By Randy Jennings – Train User & Local Pervert
I have taken the train for many years. As a boy it was something that filled me with wonder, second only to that magazine I found stuffed down behind my older brother’s bed.
Part of the excitement, the exotica, if you will, was the chance to choose a snack from the trolley service, along with the cornucopia of lovely, lovely girls you’d see in the carriages.
Unfortunately, that excitement has now died.
Last weekend I needed to travel to Dublin to pick up some specialist publications, so decided to take the train for old time’s sake.
It was a sweltering day, and the air conditioning wasn’t working in my carriage, which was a bonus. At first, I was content to gaze on all the young ones in their scanty fineries, but as the heat grew I got a desperate thirst on me. I awaited the trolley’s arrival for quenching refreshment
The announcer promised they would be serving snacks and a ‘selection of minerals.’
By the time the trolley got to my carriage I was perspiring freely and in desperate need of a cold drink. I asked the woman (not that lovely, but passably cuddly) for a Coke. But she didn’t have any. Nor did she have Fanta or 7-Up. All she had left, she said, was Diet Coke.
What about the selection of minerals, I asked? Had I paid 90 odd euro for my ticket just to be fobbed off with an imitation mineral, the calorie-free equivalent of a bad boob job?
She didn’t take kindly to my questioning, or my suggestion of a quick hand shandy by way of compensation, and I was forcibly removed from the train at Limerick Junction.