What's better than getting up at 6.30am every morning? Breaking your neck for a DART and it being five minutes late? Or breaking your neck for the same DART the next morning, only for it to be close to 10 minutes late? Or (at this stage, stupidly) breaking your neck for the same DART again on Wednesday, for it to be 17 minutes late?
No. What's better than all that smooshed together is deciding to go for the earlier DART at 7.07am, only for it to be a minute early and then having to wait 25 minutes for the elusive "7.22". Yes, it's my annual rant about the DART, which is usually offset by the new timetable.
With the best part of half an hour to kill, I opened up a conversation with the nice man behind the desk (he was very nice, most DART dudes have been known to either ignore or, at best, grunt disdainfully) by smiling brightly and saying:
"Can you please tell me where the 7.22 DART has gone? It's getting later and later. In fact, it's started arriving at the same time as the 7.35 train - but there's only one train turning up. They wouldn't be morphing one train into another effectively getting rid of a train, now would they?"
"Oh no, love, there'd be some kind of announcement. Things like this always happen when there's a new timetable ('cause there's all of three Darts an hour and a myriad of routes. It's like Grand Central station at times)."
"Yeah, but isn't it weird that there's no tannoy announcement saying the 7.22's late due to 'Operational problems', or 'The late arrival of an incoming train'."
I wanted to add "Or fecking 'leaf slip', or 'Sneaky cuts masquerading as ineptitude', but at this point the nice man had invited me behind his desk to show me his board, so I wouldn't think he was just "fobbing" me off. It said there was a DART due from Greystones, which was indeed meant to arrive at 7.22am, but it was going to take another 22 minutes, and it was currently 7.15am. "That's all the info they give me, love."
I ventured, "Is the DART increasingly late because a Diesel train has to trundle through first?" He responded "Oh, no, no, that wouldn't happen." A diesel bound for Connolly sped past at exactly 7.22am... That makes the nice desk man either a liar or grossly misinformed. Not sure which is worse.
There's only one reasonable explanation. Irish Rail appear to be hoping those frustrated souls aiming to get the 7.22am will start getting the 7.07am or the 7.35am. I'd have to rouse the bones closer to 6am to get the former, while the latter has the DART's biggest scourge - chattering school childer with bags as big as elephants and an infuriating array of ways to say the word Euro. "Yeeero", "Eearo", "Oooohroh"...
It's one thing to have a mere three trains an hour to cater for the morning rush in a capital city, it's another thing when they can't even turn up on time... Before I careen down the same ranty path as last year, about how - as the Metro Herald pointed out on Tuesday - our internal transport system is antiquated in the extreme (yes, I know we're lucky to have one, unlike any other city in the country) I just want to ask the good people of Irish Rail, who I'm about to forward this article on to, the following question:
Where, oh where, has the 7.00am Greystones DART gone? It's on your new timetable...