Communications Minister, Mme d’Erato Kozakou-Marcoulli has her hands full what with air traffic controllers, road users, public transport and bus timetables, causing her the loss of yet more hair on her already sparsely covered crown.
Thorough, efficient and to the point, Mme d’Erato will need more than her indisputable largesse to explain why it is that a 14-year-old schoolboy (blond haired god that he is) is now obliged to run 5kms home carrying a heavy backpack ever since her govt. became masters of our bus services.
The boy, let’s call him Pheidippides (myth of the Marathon) has, this past school year, been picked up and dropped off at the end of his road where Travel Express and Larnaca /Limassol buses stop. But on Day One of this September’s school term, the school bus driver drove straight past, claiming that it was no longer safe to stop the bus on a countryside road with little traffic.
Day Two: Strepsiades, the boy’s father, drove his son to school then complained to the headmistress who commiserated and promised to rectify the injustice
Day Three: the bus driver again drove straight past and Strepsiades hurriedly delivered his son to school, thereafter calling on the headmistress, who this time was less accommodating, saying the driver could choose where and when it was safe to stop the bus.
Strepsiades exclaimed, “Great gods! Will these days never end? Will daylight never come into this bus driver’s head? Ah! Ah! It wasn’t like this formerly. Curses on this government! Has it not done me ills enough? Now I may not even chastise the bus driver. Again there’s my brave son, who never wakes the whole long night but, wrapped in his five coverlets, farts away to his heart’s content.”
The above corruption of a speech by Strepsiades taken from Aristophanes’ play, The Clouds (a comedy intended to show that in the propensity to philosophical subtleties, speculation only serves to shake the foundations of religion and morality, that by sophistical sleight in particular, all justice is turned into quibbles and the weaker cause often enabled to come off victorious) is of little solace to the boy, whose father then contacted the bus company, police and school PTA chairman, all of whom were most conciliatory.
The bus company manager said he would look into the matter forthwith (meaning never) the police claimed the bus driver was at fault but it was not their problem (another never) and the PTA chairman promised to bring the matter up at the forthcoming PTA meeting (never say never).
Day Four: the bus company changed the driver, who also ignored Pheidippides standing at the end of his road to the uproarious jeering of his supportive classmates on the bus.
Day Five: the new driver then ignored Pheidippides classmates, leaving all 20 of them standing gobsmacked at the village collection point bus stop.
Well, as you can imagine, all hell broke loose, mothers venting their disdain as only Cypriot mothers can (mistresses of the race that they are) while Strepsiades hurried to the town hall with his son, who was athletically attired in the historic colours of AEL FC.
The mayor politely discharged his responsibility by directing Strepsiades et fils to his assistant who, being a fanatic AEL supporter, contacted the manager of the bus company and, symbolic flare held high in his right hand, gave the poor man more than a rocketing.
Day Six (discounting weekends) and Pheidippides was confined ill and farting to his bed while the bus company manager, assistant mayor and police gathered at the end of the boy’s road to question the wisdom of stopping the bus there, agreeing that it was perhaps unsafe and that the driver stopped a hundred metres further on, at a T junction, where Pheidippides would in future be requested to board.
Day Seven and Pheidippides hurriedly boarded the bus only to be told by the disgruntled driver that he refused to stop the bus there again as it was also unsafe (he is reported to have said that he might run him over, or words to that effect), and to boot, at the school and in the company of the boy, he burst into the headmistress’s office to give her what for.
Now, what are we to understand by this, that bus drivers rule the roost in the same way as taxi drivers and civil servants? Is there simply no respect for authority on this island? If not, why not? Is it because we all come from the same rootstock, all chiefs and no indians?
It seems that this ridiculous incident is more about loss of face than getting the boy to school. Then, if furthered, will it eventually reach the ears of our Communications Minister? Dragging a 14-year old through what is basically an administrative problem is inexcusable. None of our roads are safe given the way the majority of us drive.
Agreed, communication between the bus driver and parent at the outset might well have averted this fiasco. Unfortunately, the name Strepsiades is an alias; given his real name certain readers will misconstrue the reason behind the bus drivers’ misconduct – they who purportedly put safety above all things – the new driver having on Day Six ejected two cheeky schoolgirls from his bus in the middle of the return journey then ordered two other children to stand behind the bus to help him reverse it.
On the other hand, Mme d’Erato Kozakou-Marcoulli’s name, theatrically operatic as it sounds, is her real name, and if we think she has the time to pull out yet more hair over this nonsense when she can’t even half fill Nicosia’s blue buses, then we deserve more than her contempt.
