Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

Mother-in-Law goes militant over misguided hopper stopper.

Greerton resident Flip Ellett waiting on a bus.

There must be some very brave, or extremely foolhardy folk working at the city council. Because someone in city hall has decided to mess with my Mother-in-Law's bus stop. Without asking!

To be fair, the good folk at the city council didn't know this bus stop was the personal possession of the MIL. In fact, they were quite surprised to learn that bus stops could in fact be hornswaggled into the specific ownership of individuals. But you try arguing otherwise with Constance.

She's been happily alighting and, I guess, de-lighting, at the Fraser Street bus stop near the corner with Chadwick, for many years. Now someone has unwisely told her she can't.

It's a brave person who decides to tell my Mother-in-Law where to get off. The MIL's favourite Hopper connection disappeared up the road, creating major unrest amongst the villagers in the normally quiet and peace-loving suburbs of Greerton.

Mother-in-Law has launched a full-on bus stop reclamation offensive. Mum's Army has mobilised; a Greerton branch of the Bus Stop Liberation Front is strategising over tea and cakes and, wheels are in motion. They're not standing for this. Nor will they take it sitting down. They're seething. You should be warned: LETTERS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN.

Included in the ranks of the Bus Stop Liberation Front is Flip, a feisty young thing of 91, who was among the first to discover that the bus stop had been relocated so far down the road. By the time Flip got there, she was 92.

Flip has a dog with three legs. We're not sure why that fact is important to the mysterious disappearing bus stop story, but I just thought you should know.

It limps around pretty much as the staff at the council will, if the renegades from the Bus Stop Liberation Front get within handbag-swinging range. Such is the rage amongst the bus travellers in this part of the town, the city council won't have any legs to stand on, if they get hold of them. Worst of all, it seems no-one consulted or even notified the loyal Hopper patrons of the pending change of bus stop location. It wouldn't have happened in the old Hopper days, they say.

There's a forthright letter from Flip on our letters pages this week.

Apparently the director of Bus Stop Relocations, who is probably on $120,000 a year with a council car, decided that the position of the Fraser Street stop was too close to the corner, and therefore a danger. Even though no-one knows of any incidents which back up this notion.

What, they ask at the BSLF tactical rallies, tapping their teaspoons accusingly on the doilies, would it have taken for a notice to be put up? Why, they ask, dunking gingernuts relentlessly into suffocated submission, was a flyer not popped in the local mailboxes? What would it have cost, they anguish while wringing the digits off their Gold Cards, for the bus driver to mention it to the passengers? Not a lot, according to the Bus Stop Liberation Front.

The stop was earlier this week, located adjacent to Pemberton Park, which the BSLF says is ridiculous because it has been taken away from the concentration of residential housing and put in virtual exile. Which is where the director of Bus Stop Relocations would be now, if he knew what was good for him.

A smart move would be to apply for diplomatic immunity or join the witness relocation programme – anything to get out of range of the far-reaching tentacles of the BSLF; lest he be found bound to a zimmer frame, gagged with a ball of four ply double knit; bodily perforations from a number six knitting needle and his intestines hanging from a crotchet hook. We hate to guess the fate of his gingernuts.

So now Constance and Clifford and Flip and maybe the three-legged dog have to take a cut lunch and set out on their trek to the far flung outskirts of Greerton, just to catch a bus back up town to the library or the supermarket.

Stop press:
Good news is on the horizon, however, as we prepare this piece. While photographing the militant villagers, the council was running around painting out lines and painting in new ones, we suspect a sign that the mysterious mobile bus stop may be on the move again. Watch this space.