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June 05, 2005

Get Off The Tracks!

Liam’s Bedroom, Monday 14th April

Ah, bliss. The second week of my Easter break from that fine institution of education –Rathmines College. Instead of standing on the platform at Newbridge Station, I’m lying snugly in bed. No frantic dashes to the station. No paying of ridiculous amounts of money for a student ticket. No sitting in a stuffy carriage. No trouble trying to open the dodgy train door with everyone staring at me. No stampede through Heuston to get to the 91 bus. No sitting beside a noisy Walkman playing The Best Of Diana Ross all the way to O’Connell Bridge. No long waiting for the number 15 bus on Nassau St. No realisations that I’m 20 minutes late for my first class. No running up to the top of Leinster Road and then realising I’ve forgotten my Politics assignment. No nothing. Just pure, unadulterated bliss. The Arrow rumbles by near my abode, making my bed even cosier. I live near the tracks you see. The wrong side of them, of course. After a final yawn, I hop out of bed. It’s a magnificent day in Newbridge. Blue sky, epic white clouds and a sun that would put Florida to shame. After I collect the morning papers, it’s time for a good cup of tea and a read. The first text of the day comes through from Jeff informing me that there’s some sort of pirate porno radio station broadcasting from Kildare on the airwaves. Intrigued (and slightly baffled) at the idea, I flick through the radio frequencies. No such luck. Back to the papers.

The mobile beeps again with the arrival of another text. It’s Shane Mackey, lead vocalist of $chmackey & the Salads, who incidentally will be playing at the Bealtaine Youth Day on the 3rd May in the Arts Centre. Talk about a shameless plug, eh? Anyway, his text reads, “Trains, Buses and Automobiles? Nah! It should be called ‘Liam’s Weekly Love Chat’.” Somehow I’m going to stick with Trains, Buses and Automobiles. If my aspirations in Love happen to occur whilst commuting then what else can I do but write about them. I continue reading and eating toast until the phone beeps once again. This time it’s a text from Lorcan Garrett. And in a strange coincidence his text is also about the name of my column. “Your column should be renamed ‘Commuter’s Hell’. The amount of s**t that can go down on one journey is amazing.” Lorcan is something of a commuter-virgin and what us hardcore commuters experience every day, he has only just discovered. His text continues, “Like today on the train I had to stand at the window area and ended up getting into a conversation with a drunk holding a can of Guinness. With his slurred speech and the deafening noise of the train, I didn’t hear a word he said. He came back a while later smoking with countless No Smoking signs around us and the day is not even over!” Too true. The madness of public transport in Ireland is certainly a unique one. Every country has its own public transport quirks though. When I was on the underground Metro in Rome, I noted signs saying, “Please beware of pickpockets.” No sooner had I read the sign, I noticed someone’s hand in my pocket! The hand in question quickly retracted after it noticed I had spotted it. Over in Tokyo they actually have to employ people to push commuters onto the trains. An e-mail from my American comrade, Marty Beckerman, author of Generation S.L.U.T. and Death to All Cheerleaders, reveals how things are on the other side of the pond. He says, “The Subway in DC is surprisingly clean and efficient. New York’s subway is more of an experiment in anarchy, but it’ll get you places.” So you see were not alone in our daily torture. Millions of commuters across the globe are experiencing it too. The light at the end of the tunnel is an Arrow. Get off the tracks!

Trains, Buses & Automobiles by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist (page 6)

Posted by LiamG at June 5, 2005 09:01 PM