Unhappily, they're still rearing them...

Pal Darren tells me a tale told to him by another pal which is too funny to be untrue.

Chap is looking warily at an obvious junkie on the double-decker bus, especially when he gets up to follow him off the bus at the chap's stop.

They both alight and Junkie stops on the pavement as the bus pulls away behind him, Junkie slowly patting his pockets fruitlessly.

"Awwwwwwwwwwwww....!" he says in that fine slow-motion voice. "I've left me bleeeeeee-din' phone on de buuuuus!"

A single deck bus pulls in and opens the doors. Junkie climbs on and stops suddenly in confusion.

"Where's the bleeeeee-din' stairs gone...?"

Another commuting adventure

In the manner in which all roads lead to Rome, all strangenesses are led to travel on Dublin bus...

To nosy people like myself, it is a tragedy when the bus thunders into the car park of The Square at breakneck speed, its return journey information already up, its passengers all-but flung to the pavement in the driver's haste to get starting again. It's a tragedy when in the middle of all this a little white-haired old lady walks up to the driver from her "Give up this Seat" seat, remonstrates with him and is angrily rebuffed. Tragedy indeed because I couldn't hear one word of the exchange over the revving engine noise and had no idea of the cause of the argument. The mystery only deepened when the little old lady returned to her seat, obviously intent on being brought back the way she'd come.

I have seen bus drivers on very rare occasions who have turned the bus into a mobile creche. Once a sulking boy of about 10 years and a happy little girl of around seven did not alight at the last stop, the first stop for we waiting at the terminus, but instead rode back into town with Daddy Driver. The little girl couldn't keep the evident secret and spent half the journey waving and smiling into the driver's rear view mirror. The boy stared irately at the passing road surface through the grimy windows.

I wondered if today this driver had borrowed his granny for some outing. Maybe she had especially waited in the nursing home to be collected by a favourite grandson, only to find herself condemned to perpetual motion in the special seat of the swaying double-decker. She sat, a tiny figure in the big green seat, occasionally peering over the top of her glasses, craning up to see where the bus now was.

An Asian lady with a girl about three years old, stepped on wheeling a buggy. She shifted about to make room when the bus started filling up. The youngster started an impressively accurate rendition of "Molly Malone" as the crowds pressed in.

"She wheeled her wheel... BARROW...!"

The little old lady bounced up and down wordlessly in the seat behind her.

"Through streets broad and... NARROW!"

"That's a GREAT song," another woman sitting nearby said to the child. "You're a GREAT girl!"

Not be put off, she sang:

"Crying COCKLES and MUSSELS...
Alive, alive-O!"

There was all but a cheer from the captive audience, until she started the whole thing off again from the beginning. Getting off at Old Bawn, she gave the driver a big wave and a "Thank You!" before being pushed off home.

One time I recall the commotion of a drunk clambering on somewhere around Tallaght Village, slapping some random coins into the machine, ignoring the driver's shouts of protest, then collapsing, unconscious, into a seat near the back of the bus. A large, jolly-looking Italian man, looked over at him, then started to laugh out loud with big "Har! Har! Har!"s. The reason for his mirth soon began wafting its way about the back of the bus.

"Jesus!"
"Feck's sake!"
"Was that you?"
"NO! It was yer man!"
"Ah, Jaysus...! He hasn't has he?"
"He has!"

A young teen in charge of her younger sister reached into her bag and started spraying the oblivious one with Impulse. This caused huge bellows from the Italian.

"Har! Har! HAAAAR!"

He started turning purple, waving his hands in the air.

When I got off, there was a bubblelike barrier of scent around the sleeper, clawed by desperate hands from every handbag and knapsack. The echoes of the Italian in the seat opposite rang loudly down the Firhouse Road as the bus sped off.

Today, there was no satisfactory explanation for the mystery of the white-haired lady. She stayed ladylike, upright, quietly demure in the middle of her seat. Sometimes she popped up in the air as we went over speed bumps. Otherwise she was still.

I left the bus as usual and rambled home, wondering.

Okay, I'm up... I'm up!

Mornings on the bus again. The other day must have been exam time in the Tech, cos the upper deck was packed out with satchel carrying scarecrows of the type I used to be before I mysteriously found a briefcase in my hand.

"Audrey doesn't like me."

"Yeah, man... Two goals in two minutes. I have Spurs in the Fantasy Football...."

"DintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDints!"

"Ya bollocks."

Only DintsDintsDints can't hear Ya bollocks, because DintsDintsDints has one of those mobile phones cum music players plugged into his two side orifices, going DintsDintsDints all along the bus route.

Ya bollocks is a non-descript looking chap whose outbursts come at random moments and to no-one in particular.

Downstairs, a man in his twenties who I take to be on his way to some kind of training workshop, is hanging into the driver's compartment.

"Do you... do you... do you.... do you... do you... follow soccer?"

Audrey doesn't like me waffles on in the Champion Shallow Stakes.

I resist the urge to lick the condensation on the window pane and die.

"Ya bollocks."

"DintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDints!"

"Ya bollocks."

Ya bollocks.

