The desert

August slows down the brain. Air-conditioners hum 24/7, traffic jams get longer, mothers get irritable with their young, fathers shrug their shoulders and secretly lust over the language school babes in their skimpy holiday gear. Trade Unions mired in the past threaten national strikes in sympathy of workers sacked from Interprint. Public transport chiefs call a work to rule because they want state subsidy increased. And the President of the Republic is on a private visit, overseas, to escape the heat.

And in the space that it took the Brits to build the M25, and entire sections of the M40, the Maltese contractors continue to build the road linking Siggiewi to the outside world. The sign promising new roads for a better life is covered with snow dust. Minister Mullet's PR visits to the brave new roads has, to date, excluded the Siggiewi road. Cars navigate down different goat tracks every day, as different sections of a road not longer than 1,000 metres get closed on a daily basis to accommodate diggers straight out of Bob the Builder, falling debris, and men walking slowly. Only on weekends and feast days does the route remain unchanged, when the men in string vests and cowboy hats go away and do what the rest of the nation does.

It's a summer that has to date included: bouts of work, bouts of lethargy, a friend's wife dying in the middle of divorce proceedings, other friends contemplating break ups, new daily routines to drive Jacob to summer school, parties that never quite took off, snatched fixes of poetry books, red wine instead of white, conversatons that go nowhere, cicadas screaming a constant, mad razor.

At night, Max dreams of driving an red Mustang across the Mojave desert.

Max is woken up by Jacob announcing it is almost time to celebrate his third birthday.