate purpose of this trip, really!) and cast my vote. No, I will not disclose here where I marked the "X"! The evening was then concluded by the Barca-Man Utd game, which the latter lost to my great pleasure!

I kicked off Sunday earlier than most Sundays only to start following the outcome of the voting. I was not confident that the Yes vote would win or, if so, only by a small margin, thus making predictions from samples hard. But a mere hour after counting started, there were strong indications that the Yes vote had, indeed, won and by a majority of some 53%! The announcement by the Prime Minister a few minutes later meant that there was a considerable level of confidence in the statistical sampling and by lunchtime it was quite obvious that in Malta the status quo of the ruling Catholic dogma had been somewhat broken or, at best, cracked.

My flight was at 5pm and so by 3pm we headed off to the airport, with 3 bottles of Kinnie and 2 bottles of Maltese wine in the luggage and after all the goodbyes were done, I flew back to London and to my awaiting wife. It was a shame that I had not realised earlier that it was a Bank Holiday Monday, but, looking back, it was a good thing to come back and resume my work...loads to do!

And that was how my 2011 divorce referendum adventure unfolded.