Please give up your seat

What is the correct ettiquette for giving up your seat on public transport? Every time I board packed public transport I'm faced with this dilemma. Theres the standard crew you stand for-the elderly, the frail, the pregnant, people with crutches, people with children, people with guide dogs... you get the picture. These people are acceptable to offer to. Its clear cut.



Then theres the iffys. The inbetweeners. The ones with the grey hair and compressed spines who board the bus with the energy of Olympians. Sure they look old, but as they scramble along through the throng without a care or a worry you feel you'd offend them by offering them a sit down. They give you a look as much to say "Don't let these eccos or brown support tights fool you, I'm strong as an ox."



I wasn't always like this. I used to offer my seat to anyone with crows feet. A sprightly 18 was I when I offered to stand up for a woman who (in hindsight) was no more than 40. As her cheeks turned crimson she practically jumped out the window to affirm me of how little she needed that seat. A friend who was with me remarked "theres a line for who you offer your seat to on the bus and who you don't-and you just crossed it."



This post goes out to the man with the grey hair, false teeth and the lap top that I left standing for 5 stops on the luas today.

We're not there yet, but we're getting there

I took the train for the first time in a long time the other day. While I was busy slumming it with Bus Eireann for the past year it turns out the Calcutta Express was getting a makeover. I landed on track 7 in Heuston to be greeted with a train that wouldn't look out of place in a French film.
I stepped aboard and waited for my nostrils to be filled with the familiar hum of cigarettes and Supermacs, but instead I was met with a new car smell and clean upholstery. There were bins-bins- every few seats. Even the toilets had been raised to an acceptable European standard-gone was the steel bucket filled to the brim with piss and jack's roll, and in its place was a futuristic toilet capsule-complete with working flusher and a proper lock to keep the perverts at bay. I didn't even have to pick any used tampons off my shoes. Even the passengers seem to have been upgraded. Not a sunburn or can of Bulmers in sight. I disembarked in a polite fashion, in keeping with the company, and weaved my way through the designer luggage and out onto the Luas stop.
The bang of shit Dublin hash stung my airway and I snapped back to reality. As I boarded the Luas we were treated to an off the cuff rendition of "Crazy" by a lover to a lover, sung in the key of Vat 69.

We're not there yet, but we're getting there.