Sir, – Having recently become a Dublin Dart and bus commuter, I am at best slack-jawed, at worst appalled, at what I am faced with daily on my commute.
One morning recently I sat beside a young man who persistently sniffed loudly and swallowed the contents of his nasal passages. I have observed fellow passengers picking their noses and after examining their finds, either wipe it on the seat or swallow it. Is there a national collective aversion to the use of tissues? Why do people who clearly need them not use them? The cacophony of coughing with mouths wide open, as well as snorting and sniffing, is nauseating.
One is better off standing on public transport. If you’re unfortunate to sit at the window and want to exit your seat this manoeuvre needs to be planned at least three stops in advance as the likelihood of the person sitting next to you noticing you want to leave the bus is negligible. Your neighbour will be hooked up to a personal stereo system, or engaged in a telephone call to the exclusion of the outside world, or they will be frantically texting, Facebooking or Tweeting, or they will be asleep.
Parents using their children’s buggies like weapons of mass destruction are another irritation. They simply barge on to the bus or Dart, indiscriminately injuring or disrupting any unfortunate fellow passenger in their way.
Another phenomenon is the application by women of their full make-up on public transport. I find sitting next to a woman applying a full face of make-up embarrassing.
Since when did public transport become alternative eateries? Recently I sat beside a man on the Dart who devoured two apples, munching, crunching and dribbling while doing so. What was most offensive, however, was the fact he placed the two apple cores on the seat opposite him. I looked at him doing this and I can only surmise that a faint embarrassment at being “caught in the act” in a rare moment of consciousness forced him to retrieve them and put them in his jacket pocket.
I think it’s time to take my bicycle out of storage. – Yours, etc,