In the Square, I meet the training workshop chappie walking backwards by the cinemas. He's almost in rapture at the sight of a photo in the sports pages of a tabloid he's just bought. He grabs a random stranger and pushes the paper and its picture into his face:

"Isn't he just a big cry BABY...?"

I pass on by and go to work.

Ya bollocks.

Me Ma would be proud.

Hello, HSD.

They changed my bus route to work so they could avoid as many passengers as possible, I think. But it now goes over a couple of the steepest speed ramps in Ireland.

The commuters on the upper deck throw their hands up into the air and shout: "Wha-hey!" every time it goes over one. Anyone caught unawares has to suddenly grab the handhold on the seat in front and try to keep their breakfast down.

The bus also now goes parallel to the road on which Herself's Second Daughter and family have their house.

"Hello, HSD!" I shouted on the first day, head stuck through the letterbox size window, as the 49 rolled on by.
"What are you up to?" the chap in the seat behind me asked.
"Over that wall," I explained, "Is where Herself's Second Daughter and family live."
He peered over the wall, examining all the gardens that usually rested in quiet privacy, unmolested by passing double-decker busses of morning commuters.
"I think we could do better than that!" he said. "Check with me in the morning."

Next day he had a rolled up banner on two short poles. As the 49 lurched through the lights at the top of the road he unfurled it, telling me to grab one of the poles. It read:

"49 says HI to HSDAF!"

We stretched it out across the glass until the bus turned for The Square.

The following day he had a friend with him and a pantomime horse.

"Are you sure you can take the weight?" I asked, climbing up on the front seat and throwing my leg over.

"No problem" the muffled reply came from the back end. "I carry sacks of cement for a living."

"Yee-ha!" I shouted, as the bus passed HSDAF's house. We trotted up and down the bus, ignored by people reading freebie Metro newspapers.

"It's a bit stuffy, though," they said, when they unzipped the horse's belly and got out. "Maybe we should try something less enclosed next time."

On Wednesday, seven people brought fezes and sombreros and one had a pair of maracas. We made a conga line and "Hey-ed!" up and down until we were out of sight.

Thursday, fifteen members of a marching band and 25 baton twirlers crammed into the top deck, playing and twirling to a spirited rendition of T-Rex's, "Metal Guru."

Yesterday, I texted HSD and asked her if she'd been amused by us, sailing by on a double-decker 49 bus at a quarter to nine of a weekday morning.

"IN WORK @ 8 ALL WEEK. SRY. DIDNT C U."

Ah, crap.

Liam and the family

Another typical afternoon on the bus ride home. Two girls, each about 15 years old, punching each other affectionately in the back seat. A mobile phone rings between them.
"Liam, you're drunk!"
Her friend in the pink pajamas and trainers shouts:
"Ha! Ha!"
into the phone.
"Mary Gillick texted me and said 'Ure kid is plain in the road'."
Liam says something...
"I don't care. Why are you drinking?"
There a reply of some kind...
"Oh *you* get depressed, do you? Well *I* get depressed too, but I don't spend all my money on drink in the middle of the day!"
He says something more...
"We're walking around The Square. We'll be home in an hour."
They're on a bus leaving The Square, but Liam isn't to know.
"What were you doing phoning my mother for money last week and telling her the baby needed rusks? I *know* that's a lie, because I bought her rusks. And me Ma knew it was a lie, cos I told her I bought rusks."
The conversation waltzes about in wide-spinning circles with her ear-bashing him about his drinking, his friends, his money, his dole. Occasionally, the friend shrieks something meaningful in the direction of the phone.
I drift away into my own thoughts for a while.
Almost home and a bunch of other 14 and 15 year olds get on the bus.
"Jesus! Look at you!"
"I know. Jesus! Three months is ages!"
Bringing up the rear is a black kid in a baseball cap. He is to gangle what blizzard is to snowflake.
"No, I'm in court on Thursday. I'll call you after....", he says. "I just have something to do in court. Yeah. Bye."
The three-monther turns to the friend:
"What do you have on?"
"Pajamas."
"Are you serious? What do you have under them?"
"Skin, mostly."
They start chatting to the black kid and I trudge downstairs, wondering what's in the cupboard for dinner.

Revolution Now!

A third-level student gentleman on the bus this morning was overheard to say that he thought the bus must be leaving town earlier because it reached his stop earlier this morning.

I wondered if he'd noticed the lower-level schools were on a mid-term break, which meant less traffic, which meant he had to run for his bus. Nope. Don't think it registered.

His third-level lady companion said she thought there was a strike on next week. He said he thought there was one on Saturday. And one next Thursday. And there could be more after that (wait for it):

"...depending on whatever the hell they're striking about."

Take an F grade in Cause and Effect, young man.

I think I'll stop my Union sub now.

Other lives

A few pensioners returning from a coffee in The Square, a woman about 40 with a ponytail, and I were travelling on the 77A. No-one was particularly paying attention to the old lady alone in the front seat. The sun was shining, the traffic at least moving. Next thing she picks a mobile phone out of her bag and makes a call:

"I'm ringing," she says, in the posh voice that old ladies acquire when they are taking the high ground. "I'm ringing to tell you I am very sick and I'm on my way to the doctor. So there will be NO drinks, you'll be happy to hear, AND the phone will be OFF tonight!"

