Going Walkabout

Tuesday 26 April was the day that I’d scheduled to visit Limassol’s English-speaking, private, fee-paying schools. Although my natural inclination was towards the military alternatives at Akrotiri or Episkopi, I knew SCEA’s establishments were some way out of Limassol, in the Western Sovereign Base Area (WSBA). For this reason, I didn’t know how easy it was going to be for Allie and our children to reach SCEA’s schools from our lodgings on a daily basis, wherever they might be. Anyhow, I wanted to shop around and see the alternatives, before deciding. Mixing with Cypriot, Arab and Russian children at school might prove to be a valuable experience for Rob and Anne.

I’d telephoned some of the private schools before leaving England, to establish that someone would be free to show me around during the week of my visit. I deliberately hadn’t fixed specific dates and times for any of my visits though, preferring instead to drop in virtually unannounced. That way I’d get a valid and reliable idea of what each one was like. My tour that Tuesday had two functions really. First, to rank the schools Rob and Anne might attend. Second, to canvas for jobs that might suit Allie.

I conducted my tour of the private schools on foot, mainly to gain a better appreciation of Limassol, the town where we might live soon. Less importantly, a pedestrian tour would save me money on taxi fares, especially if I hired a driver for the day. Although Allie and I were comfortably off, we certainly weren’t rich. Anyhow, we might need all our spare cash in the not too distant future, to break free of our life in England and establish a new one over here. Further, even if our little adventure in Cyprus came to naught, my family would still want its annual Mediterranean holiday later in the year, by way of compensation.

I’d found it necessary over the years to take my main vacation abroad. Not just to bask in therapeutic sunshine, but to escape completely from work. If I took my holiday in Britain, I wouldn’t relax. Within a day or so, I’d become restless, fretful and bored, and telephone the office or a customer, just to make sure everything was okay.

During one arduous trek between schools, I became aware again of the many dangers to pedestrians on Limassol’s roads and pavements. Ensconced in yet another little daydream, I nearly died twice in a matter of minutes, as I bumbled along one bustling and congested street. My head filled with romantic nonsense about superb beaches and cheap water sports, I didn’t pay adequate attention to two injudicious drivers. I’d learnt to cope with the heat, dust, fumes, litter and low branches by this time. I’d even grown accustomed to the broken, ankle-twisting paving slabs and shin-bruising café advertisements. What I hadn’t fully appreciated though, was the average Cypriot drivers’ dreadful appreciation of time, distance and speed.

The first hapless assassin nearly succeeded in bringing my adventure to a premature end as I stepped off a pavement to cross a side road. To avoid the sudden braking that would otherwise have sent the toddler playing unrestrained on his front seat through the windscreen, a blast of the driver’s horn brought me to my senses and made me step back out of the way with some vigour. I’d long since blocked out most car horns that morning, having grown tired of lazy taxi drivers trying to solicit easy fares. However, this blast had particular venom, the kind that demanded immediate action.

The second misguided assailant was the driver of a pick-up truck. He’d failed to appreciate the significant hazard posed by several stacks of orange plastic chairs that he’d loaded precariously behind him. These swayed magnificently, and very nearly toppled, as he sped around inconvenient corners. Indeed, the lean angle that he achieved as he passed me was so great that the chairs very nearly gave me an undeserved clout as I stood on the kerb waiting to cross yet another junction. I was better prepared for this second attempt on my life though, and ducked under a traffic sign as I would have ducked under a doorframe had an earthquake struck.

If most of Limassol’s drivers had a poor grasp of the physics of time and motion, they knew even less about balance and moments, it seemed. How those chairs didn’t fall off when the driver careered around the next corner I’ll never know. I felt like the ill-fated police inspector, that the great Peter Sellers played in the Pink Panther films, never too sure where danger was coming from next, always cheating it spectacularly at the very last moment.

Reassuringly, had the second attempt to maim me succeeded, an ambulance would have been on hand to lend assistance. Its driver was having a casual smoke whilst waiting for a temporary obstruction in the road to clear. As he edged forward slowly in his own good time, I couldn’t understand why his emergency lights were flashing. In England, the cars causing the obstruction would have been diving this way and that to let an ambulance, apparently on a life-saving mission, pass.

