Of Mind and Matter (1) Reflections on the way to work

Every working day, as I’m going to work, I really can’t understand why that poor chap Austin is being banged up so hard about the situation in our streets … I mean, why only him?

One could argue that Austin’s promise that the times for farce (“bużullotti”) were over has been kept.  We don’t have a lot of farce, the genre has now turned to tragedy. Anyone who takes to the streets in the morning lives a tragic world gone haywire. The sparkle of Arriva never really tinkled bright to begin with, but now the sterner reality is reality to all.  Who on earth decided upon such big buses to begin with? 

With a tendency to narrow major routes (and again, this seems to have been the recommendation of some German gurus some years back), the buses of old may have been dirty and smelly and their upholstery quite shabby but, the truth is, they slipped through the streets (or rather bumped through them). 

The sublime proof that we were now truly European was the arrival of the bendy-buses … ah! … they reminded us of our stays in the glorious European capitals and now, just like Macdonald’s and KFC had brought us up to par with the rest of the eating world, here were Arriva’s articulated carriers.  

Alas, the truth sank in that these buses still take up two lanes to make a turn.  And two of them take up almost the whole length of Paola square.  Not that all farce has been eradicated: we have also been treated to the farcical situation of a bendy-bus which had broken down and was about to be towed … with the riot that we Maltese manage to create when everyone tries to give everyone else instructions as to how to proceed. 

Amadeus