Buses, rain, and a red-haired girl with umbrella.

So, waiting once again for a 49 or a 75 on Thursday evening, I was standing near the relative shelter of... a bus shelter... on Level 3 of The Square in Tallaght, watching the rain going by from inside the relative rainproofing of my hood. Whenever something else went by that I wanted to look at, my head revolved inside the unmoving nylon such that one of the lenses of my spectacles disappeared momentarily. People had the impression, no doubt, of a one-eyed figure peering out from a cowl, or, if I had only an antenna to stick on top, of an irate Bender robot from the Futurama cartoon glaring out at them.

The arrival of several buses that dropped off passengers then rolled up their "Out of Service" sign did nothing to add to my humour. Then a red-haired girl arrived to join the maddening crowd. And as red-haired girls generally increase my good humour, I thought that things were looking up. She had a maroon-coloured umbrella and she stood to about my shoulder height. This, unfortunately, had the effect such that the wind-blown rain skidded right off the top of the umbrella and sprayed me directly in the face. Not deliberately, I'm sure. Just my late mother having fun at my expense.

There was comment on talk radio on Friday morning about the quantity of the extraordinary traffic on the roads of Dublin on Thursday evening. I don't know what the problem was other than rain, but I know I left my job at 5.30pm and didn't arrive home (a potential 45-minute walk if the rain wasn't skidding along horizontally at 30 miles per hour) until 7.45pm.

Bite my shiny metal ass indeed.