The little conversations about the bus buzzed low as everybody tried to listen in without being too obvious. The impact of the lady's pronouncement was hindered somewhat by the recipient being a little deaf.

"I said, I'm very sick and I'm on my way to the doctor."

"Yes, the doctor. I'm on the bus now."

"I'm nearly there. Goodbye."

She hung up and gazed out the window, everybody looking sidelong at her. She didn't look too unhealthy. In her early 70s, maybe. Large mop of hair with bold, blonde highlights. A spare woman, head held high, eyes peering out from behind her black rimmed glasses.

She stood up, clutching the smooth, chrome hand-holds with a fist full of heavy gold rings. Gathering her coat around her she marched imperiously to the exit.

When she'd gone, the conversations murmured on again, gradually buzzing louder about weather and gardens and the price of things.

Counting Blessings through the interference

The bus was one of those double deckers from a few years ago, the ones I think of as new, even though they're not new. But they're one of the best on our shoddily-provided bus route. They are shiny with pale plastic and lots and lots of chrome handholds, but they have a major flaw: when the engine idles in traffic, noise resonates through the rear of the bus and echoes from the back seats off the shiny plastic walls and off the metallic handholds and gets into your ears as if swirling water was pouring from a jug or basin over your head. There is a rumble from the engine and the air vibrates and then you hear "Shrrshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" and every second or third syllable in any conversation is masked by a strange, white-noise-like, Doppler effect.

"I was in The Square and we_ oo_ eh_curt_es_an_as_eh_dy_..."

It only happens when the bus has stopped in traffic. Once the revs increase, the sound returns to normal.

I often think it can't be good for you.

How is it a health inspector has never condemned these buses as a hazard?

Half-way up the bus I was sitting feeling sorry for myself and feeling depressed over what a lousy job I had to work at. In the back seat a mobile phone rang and a young, well-spoken man answered it and chatted unabashed. I gazed out at the buildings going by, half listening, tuning out when the bus halted and the shrilling, swishing noise buzzed about the cabin.

"...There's no problem at all. I just decided that living in the house with the lads would put me back into a place I didn't want to be again. So I'm on the bus now and I'm on the way over to...."

"...and I'll sleep in the car."

"....was taking 40 mils of Methadone and gone off it. I'm doing okay. There was one day I was sick but it's okay now.."

"...one day just blow yourself away with a needle, so I thought it would be better if I got out of there..."

"...you're right, you're right. Your man asked me to mind something for him and to have some for myself if I wanted. So, of course, I fucked myself up and my mother saw me and said she'd seen your man's car and if she saw it again on the road she'd call the police.

"So I told him and he said he didn't want any trouble with police and I told him I couldn't look after his goods any more..."

"....course is a year. A whole year. They retrain you. I have the literature there. But she said I knew as well as she did I'd never do the day course. She said, the best thing you can do is hang on for the house and get away from everyone. You do better on your own. She told me a lot about myself, more than any other counsellor ever did..."

The bus moved by the playing fields in Old Bawn, half-a-dozen gangly youths clad in T-shirts and shorts kicking a football back and forth on a football field. The sun shone brightly through the right hand panes of the window glass, making those passengers in the offside seats squint and sweat.

"The best thing you ever did was tell me to get out."

"...I'll have to knock on the door, though, and ask for a blanket..."

"No, no. There's nothing you can do...."

"I had three pillows on the bed. Can you get them for me...?"

"Oh, no bother. No bother...."

I stepped down from the bus and shuffled home. The young man was still speaking away on the mobile phone as the bus pulled out from the kerb going off down the road to who knows where.

Breaking the Circle

If all those over-paid Astologers are to be believed, you're supposed to have an improvement in luck as your birthday gets nearer. Mine is turning turtle at the moment and it's my birthday in two days' time.

I was in the canteen last week and queuing with a tray in hand. There are two checkouts parallel to each other. If one side of the queue gets busy, or one of the staff has to go get more change, or replenish mugs, or answer a call (of nature or otherwise), the lady on the other side will double-up temporarily. Likewise, if food has to be weighed before purchase. Our canteen caterers sell stuff like salads or breakfast cereals by weight.

So two girls in the queue in front of me were yapping happily away and taking their time putting change into purses and such. Christine, on the checkout nearest me sat impassively waiting for the next customer, me.

Across from her, the girl on the other checkout craned her neck to see what I'd chosen, punched it into the register, twisted the readout my way so I could see that €5 was the price, took my tenner and gave me back a €5 note in change.

Christine, meanwhile, punched a couple of buttons. I supposed she was taking for the meal of the person behind me. I picked up the tray and went and sat down.

"They're saying you didn't pay, Willie," said a colleague, passing by, grinning.

"I paid the other girl!" I said to the universe at large. I got up and went to tell Christine of the mistake. On the way, I bumped into the assistant canteen manager.

"Are you stealing food?" she asked. I presume she was trying to be funny. I ignored her, but I could feel the niggle starting.

I plucked Christine's elbow.

"I paid the other girl," I said, pointing.

