Sir, – At Shankill Dart station the other morning, one of the ticket machines was out of commission. The other’s screen displayed the information that it would accept neither note nor coin. No one was on duty in the ticket office but I was gratified to see that the poster detailing rules and fines was no longer upside down and too high to read.
Assuming the character of Dart Evader, I travelled free to Killiney, where I purchased a return to the city. My journey was enlivened, as it often is, by the confusion of tourists listening to recorded information that “This train is for Greystones” as we sped in the opposite direction.
More amusing by far, however, was my return trip. I was just dozing about 10 minutes into my journey when four young ladies and their male companion entered the carriage at, appropriately enough, Lansdowne Road, and, to the accompaniment of screamed obscenities and raucous laughter, head-butted and booted a football around until an unlucky shot sent it whizzing through the door at Booterstown.
No whit downcast, the girls treated us to a lively acapella rendition of the perennial favourite Did You Ever Get Your Hole?, while their male companion swung himself about on the straps.
I confess I found it difficult to concentrate on my Crosaire while a girl pogoing on the seat opposite enquired in song if I'd "ever had a feel" or "ever got it in". It seemed to put the elderly nun opposite right off her Everyman edition of The Imitation of Christ too. But when the young man , by now weary of his Johnny Weissmuller routine, loudly broke wind and the ladies mimed fainting and began opening windows, who could fail to see the funny side of it?
At Blackrock, announcing that this was “Too f***ing boring”, the little troupe departed.
The man next to me (clearly a boring old rhymes-with-Dart) quoted Wodehouse to the effect that it made one wonder if man was really nature’s last word.
I just hope that the CCTV they kept announcing on the train for our “safety and convenience” was working. On YouTube it would get a million hits. – Yours, etc,
TOM MATHEWS,
Dublin 18.