Public transport has its shambolic moments, but the variety of your fellow passengers more than compensates, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
WELL, WE started out of Dublin about 10 o’clock. It was the usual public transport experience: old ladies and people with prams having to form a long queue, and stand in it for 15 minutes, before being allowed on to the train. But because it was Christmas Eve there was a lot more luggage being toted.
We may have been a little late in leaving Heuston station, but we stopped not five minutes later at Inchicore, opposite the old railway works, and we were there for quite a while. A foreign lady, who said she was our host, told us on the tannoy that the driver was worried about the engine. By 10.30 we were stopped at the Clondalkin/Forkhill station, and we were all worried about the engine.
This is where our problems began. One train had to be decanted into another. The passengers had to take their bags and climb a lot of steps and walk across a footbridge and take their bags down the other side. The whole of the Clondalkin/Forkhill station was covered with ice. The station lift was shut off by a smart white steel shutter.
Definitions of emergency vary. In Dublin, my local hairdresser had taken his first blow-dry at 5.30 this Christmas Eve morning. Here at Clondalkin station, a group of Dublin ladies, who had had their thermos flasks out since the start, took it all in pioneering spirit.
The lone male among them, whose name, remarkably, was Christy, was worried as they disembarked. “Girls,” he said, although there was not one of the ladies under 65. “Girls, be careful. Another girl is after falling out there.”
It is remarkable how lightly some old ladies travel. Several got off the train with only a small overnight bag. These ladies seemed to be dressed in tweed coats, and one could imagine them returning to the family homestead for one night only, before being rapidly driven back to town.
But most of the old ladies had wheelie cases which had to be carried up frozen steps. The contingent of mothers with buggies was smaller. A young woman offered one mother her help, grasping the bottom of the pushchair. The mother held the top end of the buggy by one handle only, presumably carrying something heavy in her other hand.
The child, who was two or three, consequently rolled towards the ground a little, as a consequence of this uneven support. Children in buggies do seem to have a preternatural calm.
At this point a large man in a high visibility vest came barrelling down the steps of the bridge saying “I didn’t know you were here”, and whisking mother, baby and buggy off through the crowd to open the station lift at last.
I tried to alert old ladies to this new development, but they had their own protectors at this stage, who naturally resented intrusion. In fact the concern for old passengers was exemplary – among the other passengers.
We settled into the new train with ease. “Get me my phone,” cried one of the Dublin ladies, “Til I call Joe.” Then she and her friends set to singing Winter Wonderland, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, and some song with a complicated lyric which involved driving to Castlebar.
By this time the shimmering sunny morning, which had allowed us to see the frost-covered fields and hedgerows, and the chunks of ice floating in the canal, had given way to dull, freezing fog. We were in south Tipperary. The ladies sang Don’t Laugh At Me Because I’m A Fool, Travellin’ Light and Livin’ Doll. As we left Limerick Junction, they sang All The Nice Girls Love A Sailor, which is a lot ruder than its chorus might lead you to expect, and Oh, Mister Woo.
These ladies were irresistible. Their companion, Christy, persisted in helping men much younger than himself with their luggage, and was beginning to look a little tired. But the ladies were swinging into It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie, then My Way, and, unfortunately as far as some of us were concerned, The Rare Oul’ Times. They also sang This Is The Story of My Life.
Then we hit Mallow and were told that we had to change trains for a second time – our third train. Another footbridge, another frozen platform. Another lift, or pair of lifts (one on each side of the track). The lift door kept closing before anyone could get their suitcase into it. Bemused male rail employees said that the women were too impatient, not giving the lifts time to land. The lift users were mainly women under 50, by the way, with large pastel suitcases stuffed with gifts and Christmas clothes. There was quite a wait on the cold platform at Mallow for the 11 o’clock from Dublin to arrive.
I never saw the Dublin ladies once we were settled into our third train of the day. We arrived into Cork shortly after two o’clock. At the station a very nice man gave out compensation forms, and apologised, which was seemly. But there was no sign of the Dublin ladies, who must have been whisked to their hotel. Some of us were thinking of the January sales.
And we were thinking, once this generation of Dublin ladies is gone, they’re gone.