A few minutes later, Christine appeared beside me, red-faced. She must have checked with the other girl.

"I'm very sorry," she said. "I didn't see you paying. I really must apologise."

"If I'd been stealing food," I said, trying unsuccessfully to be non-chalant and humourous "You wouldn't have seen me do it!"

We both chuckled a little self-consciously.

Christine apologised again. I said:

"I hope that manager one knows I paid." I pointed over my shoulder at her.

"Oh, don't mind her," said Christine, and scuttled off back to her register.

I did mind. The more I thought about it.... ("Are you stealing food? Ha Ha Ha!")... the more annoyed I felt. Most of the dinner went uneaten.

At quitting time, I walked over towards my bus stop. Here was the canteen assistant manager coming the other way on foot.

"Hello!" I said. I stopped.

I said: "Tell us. Are we all square about that thing earlier?"

She smiled and laughed and went on walking. I stood looking after her, now fuming! Why the fuck wouldn't she put my mind at ease and just say everything was fine? I went home in very bad humour.

There's now a definite atmosphere in our canteen up at the checkouts when I queue there. No-one asks me any more how my day is going, or how my colleagues are that aren't with me today, or if I have any holidays planned. They just take the money in silence. Not quite a stony silence, but silence nonetheless.

If I could afford it, I'd take my business elsewhere. But the job subsidises the food prices in the canteen, making up for how little they pay us otherwise. I'm stuck.

This morning, kick in the pants Number Two.

I got on my usual bus and travelled up to The Square on my way to work. I usually get off the bus a bit before The Square, but this morning I wanted to get some cash from the ATM to see me through the week. The bus pulled in and the driver switched off the engine. I thanked him and stepped off. There was a smallish man of about 50 in front of me, moving along the footpath. He stopped and turned towards me.

"Excuse me," he said.

I thought maybe he was going to ask for directions. I stopped and said:

"Yes, sir?"

He said: "I was sitting at the back of the bus." He pointed. "You got on and looked at me. I don't like people looking at me..."

I blinked.

"What?"

"I was on the bus. You looked at me..."

"I did not! This is the first time I've seen you today...!" I laughed.

He stood looking at me. I realised he was serious and now that I looked at him he did seem a little familiar. But I had clambered onto the bus this morning without a thought for anything other than my usual twin goals of not falling over as the bus pulled away from the bus stop and finding a seat upstairs.

"Where you sitting behind me or what...? I asked, puzzled. I was trying to get my head around what he was saying. It wasn't sinking in at all.

"I don't like people looking at me."

I thought: "Little wonder, you ugly little fucker."

I said: "I absolutely swear, I did not look at you in any way whatsoever!"

He walked off, mumbling.

Jesus Christ! I went into The Square, mindful that he was walking in front of me by a few yards. All I need now, I figured, is for him to tell a security man I'm following him or something. That would really put the tin hat on the whole business!

Around five o'clock I remembered how he looked familiar. The little bollix lives in Firhouse and.... wait for it.... is often at the bus stop I use every single morning! On his way to see a psychiatrist, I have no doubt, but fuck it! He'll probably be standing at the bus stop tomorrow morning.

"I'm getting a car," I said to myself on the five o'clock bus. I had found myself looking around at the other passengers suspiciously. Who was going to pop out of a bag or a box and twist my noodle this time? Would the other little bollix turn up again? What would I do if he said something?

At home, the third piece of what I hope is the end of this circle of the most bizarre luck there's been around here in ages happened. Herself came home without her much-loved, mobile phone. Surely that broke the charm?

I was so sympathetic on hearing the phone had been left in work. Among unknown cleaners. With keys to the office.

"Oh, that's terrible," I purred. "There, there. I'm sure it will be just sitting there when you go into work in the morning."

So tomorrow, the day before my birthday, I'll have an angry Firhouse gnome gunning for me on the bus to work. My tea will be served by people afraid to smile or joke in any manner. And I shall probably not receive any texts to brighten my day.

Roll on next year.

Happy Birthday to me.... Happy Birthday to me....

Future Ireland

An African lady and her wee lad of about five years of age climbed onto the bus one late afternoon as I was slouching home from work. They flopped down into the front seats upstairs among the builders and typists and hospital workers, all lolling wearily as the bus lurched slowly along.

The wee man was in full boyish spate:

"Crrrr-ash! Pu-sssh! Aaaaa-aaaa-ai..."

A McDonalds Happy Meal toy car and a figure were getting the run-over and pushed off a cliff treatment on the ledge by the front window. This continued for some time. The mother shushed him ineffectually a few times. Then she said:

"Now, Michael. If you won't have pity on me, please have pity on that man."

She pointed at a chap sitting in a nearby seat, oblivious to proceedings. His earphones were in and he was gazing blankly out through a gap in the condensation on the window.

"That man and the other men have all been at work and they are tired," she said. "They just want to go home. They don't want to listen to you."

Michael thought this over. His game changed to one with the volume much reduced. When he had had enough, he started poking through his backpack which was resting on the seat between them. The toys went in and a juice bottle came out. He mumbled and muttered through a series of little games as the bus inched along in heavy traffic. Beside him, his mother softly sang something spiritual.

