In last month’s post I listed a few websites which I really enjoy, and which I thought readers of this blog might also enjoy. I think I’m going to create a new rule for this blog – if I talk one month about something positive, or something I like, then I’ll follow it with a bitch about something. I got absolutely soaked walking home this evening when a bus went through a puddle, so alas, my well developed rant about larger, more weighty issues will appear later in the year, while I rant about DublinBus instead.

DublinBus must have a committee which meets regularly to decide how to make taking the bus as confusing and frustrating as possible. Let’s say you want to take the 46A from Dublin city centre to Dun Laoghaire. It’s the most frequent bus route in Ireland, but yet the notice at the bus stop wouldn’t tell you when the next bus was due or what the fare would be. This annoys me. The bus shelter will give you a mass of irrelevant information such as what time a hypothetical bus left a distant garage, but not what time it will reach the customer. This is like a TV guide refusing to tell you on what channel and at what time your favourite programme will appear, but giving you details of when it was filmed and who the assistant producer was.

Last month, I turned up late at a conference because of DublinBus’s policy of making bus travel an exciting adventure. The notice board wouldn’t tell me when the bus was due, but it did tell me (in two languages) to queue sensibly and watch out for mirrors. I looked around to see if there was anyone to ask, but everyone waiting in the queue was either a pensioner or a Spanish teenager. The former get free transport so they didn’t know how much the fare was, and the latter were too busy writing on each others’ backpacks to be interested in my query. I secretly prayed the Spanish teenagers, reading neither English nor Irish, would be flattened by a passing mirror.

When a bus does arrive, you need to ask the driver what the fare is and pop the coins into the machine. The driver may – or may not, depending on his temperament – give you an additional section of receipt if you’re due a refund. You will lose this receipt. I always lose the receipt. In fact my losses on unclaimed bus fare refunds probably rival Anglo’s losses by now.

While on the bus, you have no idea where you are going. On London buses, periodic announcements, usually at major junctions, tell you where your location and it’s a fairly straight forward process to get off at the right spot. In Dublin, the trick is to mentally calculate how far you have travelled and take it from there. It’s extremely easy to get caught up in a particularly juicy story in the Metro which you find squashed between every seat, and miss your stop.

As an aside, I once lived with a woman from Uruguay who told me that Uruguayan buses don’t have bells to press in order to alert the driver you want off. Instead, when you want off, you remain seated and go “pssssst” to catch the driver’s attention. She had done an entire circuit of the Manchester city centre before she realised why everyone except drug dealers were avoiding her.

Back in Dublin, many older double decker buses have ornamental doors towards the rear of the bus. Like a hilltop folly built by an eccentric Victorian landowner to amuse his gaze, so Dublin buses have these trompe l’oeil doors fitted to amuse the customers. You think they’re doors until you get closer and you realise they’re pretend. However much you go “psssst” at the driver, they won’t open.