All this Luas talk, and bus talk and car gridlock talk, not to forget DART. And nobody ever mentions the simplest way of getting to work, which is not open to everyone but surely is to those who live within two or two-and-a-half miles of their office - to get on your feet and walk. And it's not just Dublin to which this applies.
People who will flog them themselves into a lather going round golf courses, to the point of having to be revived at the bar with stiff drinks, don't think that the city is a place for walking. The air isn't as good as it might be on the links, but it is better than you get sitting in your car, looking at the rear of the vehicle in front of you and inhaling its exhaust fumes in an enclosed interior. And, above all, walking two or even three miles to work is bound to improve your health and your efficiency in office or courtroom; it will probably lengthen your life and, above all, is proving you to be a good citizen of this country. A patriot.
It certainly stimulates the brain, sharpens your mind for the day's work. Watch the trees grow greener just now. And in one case grow purple, for twice a walker came across what looked like a dumping of broccoli, once covering a nice white car. It was an ash tree shedding its flowers, purplish and green. You note the way in which the city is changing, not always for the good, with its army of builders and its gross machinery everywhere. So it rains? There are umbrellas and raincoats. Doctors keep telling us that it is not only heart patients who need regular (repeat regular) exercise, especially in the form of well-paced walks. It keeps the circulation going, the whole works, and stimulates the mind.
An old newspaper hand used to tell of his early days in the Irish Press, when, at four o'clock in the morning, and sometimes at six o'clock, he and a colleague used to walk, in all but hurricane conditions the three miles or so home after a night's work. Taxis were beyond them. The elder of the pair, about 70 years of age, was an almost daily performer at the Forty Foot pool at Sandycove.
Oh, and talking of walks, there's Denis Carroll's splendid, slim pocket pamphlet, costing about £2: Dublin in 1798: Three Illustrated Walks - You could do these at the weekend.