"Do you know," he said, "that when Jesus was small he was lost in the big city and Mary and Joseph couldn't find him?"

His mother nodded.

"When they found him," he said, "he was teaching the teacher."

His gaze went over the stationary traffic, orange indicator lights clicking on and off in the gathering gloom.

"Teaching the teacher," he said again and he laughed.

At their bus stop, the mother and son jumbled their way off the bus, dropping bags and toys, shouting at each other to hurry up, thanking the driver profusely.

On Monday morning last, Michael and his mother were on the early bus as I was travelling to work. He was fizzing. He counted numbers out loud in tens as far as eighty. Then he had an argument with his mother about whether or not a symbol he had seen was a letter "F" or a letter "K". He drew it in the fog on the window. She asked him:

"Do you ever remember meeting a girl named Rachel?"

He sat and thought about this.

"No," he answered. "I don't know anybody named Rachel."

"Rachel was a young girl that I used to know when you were very small," his mother said. "She would have been eleven years of age then, so she must be all grown up by now."

"So, she was bigger than me?"

"Yes. And she is still bigger than you."

The almost-completed roadworks at Firhouse caught his attention.

"Mother," he said. "When all the builders are too old to build.... How will anybody know what the plan is?"

She said: "Other people know the plan too."

"Do you know," he said, "that when they first started building, they only had wood? And then they found metal. And then steel."

"Metal is stronger than steel," his mother said. "You can bend steel."

"Does that mean that the spoon I bent was made from steel?"

"Yes, it was made from steel."

"But can you also bend metal?"

"Some metal can be bent, yes."

"Then how is it stronger than steel?"

At Tallaght, they gathered up their bags and rushed for the top of the stairs again, pushing and pulling at each other, shouting to hurry up. Michael said:

"I am in Jun... no Senior Infants." He grinned.

"Ju'Senior Infants," he laughed.

"Hurry up, Michael!" his mother shouted from the bottom deck.

Michael gripped the bannister rail and descended the steep steps on his way to school. I wonder what he learned that day?

Furniture, DIY, Skip bags and bulbs

I've not been online much recently for various reasons, chief among them being exhaustion. Herself has moved to a new job, which has upscuttled our household routine. I am truely commuting now -- a bus each way, instead of the cushy lift each morning, followed by a bus ride home in the evening -- as she is now working in a place which is in the opposite direction to my morning travel.

Morning travellers are a different lot to the evening varieties I have encountered up to now. And the earlier buses have a few surprises as to routes and to the temper of the bus drivers.

"Do you go to the hospital?" a woman asked from a bus stop, stepping up to the driver.
"No," he said.
The woman stepped back down off the bus and awaited the next double decker.

I thought this one over and decided that the driver was giving a very literal answer to her query. No, the bus didn't go to the hospital. Rather it went to The Square, and the hospital was on the route. So while he was being absolutely truthful, he was not being customer friendly. There is a bus stop right outside the hospital gate he could have dropped the woman at.

The past couple of weeks have been eventful in the search for and acquisition of new furniture for the house. A much hated 1970s dining-room unit, the type that holds drinks glasses and had a little cubby hole for bottles of booze, was remaindered. I quite liked it, but Herself said it had to go. We acquired the mammy and daddy of all dining-room tables and a platoon of leather dining-room chairs to go with it. And some matching -- or nearly matching -- smaller units to store the glasses and ornaments in. We shall not be ashamed of our Christmas dinner settings at least.

I have also been trying to complete the kitchen project, which at this stage requires only some final positioning of some units, a swap of two applicances, and the installation of kicker boards (plinths), and some fiddly bits. B&Q has been unusually unhelpful and I haven't helped myself much either. I phoned the Tallaght store and was told that only two of the four items I need are in stock there. The sprout on the phone told me that they didn't sell one of the missing items, even though I had seen it with my own eyes only a few weeks before.

The problem is the length of the last few timbers, which are not convenient to carry by car. I will have to get them ordered and delivered.

The Liffey Valley branch is under major refurbishment at the moment and their kitchen showroom staff are languishing in a large temporary building in the car park. I phoned two weeks ago and the girl on the switchboard was able to confirm that yes, they did have Item 1 and Item 2 in stock, but by Item 3 she was obviously being distacted by the flashing lights on the phone, and when she said:

"Yes we probably have that,"

at Item 4, I was not confident that she was giving me her fullest attention. She took my phone number and said that the kitchen showroom staff would phone me back to address my queries. No call was ever received.

We drove over to the store later that day in a particularly wintery rainstorm and were told by an assistant that:

1. Items 1 and 2 were in stock.
2. Items 3 and 4 were not in stock.
3. Deliveries are made only on Thursdays.
4. No, I could not buy the items in advance, as they were not in stock, but they would be in stock this week, at which stage I could buy them.

I phoned again yesterday to see if they had come in. The girl on the switch warned me that they were "very busy" in the kitchen showroom and may not be answering their phone. However, the phone was picked up. I quoted the barcode numbers of the four items, whereupon the assistant asked me for my mobile phone number as it would take five minutes to look them up and confirm they were available.

"Ah."

