I have lived in Dublin for more than 30 years now, so it was bound to happen sooner or later. But it still came as a surprise recently when I looked at myself in the mirror and realised that the day had finally arrived. I had turned into a city slicker.
Yes, I know that, according to the famous Man/Bog corollary, the slickness can never be complete in my case.
Even so, reader, consider the evidence and judge for yourself.
Breakfast
My typical morning begins these days with a breakfast punctuated by frequent checks of the Dublin Bike mobile phone app. This is because I generally accompany my cycling 11-year-old son to school, but I no longer own a bike since a thief stole the last one three years ago.
Instead now, I use the excellent JC Decaux scheme, even to the extent of having two membership cards (the second one for other family members, or for changing mounts instantly on longer trips, like horses on the old Pony Express).
Drop the toast
But my local station, which will often have 40 bicycles at 8am, may have none half an hour later.
So I have to keep an eye on the app’s real-time updates over breakfast. When bike numbers fall to single figures, it’s time to drop the toast and sprint the 100 metres to the station to grab one.
Slick as that is, however, my city driving habits have become even slicker. I still own a car, technically – it just hasn’t been capable of movement for two years, since the engine blew. Its main use at the moment is as book storage.
But at a time when I still intended replacing it, a thing called GoCar started up in Dublin, allowing members to hire vehicles by the hour, for a basic rental plus milage (minus street parking – as a perk of the system, that’s free). It’s a bit like getting a taxi, but without the driver, which has its advantages. And since the service’s last expansion, I have a GoCar station 100 metres away too.
Extravagant
On the other hand, the time and mileage charges are expensive if you’re travelling outside Dublin. So for longer journeys, I resort to conventional car hire, for a day at a time. The nearest rental company is an epic journey, by comparison, but I get there in a six-minute walk.
All this car-hiring feels extravagant, occasionally. Then I remind myself of the costs I’m not paying – tax, insurance, an average of six clamp-removal fees a year, etc.
And besides, I still have all the city’s other forms of public transport available. In fact, I find, when you don’t own a car, you don’t drive anywhere unnecessarily.
Urbanites
Being a city slicker is not all about transport, of course. It also means availing of Dublin’s many opportunities for cultural enrichment. Within a 10-minute walk of my front door, for example, there are galleries, museums, and – crucially – an art-house cinema that also serves craft beers (without access to which even the slickest urbanites can feel oppressed).
But if I’m sounding smug here, I beg the forgiveness of readers from outside Dublin, or even from the capital’s farther-flung suburbs.
For I am not so lost in slickness as to forget that there are disadvantages to urban living too.
I’m reminded of one every time I bring my deprived inner-city children to visit their country cousins, who live in bigger houses, with bigger gardens, than we do. And of course, having grown up in it, I miss the countryside itself at times, or at least a nostalgic idea of it.
At least once every May or June, for example, I still feel a terrible urge to make hay.
That aside, and no matter how slick you become at it, city life will always have drawbacks. They include the high cost of living, noise, air pollution, bike thieves, and people making painfully unnatural sounds when they say “roundabout”. But there remain the considerable conveniences.
Gym
Speaking of which, the latest amenity in my neighbourhood is – wait for it – a 24-hour gym.
I have’t joined yet and, to be honest, I’m not sure I will. As I told my teenage daughter, we already had a free 24-hour gym in the area (“it’s called the Phoenix Park”).
But I enjoy having the new one there too. It is somehow comforting to know that, in case of an emergency some night when I wake at 4am and need to lift weights, the option is available.