I was only back in Dublin for three days. Now I’m home again and it feels like I never left.
Except that my mammy washed my sheets and now my bed has that warm tumble-dryer smell. Lovely.
I usually have a hate/hate relationship with trains and today was no different (if not worse). Y’see, I was silly enough to forget to renew my student travel card before the Christmas holidays. No worries, I thought, I’ll just nip into the Iarnrod Eireann office on Abbey St on my way to Heuston. Easy, right? Wrong. Because they don’t issue student travel cards there, oh no, you can only do that in universities (or by sending off an application form).
This was very worrying indeed. It meant that I would have to pay full price for a ticket. And I had no idea how much that would be, but I knew it would be a lot.
To add injury to insult, I missed the LUAS because of the woman in front of me at the ticket machine, a homeless man and some technotards, and had to wait ten minutes for another one. I’m impatient at the best of times but even more so when I’m moody. The only thing that managed to cheer me up was a guy standing beside me who looked like James from Klaxons, only taller. Swoon…!
But my good mood was shortlived as I asked for a single ticket to Tralee and heard “That’s €59 please”.
My heart stopped. My jaw dropped. I wouldn’t be surprised if I paled slightly too.
It near killed me to hand over that much. If I had renewed my card I would have only had to pay €31.50.
Being a student (and an unemployed one at that) I can’t afford to be spending so much on a single train ticket. Needless to say I was depressed for the rest of the day and allowed myself to indulge in my guilty pleasure of Laguna Beach: Season One.