I don't know my mobile phone number. Nor does there appear to be a method on my current phone of looking it up while one is on a call. I forgot that I had Herself's phone in my pocket, which contained my mobile phone number in its Contacts list. So I said I would phone back.

When I did, no-one answered at the switch. Ever.

So, it looks like another drive over to Liffey Valley is required. But not this weekend, which has now all but passed. I shall try again next weekend. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I have availed of an A1 Waste free skip bag offer and filled a big yellow container with broken up kitchen units and other stuff we have been accumulating in our garden since the never-ending kitchen project and the never-ending preparations for Christmas have begun. I moved about a tonne of plywood and chipboard today and planted around 50 or so daffodil bulbs that had not made it into the ground before now. I containerised them, which is to say I stuffed them into pots and hoped for the best. Herself says they are not house-broken, so I can't experiment with forcing some of them to bloom in time for Christmas. They are outside as I type, possibly wondering what the drop in temperature is all about, since they were rather inadvisedly being stored in a heated cupboards for the past month.

Busy, busy, busy.

Why Howard Hughes stopped using public transport, Part 2

This movie lets you know the quality of the passengers on some of my daily bus journeys.

I include myself in that particular assessment. I may even be related to Scary Mary.

Why Howard Hughes stopped using public transport

The single decked 49 bus is not a favourite of mine as you may recall from this post. Too many odd things can happen on a single-decker when all your whole muddled, post-work brain wants is the familiar stale sweaty smell and shrieking noises of a regular, overcrowded one-up-one-down on wheels.

Tonight a lady in her 50s sat down in the seat ahead of me on the single-decked 49 bus. Well-dressed with skirts that almost touched the floor, where her three or four bags of newly purchased Dunnes Stores clothes or home wares were nestled, she had on a smart camel hair coat or its fake equivalent. A nice, well-turned out lady you would think.

As the bus reached Aherns pub on the Old Bawn Road, she saluted it by tilting to the left on one cheek of her bum and letting off a smart, sharp, retorting fart that went "Fra-a-ap!" Then, quite unperturbed, she gathered up her bags and alighted at the next stop.

A young Asian man who was uncomfortably perched on an aisle seat threw himself gratefuly into the unoccupied space by the window.

I was thinking of tapping him on the shoulder and asking if he thought the seat was unusually warm.

I hope I'm on time for the double-decker tomorrow.

Rules of the Road

So we come to a halt as a line of non-bus traffic streams up Tallaght Village. The bus driver sits there looking at the "Republic & Northern Ireland" delivery van with its indicator on wishing to turn into the grounds of the Institute of Technology. We wait. The van driver waits. The sensors in the road detect the weight of the bus and turn the traffic light green. We continue to wait.

"You'll have to reverse!" one of the drivers waiting illegally in the traffic shouts out.

"Who'll have to reverse?" asks the bus driver through the open window. "I'm in a bus lane."

We wait. Someone honks a car horn.

"Frank," says the bus driver into his radio. "You'll have to get down here. The whole bus plug is filled up."

The traffic moves up a little in the opposite direction. The dog-faced delivery van driver peers solemnly at the bus passengers glaring out at him. He keeps his indicator on.

At the other end, a line of cars followed by a bus approaches and stops at the red light. To the left, a long line of traffic trying to exit the I.T. is stuck because our bus is stuck on the road across the gate.

A man gets out of an unseen vehicle and walks around the front of the bus. He walks up to the van driver and says something to him, waving the van off. The van driver looks at him impassively. Finally, after a ten minute stand off, there's enough room to move off and we make a run for Tallaght Village.

"Frank, you'll have to get the guards to go up there. I don't know what's going on."

Bad driving, that's what's going on.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a guard to arrive on a Friday evening either.

Serving the Community

Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Gobble-ee-umph-umph-rattle...!

The bus stalled. A girl laughed out loud upstairs.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Er-ree-ree-ree-ree-ree..! REEEEEE...!

The driver started the engine again. We were one stop from The Square on the 49, heading for town, and the driver was not impressed. I wondered if we'd make the whole journey.

Passengers got on. The traffic light went red.

Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Gobble-ee-umph-umph-rattle...!

It cut out again. The girl upstairs shrieked laughter.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Er-ree-ree-ree-ree-ree..! REEEEEE...!

We limped along from stop to stop. Each time the engine had to idle in the stationery traffic the engine worked for a while then died. The driver called the controller on his radio.

"I had dis boss YES-ter-day and it was cutting owt. I put in a docket. I was told it was fixed. It is still cutting owt. It has cut owt six time maybe from The Square to Old Bonn."

The heavily accented Dublin voice of the controller came back.

"Errrr....!"

Aggrieved, the driver waved to an oncoming bus which stopped alongside. He said:

"Tell them I had dis boss YES-ter-day and it was cutting owt. I put in a docket. I was told it was fixed. It is still cutting owt."

At the Old Bawn junction, the bus went "Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Chugg! Gobble-ee-umph-umph-rattle..!" and the engine stopped again. An orgasmic wail erupted from the upper saloon.

At The Old Mill pub, the driver had had enough. He had repeated his speech another time to the controller. The public address intercom then said:

"Everybody off da boss."

