Sorry, Got To Dawdle, I Have A Dublin Bus To Catch

[I recently found the following piece, literally, in the bottom drawer of my work desk, read it and decided to blog it here, just as was written, well over 30 years ago.

I lived in Sandymount, Dublin, around 1992-94, and I used to get the Number 3 bus in and out of town. It wasn’t the most reliable service, and it inspired the ensuing piece.

The piece was typed on my very first word processor, and printed on one of those old line printers that used continuous form paper, the machine rattling over and back across the page, and leaving a wonderful trail of printed words behind as it did so, and you were eventually left with a perfectly ploughed field of words, paragraphs and stories. When finished, you would rip away the printed piece, tear off the individual pages and staple them together]

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Waiting for the Number 3 bus gives you time to think. Especially if you live in Sandymount, as I do, because it’s our only bus to town and back.

Indeed, the Number 3 is so unreliable that while you’re waiting for it you can get your full day’s proper thinking done in one or two stints — there and back — and switch smugly back to idiot mode for the rest of the day.

Well that’s what some of my fellow passengers choose to do. Become idiots, that is, when it comes to queuing and waiting.

The queue — hah! — builds up around the stop as we wait for our-double-decker Godot.

You’ll get the odd flash of exasperation, usually from map-wielding foreigners who take our bus timetables literally, but most of us stand there, thinking away, a picture of stoic rumination … until the bus finally yelps to a harassed stop beside us.

Queue pandemonium.

Now, it’s every stoic ruminant for his or herself. Two million years of evolutionary advancement abandoned, as if it has all been one big cosmic trance, and we are back in our wugga-wugga cavemen days, every stranger the enemy as we battle to survive, or at least get a front seat.

Especially at the Number 3 terminus.

A solid wodge of bodies squeezes as one into the doorwell, women, children and shopping trolley old dears first.

Of course, I am above all this — but I was here before that ponce with the brown leather brief case, which has battered a few knees already, and I do want my favourite window seat at the back on the right …

The thing is, waiting for the Number 3 bus can be such a rich and rewarding experience, if approached in the right way.

For instance, one evening, there was this fisherman type at the stop, with all the gear: rod, net, raingear, wellies, and silly Woody Allen-type bucket hat collapsed around his ears.

And a thought suddenly struck me: the silent thrill the commuter feels when their overdue bus finally arrives is, I am sure, similar to that felt by our fisher man friend when he feels that tug on his submerged line.

And sure this bus journey will only cost me 80p and I can wear any kind of hat I like.

Waiting for the Number 3 bus teaches you about life. For every good bus day, when your chariot arrives with you at the stop, there are those bad bus days.

Days when the driver passes you by with disdain because, you were the only passenger at the stop and in your catatonic stupor, you forget to signal the bus to stop, or the sadistic so-and-so ignores your Olympic sprint and frantic wave and scream because you are still 18 inches away from the stop as he accelerates past.

And it’s usually raining and horrible. So you find yourself standing all alone ten yards past a city bus stop, way out on the road, ignoring the honking horn of the driver whose car you are impeding, and shouting a stream of x-rated invective at the back of a diminishing green mechanical vehicle.

‘Sorry, Sister,’ you say, red-faced with anger and embarrassment to the little nun who has just arrived at the stop. ‘You’ve just missed it,’ you tell her, with no little pleasure.

But really, what the Dublin Bus company are actually doing is helping you to get in touch with the real you. Helping you to properly express yourself, to release those unexorcised demons of anger and hatred towards humanity, or at least Number 3 queue jumpers. So, be beside yourself, your insides molten with fury, and strip away that veneer of dull respectability.

Go on, let that silent lava of outrage flow. No one will heed you anyway, even if you actually voice your displeasure at this latest existential kick in your nether regions, and the unfairness of it all, least of all the driver when the chariot of gloom does show up.

I don’t know about you, but when I am calm, it always seems to be at the bus stop that I think of that withering retort I should have used in an argument, or to that blinding bit of office banter that mowed me down good and proper just I was gathering my stuff to leave.

Indeed, by the time the bus arrives, I’ve turned the whole encounter on its head and vanquished my slick tormentor ten times over with ever-evolving feats of debating derring-do. The Errol Flynn of riposte and repartee, I spring up the steps of the bus, my cheekbones glinting and my dashing moustache a-twirl. But by the time I sink into my seat it is too late, the mild euphoria experienced at the bus finally arriving has passed.

The thing to do, of course, is to plan your argument at the bus stop, on the way in to town, to water it, nurture it and then after winding up your chosen victim, hit them with with your pre-prepared rebuttal or killer line. Why ever lose an argument again?

It must be something about working for Dublin Bus, and always being hassled for your bus turning up late, or arriving in twos, and even threes, but have you ever won an argument with a Dublin Bus driver? Me neither. So skilled and disparaging are they, in fact, you are often left thinking that yes, indeed, you are the crank and knave.

I mean, during the second last bus strike … sorry, service disruption … one driver patiently explained to me that since the Number 3, which normally goes right across town, from southside to northside, was now only going from town to the southside (which included Sandymount) the service, in fact, was more frequent than usual. And this after me waiting for over 50 minutes for his bus!

You see, we live too fast in this capital city and for me, it takes waiting for the Number 3 bus to slow things right down. Times passes slower at the bus stop.

Even that ad poster on the bus shelter doesn’t change for weeks and weeks. Like, you’re watching a TV ad and it’s gone in a few seconds, and you mightn’t even figure out the actual product being promoted; but a bus shelter poster, you can peruse for minutes, days, weeks, become intimate with its stars, as you marvel at the elegant type face of that punchline you will come to know by heart …

Ah, the untold bliss of arriving at the stop of a morning to find a new poster in all its pristine glory! New love about to blossom.

At this stage, you’re probably wondering why, since I live in Sandymount, I don’t just get the DART train? First of all, I live over ten minutes from the train station and the bus goes right by my door. But the real truth is that, part from the fact there’s no driver to glare at you when you don’t have the exact change for the fare, the vital element of surprise that you get with the Number 3 service is absent.

Anyway, got to dawdle, I have a bus to catch …