Things happen from time to time to remind us that times are changing. Like when friends of mine told me recently that they were going to Dublin to see Cliff Richard and their daughter, who is in her twenties, asked them who he was.
I thought that was hilarious and I was telling my son about it, he’s also in his twenties, and he looked at me in a way that made it obvious that he didn’t get the joke. He asked me if Cliff Richard was a black lad with a lot of hair but then he realised that he was confusing him with Lionel Richie.
I thought everyone on the Planet knew who Cliff Richard was, but it turns out that you must be of a certain vintage to be in the know.
Then there was the story about the telephone directory. An Post announced that they are going to discontinue the annual distribution of telephone books to every household in the country. That makes perfect sense given that many homes don’t even have a landline now and most of us rely solely on the mobile phone.
There was a time though, not so long ago either, when directories were essential. When I worked in An Garda Siochana, there were always a few of them knocking around the station and sometimes you would struggle to get your hands on one. They were constantly in use.
They weren’t always in one piece either and there was nothing worse than trying to find a number only to discover that the page you were looking for had been torn out. It baffled me that some people found it easier to rip out the page than write down the number.
Some young people have never even seen a phone book and there are others who wouldn’t know how to find a telephone number in one so now they are being consigned to history along with Cliff.
The mobile phone has completely changed how we communicate with each other but there are some daft aspects of this technology as well. I heard a lady called Jess Kelly on Newstalk recently and she gave five mobile phones a test run over a period of time and then rated the performance of each one.
According to Jess, the most important concerns when buying a mobile phone these days are the battery life and camera quality. The cheapest phone she reviewed was about €800 and the dearest was around €1,300. My bog-standard Samsung cost me around €80 and the battery life is fine. It also takes a good photo, allows me to use the Internet and it lets me make a call and I can’t find any justification for spending any more than that.
Another thing that has changed a lot over the years is our rail service. At least, I thought it had. Back in the early eighties, when I was stationed in Blackrock Garda Station in Dublin, I used the train on a regular basis to get up and down to Cork. Getting a ticket wasn’t complicated. You simply went to the ticket office in the railway station, bought your ticket and hopped on.
If you were lucky you got a seat but if you travelled on a Friday afternoon you’d be lucky to find space to sit on the floor. In those days, the carriages were rough and ready, and it wasn’t unusual to travel without heat or light or both and a dining car was a rare treat.
I hadn’t been on a train for a long time, but I was told that Iarnrod Eireann had gone all posh and sophisticated with new carriages that you can plug your laptop into and everything. I had to go to Dublin for surgery and I figured the journey back down on the train, after the operation, would be more comfortable than sitting in a car for three hours, so I decided to give it a whirl.
I booked online and got my single ticket for €30. I didn’t book a return because I wasn’t sure of the day or time I would be travelling back to Cork. The train was modern and comfortable, and the journey was pleasant.
I was released from hospital a few days later and I headed to Heuston Station. I wasn’t in a position to book my return ticket online, so I looked for the ticket office but of course, that’s gone the way of the phone book and now there’s just a machine.
The machine charged me €62 for a single ticket to Cork. I was feeling a bit sore and sorry for myself and walked gingerly to the carriage to get a seat. I was surprised to find that it resembled something I used back in the 80’s. It looked old and didn’t seem to be the cleanest.
I sat next to a young guy from Canada who was travelling around Ireland on a holiday and once we got going, he was looking out the window admiring the scenery. He told me he was really enjoying the countryside and I had to apologise for the fact that he could see so little of it because the windows were so dirty. They were manky.
There was no dining car either, just a trolley service and it reminded me of the old days. My wife was travelling with me, so we paid €120 for the privilege of suffering this ordeal. In hindsight, the car would have been a more comfortable option but how was I to know.
Iarnrod Eireann are planning to ban alcohol on some of their routes because of the anti-social behaviour by some passengers, but maybe they’re only trying to numb the pain of the prices and the state of the carriages.