So we got off da boss and walked. I don't think the girl upstairs could have taken any more anyway.

Going sideways

As the 75 bus pulled out before I could set my booted foot upon it and as I had spent an afternoon at work stuffing envelopes, I was not inclined to turn up my nose at the prospect of a single-decker 49 bus which appeared ten minutes later.

I usually avoid these ill-conceived monsters like the proverbial terminal cough and bursting bits. They are constructed so that the last two-thirds of the bus contains the majority of seated passengers. One sixth ahead of that is for luggage, and between the luggage racks and the driver's compartment is an aisle which rapidly fills up with standing passengers such that one fat, tired, and incredibly annoyed person who happens to look exactly like me, can't get to the front in time to alight at his chosen stop.

This evening I would have accepted a lift in the back of a dung-carrying donkey car.

"I'll find one of those seats for wheelchair helpers or something and sit in it. Bugger ability!"

So it was that I found myself a single seat jammed in behind the driver's compartment and a luggage rack. I was sitting sideways on in a passably comfortable position like a cork shoved into a bottle. The world went by like a microfiche reader.

Whizz! Greens, brick reds, flashing indicator lights, No-Through-Road signage, pink and bottle-blonde blobs of people waiting at the side of the road for other buses.

Clunk! There's the front door of the Tallaght SuperValu, framed perfectly in the window. Western Union money transfers done here, I see. Free car parking for 2 hours around the corner. The unseen traffic signal changes and we lurch away again.

Wheee! The building site on the southern side of Tallaght Hospital jumbling by in horizontal, tubular lines, poles and scaffolds, dark cavernous unfinished rooms, piles of dug-up earth, large wheeled lifting machines.

At the roundabout -- where we Clunked! briefly to a halt again to let traffic by -- the centrifugal force almost pulled me out of the niche I was sitting in. I gripped a handhold and counted in my head how many times the bus would be turning right. Once more, on this journey, at least for me. At the next turn I was ready and didn't get sucked out too far into the aisle.

Wheee! Unfinished walkways and galvanised rails, stainless steel posts and loungers sipping drinks at the tables outside the Metro bar.

Then warp-speed ahead! The limestone wall of the Priory shot by in perfect parallel lines, its crooked lines of mortar merging together in long, unbroken, mermerising horizontals. I looked away. I was feeling queasy at the sense of speed and the lack of anything to fix my gaze steadily upon.

On the floor where it had rolled was a shiny penny. I looked at it in the dust and chewing gum until my light headedness went away.

People got on and looked at me in surprise. I was facing the doors as soon as they opened. Even the bus driver sits facing away. A man spoke in Arabic on a mobile telephone and argued with the driver about his fare while trying to carry on his mircowave-linked conversation.

"Two stops! Two stops!" he said loudly. "One euro!"

"Bottom of Old Bawn Road!" the driver said loudly back to him, punching the button which spat out the ticket.

The Arab man took the ticket without acknowledgement. Then he had a loud conversation down the rear of the bus on his telephone. After two stops he got off and carried on at the side of the road, sometimes making gestures the person on the other end couldn't see.

Cold air blew in at me. I was glad my shoulder bag was resting on my lap and giving me some protection from the weather.

A woman jumped on suddenly through the open doors and said to the driver:

"Can I ask you a question?"

She was sober, but obviously didn't spare herself on food or drink.

"How do I get to Sundale?"

She added: "I'm driving."

"Oh, you're driving? Well, go back to the Tallaght Bypass. Turn left and go up to the pub there at Jobstown..."

"The one near the petrol station?"

"Yes. Turn right there and go down to the roundabout. It's around there..."

"Thanks!" she said and rushed off, jangling cheap jewellry. I couldn't see her car. I was facing the wrong way. The bus creaked along a little way before the doors closed again.

At Firhouse, a young man stopped the bus, got on and dropped a coin in the slot.

"One Euro, please."

"Bottom of Firhouse Road!" the driver exclaimed, and punched the ticket machine button. The man looked at him warily from under his fringe, took the ticket and went to sit down.

At the back of the bus, a black girl who had paid the child fare was wondering if the driver would remember shouting "Templeogue Post Office!" The tension was unbearable.

I looked at the arrangement of the bell pushes. The last one was to my left and I would have to step down from my bucket seat and reach the wrong way with my left hand to press it. I couldn't tell its colour, which somehow annoyed me. Was it a blue bell button, or a red one, or some other colour? I pressed it and a muted "Ding! sounded in the driver's compartment.

The world spun back into a recognisable going-forwards scene and the driver deposited me safely at the bus shelter on Ballycullen Avenue. I was the only one he hadn't announced a destination for out loud. Strange, I thought, and walked the 100 yards or so home, facing forwards all the way.

Hail fellow...

"Is that an MP4 player?"

"Yeah."

"What's the memory?"

"Dunno. 2,000 CDs, or something."

"How much was it?"

"I don't know. It's my sister's. €180 or something."

"You paid €180 for 2,000 CDs worth? That's good."

"I don't know. My sister got it. It might have cost more."

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

"You might have seen me around Jobstown."

A pause.

"Cloverhill?"

"D-wing?"

