Watery clickbait has indeed never been this wholesome

The Skinny | No 115 – Rain Wracked Rock

What are we skinning? The rain.

Why are we skinning it, again? Because it is a weather phenomenon that keeps recurring each year, and yet every time it rears its watery, downward bound head, it seems to wreak havoc on both our roads and our general sense of equilibrium.

What did the rain do to the Maltese islands this time? Oh, haven’t you read the news? It gave newspapers more fodder than any amount of temper tantrums by a PAC-avoiding Konrad Mizzi would ever have…

Go on... Par for the course, photos of flooded roads taking cars with them as they flowed along, river-like... apocalyptic warnings from the MET office and other sources, reminding us that such missives are the earliest (and perhaps most wholesome) examples of clickbait…

But was there anything new this time around? Well, we did get both a dramatic airlifted rescue thing happening – which was a nail-biter – and the heart-warming ‘rescue’ of a Wolt driver by a local policeman.

The watery clickbait has indeed never been this wholesome. Not in recent memory, no…

So if it’s not Konrad Mizzi, Rosianne Cutajar, or Anglu Xuereb vs the Caruana Galizias, it’s the rain... whatever happened to slow news days?! Post-covid and post-Yorgen Fenech’s attempted elopement-by-boat, it appears we’re doomed never to have to experience the underrated languid bliss of a day in which ‘nothing much’ happens.

We even had bestiality on the menu just a few days ago, didn’t we? You see, I was so caught up in the watery tide I even let *that* nugget slip.

Strange, I would have imagined that to be perfect fodder for some skinning. Let us celebrate the fact that less animals will be sharing their #MeToo stories on social media, for the best reasons imaginable.

I’ll drink to that. Me too, but not before I’ve plugged this ceiling leak with the last issue of MaltaToday.

You’re finally putting that rag to good use! I’m just saying it as it is.

Do say: “A country that isn’t even nominally rain-proof is a country barely prepared to tackle the myriad meteorological crises that are heading our way as a result of climate change.”

Don’t say: “Hey look, I deserve some credit for sheer restraint here - I held back from mentioning Ian Borg and co.’s clearly ineffective work at the Marsa bypass. That is a sign of true maturity and political sobriety.”