Yes, things were clearly different here. For a start, pedestrians and cyclists were endangered species. That was obvious. Indeed, given that there were so few about, one might have thought them almost extinct in Limassol. Those that I did see were probably direct descendants of the Minoan civilisation, I mused. Specifically, the young men of Crete who jumped bulls for sport. Today’s bulls were motor cars; yet, like their ancient predecessors, the bulls themselves weren't to blame for the injuries that arose. When parked on shady pavements or across emergency access points, the modern-day bulls dozed peacefully enough. No, it was their tormentors who were to blame. The people who drove them to perform unspeakable acts.

From another perspective, besides resembling Knossos during a Minoan bull festival, Limassol's Archbishop Makarios III Avenue was a practice ground for Cyprus’ very own display team, the Cypriot equivalent of the Red Arrows. Most, but by no means all, of the hopeful members of this two-dimensional team used big powerful cars to practice their breathtaking manoeuvres. Some however gave more than adequate demonstrations of bravery when taking on mopeds and tanker lorries.

I soon realised that many attributes of the Red Arrow’s repertoire were on display every day on the roads of Cyprus’ second city. For example, head-on, high-speed confrontations only resolved at the last possible moment by sudden swerves with trailing plumes of red, white and blue smoke. Then there was the close formation work; apparent as several drivers jockeyed for pole position at traffic light queues. To coin a phrase, the local version of the Red Arrow show was more ‘terra-batics’ than aerobatics. It certainly scared the hell out of me!

Like their world-famous counterparts, the local red suited ‘wannabes’ seemed to thrive on risk and danger. They’d do anything, it seemed, to thrill their spectators. The main differences were that, whilst Red Arrow pilots believed in co-operation and teamwork, their copycats on Limassol’s roads preferred competition and rivalry. Young male drivers especially, just had to be at the point of every formation. This instinct seemed so compelling at times that it led to some truly heart-stopping stunts.

One such I witnessed two days before, on the road to Akrotiri. It involved a maniac overtaking a long line of vehicles on a blind corner. When the stuntman had found the most dangerous place to overtake it seemed, a lunatic swerve-dash-swerve manoeuvre made him leader of the pack, temporarily at least. After this particular display of daring, I felt like holding up numbers to score the driver concerned on his style and technical merit. With the dreadful state of Limassol’s roads in 1994, it was little wonder that Cyprus’ traffic accident statistics were amongst the worst in the world.

Another stunt I saw that Tuesday involved an impatient driver ‘tail-gating’ a vehicle that he clearly thought was moving too slowly. Apparently, his aim was to leave a ‘duelling scar’ on his opponent’s rear bumper, by weaving crazily in and out of the oncoming traffic at very close range; close enough to scar the plastic bodywork of the car in front. At least the driver hadn’t mastered yet a dangerous variation of this dubious skill: to spin the dallying car in front, in a manoeuvre apparently known as ‘fishtailing’.

‘Z-cars’ were favoured playthings for local drivers, being vehicles hired mainly by holidaymakers, to tour slowly from one place of interest to another. With their vivid red number plates, the first letter of which was always Z, they were unworthy adversaries really. Defensive posturing by their drivers didn’t offer any protection against local stuntmen intent on a career in terrabatics. Cypriot males viewed any niceties, like waiting patiently for safe gaps in the traffic before pulling out onto main roads, as signs of exploitable weakness. The best way for Z-car drivers to avoid the intimidation therefore was to demonstrate what might be termed ‘offensive driving’, in every sense of this phrase. The result was belligerent mayhem at times.

As a rule, young female drivers were even less attentive to trivial matters like impending collisions, red traffic lights and warning signs than their male counterparts. This was particularly true whenever another Cypriot female was in the vehicle, since eye contact with her and extravagant gesticulations to emphasise discussion points, were much more important than looking at the road ahead or turning the steering wheel. Any children loosely bouncing about the passenger cabin were seldom a distraction to females whilst driving. They'd be ‘doing their own thing’: generally clambering wherever they wanted, totally unrestrained by safety belts or harnessed booster seats.