"Yeah!"

"Have you got a smoke?"

"Yeah. Here. Something better."

"You have some."

"No. I don't want any. You have it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

The conversation turned to who knew who and who had prayer meetings every Wednesday because they were Born Again Christians. And getting out of jail.

"I spent three days in a bed and breakfast. And two days on someone's sofa. And two days in a hotel. And I went to them and said 'I need a place because I've spent three days in a B&B and two days sleeping rough and two days in a hotel.'"

"Yeah."

"What's your phone number?"

I just wanted the traffic to move so the bus could take me home.

I only have an ordinary music player. I've only been in a B&B on holiday. I've slept rough twice, because I chose to. To me, Cloverhill is on the way to Liffey Valley Shopping Centre on the back roads. Lucky.

Culture shock

The bus pulled in at the terminus at The Square and in keeping with tradition the passengers disembarked and the engine was switched off and somebody started to complain as the driver tried to go on his break.

"You're late!" the middle aged Dublin woman said to the African in the Dublin Bus uniform who was trying to wave her off the step so he could shut the door.

She stepped back down onto the pavement.

"I've been waiting here for hours and then you just go on a break!"

The driver calmly closed the door. He said:

"How many hours?"

There was a definite look of surprise on the woman's face. Not only was she, a native Irishwoman, being addressed by a black person, but also by a black person in a position of authority. It was evidently a shock to her system.

"How many hours have you been waiting?" he asked. "One hour? Two hours...?"

She looked at him in bewilderment.

"Half an hour!" he said. The bus arrives every thirty minutes or so.

She retreated to the relative safety of the bus shelter. No-one else joined in the argument on her side.

"That's right," she rallied. "You go on your break now and get your cup of coffee or whatever it is you're getting."

The driver spoke quietly to her and I couldn't make out what he said. But her reply must have included something along the lines of

"And what are you going to do about it?" because he then said, loud enough for all to hear:

"I can refuse to take you on this bus. All of these people can travel. You cannot."

He turned and walked off in into the Square.

Ten minutes later we boarded the bus. The complaining passenger politely proffered her fare and was given a ticket. A few stops on, a friend joined her. They spoke cheerfully abut the weather and about hospital appointments and stuff like that. Then after a quarter hour their voices lowered and they whispered together. I wonder what the subject was.

Nice one, driver. I think.

Boundin'

Alas, the Boundin' little lambikins is no longer available, so I've removed the movie window for now. It is available in German and in Spanish though over at You Tube. But as I speak neither German nor Spanish, I doubt I would enjoy the same level of charm as the original.

Today on the bus another little boundin' lambikins entertained us all the way from Tallaght as his minder -- Mom or sister, I do not know -- tried to figure out a way to keep him shut up. His feature performance was:

"Eeeeeeee-er eeeeeeeeeee-ek eeeeeee-eeeeeee-er..," in a thin, reedy voice which hardly met the basic standard for a two-year old's whine at all. I'm sure if there was another two-year old on the bus, it would have been embarrassed for him. Although... he had staying power. One had to admit.

Lovely little puddin' headed, ginger-haired boy.

Ah.

An elderly lady with an American accent got off the bus a few stops before mine and waved at him profusely. She turned around and looked me straight in the eye and grinned.

Now, was that a sarcastic Granny, or what?

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-er."

You wouldn't want to be sensitive

I jumped on a bus this evening. Paid my fare to the driver, who was studiously trying to get his finger up his nostril to the second knuckle, thanked the powers-that-be that bus tickets aren't handed to the passenger any more and sat down.

There was no-one else on the bus.

"Strange," thought I. "Doubtless there will be a rush at SuperValu."

The driver obviously thought the same, because he edged a little closer to the kerb at SuperValu. But no. The people there all gave that purposeful stare behind the bus so that the driver of whatever was bringing up the rear would know to stop instead.

At the hospital there was nobody at all.

Finally, in Tallaght Village, after not one sinner I.T student (lanky or otherwise) had boarded, even when he had opened the doors in hopeful expectation, the driver climbed out of his compartment and rolled up the number of the bus.

"Where are you going to?" he asked me from the aisle.

"Firhouse," I said.

"Do you mind if I just drive down the road and not bother with going up the other way?"

"No bother at all."

"There's another bus in front," he said. "Everybody's on it."

I thought this one over. Somewhere in front was a bus with 160 people crammed in, everyone on top of each other. Five minutes behind I was lolling about in an otherwise empty bus with a lonely driver. I strolled up the empty bus to chat to him. It seemed the decent thing to do.

"It's stupid putting two buses out at the same time," he driver said to me as I broke a bye-law by standing when there were 90-odd empty seats around.

"It does seem a bit odd," I said.

We finally bumped onto Firhouse Road. He let cars out of side roads with a grin. After all, he wasn't in a hurry.

"Actually, if you're not turning right, you can drop me off at the school," I said. "It's handier for me anyway."

"Works out well for both of us then," he said.

"Cheapest taxi I ever got anyhow!"

So I thanked him and hopped off a couple of minutes from my door.

"God bless!" he called after me.

Somewhere up the side road someone was probably wondering why the bus hadn't come.