I use public transport – a lot. What I most like about it of course, is that for senior citizens of my vintage it is free to use here in Ulster. So, being a skinflint, I use it extensively.

Now, I don’t want to be over critical, – after all, our public transport in Northern Ireland is vastly superior to that in some other jurisdictions. We have clean modern trains that run on time and can usually get you to your destination without the risk of getting mugged.  Buses that are punctual and clean and with reasonably polite and helpful drivers (speaking generally). But if there is one minor criticism that I hope I am allowed to offer on the subject of public transport it is this…

APOLOGIES TO THOSE WHO SPEAK PROPER ENGLISH. This post contains a lot of colloquial idiosyncratic diction. (Slang!) It’s just the way we spake over here, so it is…

It is PUBLIC. Too public for comfort.  I know there’s little that Translink can do about the public nature of its public transport, but at least allow me the comfort of having a decent rant about it.

I caught a late-ish train to Coleraine. Normally on that journey I would travel earlier in the day, but on this occasion, an impromptu decision to go up to the North Coast, to ‘get my heid shired’ resulted in my getting on board a half empty train departing from Antrim Station. I picked a carriage at random, after all there seemed to be plenty of seats, and I chose one of those seats you have to give up in favour of someone with walking difficulties… extra leg room and all. 

As we pulled away from the station I realised I’d made a huge mistake. A group of eight or ten teenage girls further up the compartment began or maybe resumed, a noisy badinage of joking and bantering each other, ribald comments and innuendo laden remarks, producing raucous laughter and screams of pretend shock, punctuated with the usual ‘OMG’ blasphemies. To add to their racket, two feral children, late primary school age, decided that the carriage was a playground, and began racing, screaming loudly, up and down the aisle. It was torture. 

But, after what seemed like an eternity, the train arrived at Coleraine, and I trudged wearily over to the stand from which the direct bus to Portstewart departs. It had, naturally, done just that – departed. Never mind, there’s one in just under an hour, if you care to wait, alone, in the drafty concourse, or, of course you can take the one that goes in the opposite direction, and reaches Portstewart via Portrush. Great idea. NOT – at least not at that time of the night. 

I sat alone on the 140B bus all the way to Dunluce Avenue. It was like heaven on earth after the noisy train carriage, but as we approached the Portrush bus stand my heart sank. Gathered at the stop was a crowd of revellers; Belfast holiday makers, returning to their caravans and AirB’n’Bs after an evening of inebriation in the holiday capital of the coast. The bus stopped. The doors opened and they swarmed on board, accompanied by a distinct waft of alcohol. At least I know I still haven’t contracted Covid… 

Loudly, they announced their various destinations. One woman couldn’t understand how the bus that brought her here wasn’t the same route number as the bus taking her back. The driver was patiently explaining, with hand gestures, that the two routes run in a circle, crossing over at Portstewart, and both eventually arriving back in Coleraine. When she eventually reached her seat, she was still telling her husband that she couldn’t get her head around the way these ‘country buses’ operate. 

Another poor soul asked the driver if he could wait, while she went for a pee, for she ‘wis bustin, so she wis…’. He helpfully informed her that he could not wait, but that she should. And anyway the public toilets would be closed at that time. With her friend beside her, she sat down heavily in the seat ahead of me, exclaiming, “G-d, I’m wetting m’self, so I am…’ (Or words to that effect). Their male partners sat across the aisle, bantering each other across the width of the bus, while other members of the drinking classes found seats nearer the back of the bus, and began a tuneless racket of what sounded like country and western … or maybe not. The bus left Portrush much ‘fuller’ that it had arrived. If you get my drift.

But it soon began to empty, as it made stops along the coast between Portrush and Portstewart, stopping at the various caravan sites, where raucous teenagers alighted, prompting within me a wave of sympathy for their caravanning neighbours who just wanted a good night’s sleep. The Promenade emptied a cadre of drunken middle aged women, one of whom announced, to no-one in particular that they were ‘going for a poke,’ for Morellis was still open and queued out the doors as usual. More revellers alighted at Strand Road, and the woman who doesn’t understand bus routes got off with her husband  at Burnside Corner, and calm reigned, at least for the last two stops before I alighted at Agherton Village, where I was dismayed by the simultaneous arrival of the empty direct bus from Coleraine to Portstewart, coming in the opposite direction, – the one I could have been on, had I waited.  Still at least I’ve arrived, and all is quiet. At last. 

