Rear To The Ground

There was an election recently in this country with a voter turnout in places of around 40 %. It was still the only story covered for a week.

The thinking behind this presumably goes something like this – the public placed on record their lack of interest by not bothering to show up to vote but we’re still going to lead with it for several days in case of a mass, miraculous, unprecedented simultaneous change of heart.

To which we say; good luck with that.  

Welcome Home

We are just back from two weeks in London with our four children. We all had a great time, there were no incidents or issues to speak of, apart from one late train at Waterloo everything went swimmingly.

We got the ferry back to Dublin. In the arrivals hall the baggage carousel was broken. Outside the terminal there were absolutely no public transport links to the city or anywhere for that matter. There was however no shortage of surly taxi drivers with their painted on “come here till I put the saddle on you” sneers lying intimidatingly up against their vehicles. There was one privately operated bus to Connolly manned by a fella who didn’t know the way to anywhere that was not on his memorized route and could not advise any of the confused tourists about onward travel. There was no information or even basic signage that might have assisted an anxious first time visitor to the country.

At the Luas station in Connolly we were greeted by a dozen or so junkies on a bench intimidating passers by. Beginning at the Four Courts stop the entire carriage was treated to two of Fatima Mansions’ finest teenage progeny racially abusing and threatening a Spanish chap who brushed off them accidentally as the train jerked to a stop at the station. The onward bus, only coming only from the airport was fifteen minutes late at the Red Cow.

It can’t possibly be reasoned or extrapolated from this freakish sequence of minor incidents that Ireland is a shithole, but Jaysus it was quite startling.    

Running

A run takes up a fair chunk of time. It takes me about fifty minutes to run six miles but the preamble; the forraging for suitable socks, locking up the dogs etc. takes at least that again. Then you have the mandatory basking in the smug glow of your accomplishment when you return, striding back and forth, stretching, groaning. That's directly proportionate to the distance you've covered  and is not to be rushed. Only when you've wrung all you can out of that can you contemplate heading for the shower.

It's a big job all told, that's probably why most people don't bother their arse.