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June 11, 2005

One Crappy Day in April

Monday 4th April

This morning I got up early in order to catch the 12.05pm train to Dublin. I got up a bit too early though and found myself with a few hours to spare before I had to depart for the station. A film is in order. I search through the extensive DVD collection but can’t find anything I actually want to watch and that’s including the one’s I own but still haven’t seen yet. That’s one of the pitfalls of being a young Irish twenty something - you have it all but you’re still bored. I decide to open the vaults and see if I’ve any old videos worth watching. Grease - too much of John Travolta in the morning is bad for you. The Pagemaster - Oh dear God. I actually own this!? Disney’s The Fox and the Hound - Perfect! Haven’t seen it in ages and the front cover promises lot’s of cute foxes and hounds. Starts off very ominously. The credits are unaccompanied by music. All we get to see are various misty morning scenes in a forest. Then it becomes apparent that there’s a fox hunt on. A mother fox carrying her cub is being chased and then BLAM! The mother fox is shot reminiscent of Bambi’s mother’s death.

The story picks up from there as Todd, the orphaned fox cub meets Copper, the perky hound puppy who become in separable friends. It’s all great heart-warming stuff but then they grow up and that’s when the film returns too it’s unsettling opening notes. Copper is a huntin’ dog. Todd is the prey. It’s a tragedy in the Greek sense. I was in tears at the terribleness of it all. How could Disney make such a film? I always thought nothing could rival the onset of depression that watching “Watership Down” could give you but by God “The Fox and the Hound” does. So with a great start like that to my day I wandered off to Newbridge Station.

Meet Keara on the train. She studies Anthropology - the study of people. I’ve often wondered what can you actually become after studying anthropology. Keara reckons after you study it, you become an professor teaching it and join the never ending anthropology circle. It brought to mind an American magician I once saw being interviewed. He was asked what he studied when he was in college. He answered anthropology. The interviewer asked him what that qualified him to be. To which the man said “a magician”. Touché. Said goodbye to Keara on the number 92 - a bus in all my years of commuting I never knew existed. A number 92 - what will they think of next. Rushed across O’Connell Bridge and up to the third floor of Eason’s to, you’ve guessed it, the Muse Café. I really do need to find a better place to do lunch.

So after several hours of witty conversation there I joined Hank Tree and Barry Tully on the Arrow home. It was the notorious evening train that’s always packed like the Tokyo Metro. Bare this in mind then, when Hank and Barry decide to start telling jokes. Now in the interests of keeping my weekly slot here on page six I won’t dare repeat any of them sufficed to say they had to almost whisper them for fear of any one overhearing which was a waste of time considering the carriage was silent. So it came to be that I spent the entire journey home trying to keep a straight face at some of the most unspeakable baby jokes I’d ever heard.

Trains, Buses & Automobiles by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist.

Posted by LiamG at June 11, 2005 01:36 AM