You know, sometimes you can look back on a certain point in time and say, ‘Yep, that’s the moment when things started going downhill.’
A nice Sunday drive up into the mountains seemed like a great idea, lunch at Romios restaurant in Kakopetria, perhaps a walk around the mill, birds singing, man with lute in background and so on. So there we sat eating our halloumi and enjoying the warmth while the kindly staff took away the baby’s bottle to be heated. All was right with the world. Then the waitress returned. I did a bit of a double take when she handed back, not a bottle of cosily warm milk, but hot water. A minor miscommunication meant they had tipped the milk down the sink and left us with the ‘emergency bottle.’ To non parents this means zilch, but to the initiated it is like watching sand disappear through the hour glass at double speed. With impeccable timing, as if to signify the start of the day’s demise, the rain started pelting down. Our quintet squelched back to the car and opted to take the scenic route back to Nicosia in an effort to salvage that Sunday drive spirit. It started to hail – dun dun daaah. For atmosphere, please start humming “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
Soon we were lost. No matter where we drove in those mountains, every so often we would pass a sign reading “Kakopetria 8km,” like the omnipresent rock in an episode of Gilligan’s Island. Trapped inside a big moving tin box with a crying, hungry baby, I was trying to work out if there was any way off that mountain. I had nearly made it back to civilisation when I saw the big line of vehicles up ahead. I braked, but the truck didn’t, and instead slid it’s business end gracefully into the back of another truck. Surprisingly, the gentle tinkling of glass is not as relaxing as one might expect. Standing in the rain looking like Alice Cooper, my kindly victim let me shelter in his cab until the police came. Despite his friendly face, there is something unnerving about sitting in a strange man’s vehicle with a shotgun pointing at your leg when you have just crunched something very valuable of his. I tried to remain very still and very zen.
Before I knew it we were on our way home, with the baby kindly serenading us from her Slipknot repertoire. Doing the postmortem of the day, I decided it was the moment with the bottle that signaled this little karmic dip. However as we all know… no use crying over split milk (groan.) On the positive side, it was a quite a cosy Sunday evening, sitting by the fire at the Peristorona police station.
How often do you hear complaints about how rude and unhelpful folks are these days? Granted, mainly from me, yet I couldn’t have crashed into a nicer hunter, or dealt with a more helpful policeman, and quite frankly, despite the picture of his beautiful wife sitting on his desk, I could have kissed the insurance guy.
Two days later the same screaming baby and I were in Orphanides with a trolley train of groceries and a learner driver at the checkout. Every person in the place took turns at helping me, and I soon realised I had become ‘a worthy cause.’ Even the checkout guy with L plates escorted me to the car. The cynic in me says that they wanted the screaming baby out of earshot. Without the drooling, four-month-old carpet shark strapped to my chest I would have just been the irritating foreign chick with the three trolleys, but Cypriots in general will go out of their way to help little window lickers. It’s like the entire island has a family friendly policy. There are no pavements to speak of, it’s a push to find many places with wheelchair access, and finding good customer service is like pursuing Nirvana… but get yourself a scone grabber, and doors seem to fly open.
Machiavelli, that sly dog, said “The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel.” He’s saying we’re all kids really, and we all need some help at some stage as we cycle like mice in this karmic wheel. This is not in anyway an invitation to cry and scream in Orphanides – though I do know someone who did; but maybe we should get in contact with our ‘buddha nature.’ And get our brakes fixed.