-oOOo-

Next Day I woke early, writhing in agony with a cramp in my leg and foot. So I decide to get up, have a shower and breakfast, spend a little time on Coleraine, getting some essentials for my upcoming foreign adventure, and then catch the train back to Antrim.

Shopping done, tea and GF scone in Moore’s consumed, and I’m now on the station platform, some ten minutes before departure, leaning against a wet railing, waiting for the arrival of the train. Beside me, on the crowded platform and a few feet away from me, a swivel eyed, mildly deranged looking man, whom I have now nicknamed ‘Crashing Bore’ is casting around for a victim. It’s not going to be me. I avoid eye contact, and am grateful that Janette is not with me. She would have sheen tempted to say hello and we’d have been doomed.  Eagerly he fixes his attention on a man and woman who have just arrived. He’s found his victims. It goes something like this:

Crashing Bore: ‘Where yis aff tae the day then?’ Bilfast, eh? Do yis live there, are yis on a wee holiday up here? (No, they live in Portrush). 

Crashing Bore: ‘Portrush eh? Whereabouts in Portrush?’  ‘Oh aye… Dae yis know Willie McManus then, he’s a great dairy farm oot that way?’ No, they didn’t know Willie, but by the time the train arrived Crashing Bore certainly knew a lot about them. 

I raced up the platform, for the train was well full, – full of Derry Wans all heading up to the city for the Flaaaaa. But I’d spotted a lot of empty seats in one carriage and I was determined to get one of them. I did. I found a seat and lowered myself into it. 

Sadly Crashing Bore had seen the less occupied carriage too, and so had his victims. The Portrush couple had sat down across the aisle from me, and one row back. Determined not to let go of his catch, Crashing Bore planted himself right next to me, same seat. I was trapped. The carriage was now full. He resumed. At full volume. I turned off my hearing aids. Now I couldn’t hear his victims’ replies, but his voice would not be silenced. 

Crashing Bore: ‘My young lad’s a doctor y’ know. Up in the Royal. The wife’s well proud o’ him, but tae be honest, I’d a preferred if he’d just stayed on the farm wi me.’

I tried to sleep. It didn’t work.

Crashing Bore: ‘I’m not jist a farmer ye know, I work for the monastery of agriculture. I’ve been in lots of different jobs in the monastery, oh aye.’

I decided to attempt the News Letter crossword. I couldn’t concentrate. I’m getting weary.

Crashing Bore: ‘I’m 62 ni.  – Ah’ll be 63 next year.

Me: You don’t say.  I’m losing the will to live. I need to stay hydrated or my brain is going to freeze. But my bottle of Diet Coke is in my bag, which is on the floor and I can’t reach down to it, because Crashing Bore has pinned me to the window with his back while he gesticulates wildly to illustrate his next piece of useless information.

Crashing Bore: ‘I needed tae go tae the ‘osspital m’self there a while beck.’  (At this point he had launched into a vivid description of his symptoms, with great enthusiasm and wild arm gestures – the cause of my imprisonment). He went on… ‘Of cooorse the wife thought the worst, but luck… Ah’m still here and doin’ rightly.  Oh here… this is my station.  Nice tae meet ye. What did ya say yer name wis?’ They hadn’t. And they didn’t. 

It was Ballymena station, and Crashing Bore left the train after an hour of high volume boring pointlessness. Others might call it ‘conversation.’  But as the train doors hissed closed, the tea trolly proceeded down the aisle, and the male victim ordered two black coffees. “Make them extra strong please, with lots of sugar…”

I alighted at Antrim, my conviction reinforced, that our public transport really is wonderful, apart from the ‘public’ bit.  On Thursday I have to get on a plane…