Then I recall more recent times when I used to catch the tail end of Colonel Papadopoulos’s presidential motorcade and whizz down in three minutes flat. Alas, those days are gone forever! A short while ago I realized I was spending more of my waking hours in my car than anywhere else and I decided to adjust my way of life accordingly.
First, I bought a new car. It cost me the better part of an ugly sister’s dowry but since it was to become my home away from home I decided not to stint. I made sure it was equipped with a dashboard lighter, reclining seats, a cassette player and a baggage compartment large enough to accommodate a substantial icebox. On a recent trip to London I bought myself an Auto Coffee Maker from Harrods at the very reasonable price of five pounds (made in Hong Kong) and during the August sales in Athens I acquired one of those picnic chests that keep ice cubes and perishables cold for twenty-four hours.
With that equipment and with a passe! of magazines and paperbacks on the back seat I felt I was adequately provisioned to live out a traffic jam worthy of the Guinness Book of Records.
So now, when I have to wait for fifteen traffic light changes between Ambelokipi and the Hilton, I plug my Auto Coffee Maker into the dashboard lighter and ten minutes later I have a steaming cup of coffee in my hand. This is drunk to the soothing strains of schmaltzy music by Hugo Winterhalter or Andre Kostelanetz on the cassette player.
After negotiating the Hilton I put the empty coffee cup away and settled down with James Clavell’s 1,243-page best-seller Shogun, a riproaring tale of life in medieval Japan where samurai warriors are ordered to disembowel themselves by their liege lords at the drop of a cherry blossom. Every now and then I am distracted by loud horn blasts from the rear to advise me that the line has advanced by five inches. I dutifully release my brakes and glide forward. At Sekeri Street it is time for forty winks so I lay the book down, set back my reclining seat and take a nap.
At Merlin Street I begin to feel peckish. I wait for the next five-inch glide and then get out of the car, open the baggage compartment and remove a packet of smoked trout, some brown bread, butter and a cold beer from the icebox. I return with these to the drivers seat, spread a napkin over my knees and have my snack in plenty of time before the next change of traffic lights at Akadimias.
Between Akadimias and Syntagma I begin feeling convivial and strike up a conversation with the driver of the car ne xt to mine. The owners of Jaguars and new Mercedes tend to be a bit snooty but they become friendlier when I compliment them on their magnificent vehicles and ask how they are performing. “It’s not a bad old bus,” they say with a shrug. “Averaged two hundred kilometres per hour to Salonica the other day. Made it in a little over two and a half hours.” Then we make a little joke about how much they are averaging on Vassilissis Sofias and there is hearty laughter all round.
If the man beside me is driving an old rattle-trap, I resign myself to a long description of the car’s extraordinary strength and durability (it is invariably compared to a donkey) culminating in “They don’t make ·cars like this any more” and “I wouldn’t change it for a . million. dollars·.” More often than not, this paragon of automotive technology stalls at the next glide forward and the last I see of my newfound friend in my rearview mirror is the poor fellow pouring water into a steaming radiator to the deafening chorus of cars honking behind him.
Once I tried to engage in conversation a beautiful blonde driving a sleek Maserati. She ignored a proferred cup of coffee and a ham sandwich and kept looking straight ahead, paying no attention whatsoever to my overtures. When the lights changed she zoomed off at high speed and ran straight into the back of a bus.
By the time I have reached the office it is fairly late in the day and after glancing through the mail and making a couple of phone calls, I start back for home again. More cassette music -Spike Jones and his City Slickers if I am in a nostalgic mood or Wagner if I am Teutonically inclined- and an ouzo with taramasalata as I pass the American Embassy. Thereafter, a few more pages of ritual suicides in Shogun and at Ambelokipi I get out of the car and buy an afternoon newspaper.
When I have reached Floca’s on Kifisias Avenue I have read the entire newspaper, including the classifieds, and have reassured myself that there is basically nothing to support the scare headlines. A second ouzo at the light before I turn into Psychiko and I am now ready for lunch and my afternoon siesta.
Once I happened to arrive at the same time as my neighbour, normally a pale and placid banker, who was red-faced with rage and frustration. He raved and ranted about the traffic jams and complained that it had taken him an eternity to drive home. “I give up,” he cried, “I can’t take it any longer, this is the end!”
I was glad he wasn’t a samurai otherwise he might have been tempted to disembowel himself right there on his doorstep. I said, “It took me just as long but I rather enjoyed it.”
He looked at me so balefully that I was even gladder he wasn’t a samurai because I am sure he would have used his ceremonial dagger on me instead of himself.