For local drivers of both genders and all ages, the precise rules regarding direction changes in Limassol proved difficult to fathom at first. Later in the day, I cracked it. I identified the logic-defying component that influenced nearly all left and right turns, emergency stops, sudden accelerations and unpredictable changes from forwards to backwards motion. It was the biological imperative to pass on ones genes to the next generation. Put simply, sex was the unfathomable factor, if death didn’t occur first.

The irresistible Mediterranean urge to attract potential mates at any time of the day or night also explained the subtle link between drivers’ combs, their cosmetics and their rear view mirrors. Once the behaviour controlling ‘x’ factor was known, it became clear to me in an instant that these mirrors were not for checking the road behind at all. After all, why would any driver be in the slightest bit interested in the piece of lumpy tarmac or pothole that they’d already negotiated, or in the inferior pilots further back in a formation? It was bad enough coping with any on-going discussions inside the car, at the same time as executing vehicle manoeuvres that any observers outside it would feel worthy of applause.

No, rear view mirrors were included in the specification of Cypriot cars for much more important purposes. Primarily, they were provided to allow drivers to ensure that they remained sexually attractive to all other road users, and any pedestrians nearby. That’s why almost all such mirrors pointed towards the drivers and not towards their rear windscreens. As a secondary function, interior mirrors provided somewhere to hang the pendant of your favourite soccer team, or your worry beads if you were of an anxious disposition. I made a mental note for any future occasion that I drove in Cyprus, that the ‘mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ rule here was actually ‘mirror, hairdo, manoeuvre’!

Also regarding the obscure logic behind unpredictable and sudden direction changes, unlike we pernickety British, the wise drivers of Limassol had realised aeons ago that signalling with electrical indicators wears out the bulbs. The same principle applied to driving at night with a full complement of side and headlights switched on. Furthermore, bulb failure due to overuse resulted in irksome trips to garages and unnecessary expense. No, it was far better not to signal, or to switch on a car’s lights. Thankfully, the local police seemed to understand how annoying these chores were and overlooked signalling and lighting misdemeanours.

One might have thought that the alternative to electrical signals, hand signalling, was preferable in Cyprus. After all, the climate there made it possible to drive about with the car windows open even during the winter months, without inviting frostbite. However, hand signalling seemed to limit the quantity of gesticulation and quality of grooming possible whilst on the move. It also affected the cars’ air conditioning in summer. No, on the whole, it was clearly far better to ignore direction indication altogether.

Another thing that struck me about the driving, apart from the number of bald tyres about, was the local drivers’ susceptibility to ear ache. At first, I put this down to the hurricane force winds that must be swirling about within all those fast moving cars. With the windows wound down, and all that traffic noise to cope with, it wasn’t surprising perhaps that earache was a common affliction.

What I couldn’t understand was why some drivers suffered more than others did. Those who endured the most excruciating pain could be seen clamping one hand over the affected ear whilst waving the other about wildly, the pain causing them to screw up their faces and shout loudly. Those less badly afflicted also had to clasp one hand over the aching ear, but seemed able to smile and chuckle as they drove along. Later in the day, it occurred to me that extreme drafts and traffic noise were not the cause of this behaviour. It was, in fact, an outbreak of minute mobile phones!

Yes, there were many alarming things to tell Allie about Limassol’s roads and its users after my walkabout that Tuesday morning, but my euphoric state downgraded the importance of them all. All the dangers that I encountered just added to my impulsive sense of excitement. I was high on the unfamiliar drug of extreme risk, a drug that clouded my vision and my ability to make rational decisions. As a result, all I could see were the wonders that lay ahead regarding our new life. Disadvantages, such as the driving conditions in Limassol, were mere side-shows in the grand funfair I was experiencing. Delirious with the tantalising prospect of spending the rest of my days in the sun, I found myself unable or unwilling to scrutinise anything negative beyond a very superficial level.

Yes, my heart was firmly in control of my head.