I have been busy and not the best of late. Hence my blog has been getting neglected once again, although with my last post hogging my bandwidth, every cloud has a silver lining

I have not even had a chance to keep up with my favourite Irish blogs, which is a shame. For a start, I have been missing a great debate on women and blogging although I am probably best out of that without the time, energy or debating skills required for combat!

For now, I’ll stick to the lighter side of life as usual. Along with the Budget (handy tax calculator here) and Christmas shopping (aaarrrgggh! The Blanchardstown Centre is now officially hell on earth), a couple of other issues have been on my mind of late:

What has happened to the Marks and Spencer Grafton Street store?

I know that they are adding a café at the Duke Street entrance, but who decided on the new layout? There is children’s stuff in the middle of the food hall and a whole load of Christmas stuff shoved all together near the tills on the first floor. The store is all over the place. Most disturbing of all, they have moved the women’s underwear section up to the second floor right beside the men’s shirt and tie section. I do mean right beside each other. I don’t know whether some matchmaker in M&S thinks that lots of romances will start when a guy picking a tie bumps into a girl flicking through the bras, but I have already witnessed a few awkward looks being exchanged!

Why are the new bus stops on the south quays back to front?

At least 2 bus shelters on the south quays opposite the four courts have been replaced recently. The new versions are a big improvement - all glass and silver with a much longer seat - except that they face the wrong way. I’ll try and take a picture (exciting!) but basically the glass side is nearer the road and if you are sitting down on the seat you have your back to the traffic. Even if you are standing under it, two thirds of the back of the shelter are filled in with timetables and adverts so it is not too easy to see which buses are coming.

I seem to recall the bus stops in Edinburgh being like this, but I don’t think they will work in Dublin. In the lashing rain during rush hour last week, there were about 30 people at my stop. About half of us were sheltering under the Riverbank theatre building which is quite handy. Just one person was standing in a corner under the shelter and one other person was sitting down in the shelter. Everyone else preferred to stand out on the path under their umbrellas.

Thankfully it’s a while since I studied statistics, but even I can work out that there is next to no chance of seeing your bus in time to get it to stop for you if you are sitting on that seat!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 10th, 2005 at 8:49 pm and is filed under irish, pick n mix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.