Friday, November 4, 2011

sometimes i feel like i'm over and out

It is one of the oddities of Dublin life that if one is fortunate enough to live close enough to one's place of work to only have to pay a €1.20 fare on the bus every morning then there is no other way to pay one's fare but by having that €1.20 counted out in exact change.* This morning, I finally succumbed to the eternal battle with change by not having any of the fucking stuff. So I hopped into Freddie's cornershop on my way to the bus stop and bought an 80 cent packet of chewing gum and a €1 scratchcard with a twenty, providing me with the requisite change. I was still on time for the bus and my scratchie showed three little €2 symbols, meaning I had covered the cost of the scratchie, endowed myself with minty fresh breath and netted a tidy profit of 20 cent.

Some days I swear I am invincible.


*Unless, of course, there is. I am open to correction on this.

3 comment(s):

Jo said...

Well, that's a nice story.

But on less fortunate days, perhaps Sir could purchase a bus card, no?

Anonymous said...

You can also overpay and they give you a receipt which you need to go the the Bus Station to redeem.

Andrew said...

Jo - Do you mean the Smartcard? I'm looking into that, but I've a feeling that the readers for it haven't been set up on all the buses yet. Any weekly or monthly tickets are no use because they only provide value if you're going fairly far, or changing bus during your journey.

Anon - I'm an avid collector of dublin bus receipts, and enjoy wrecking the cashier's head by handing in a good rake of them, but on this occasion I had no coins whatsoever.