Wrong side of the tracks

The delegation going to meet the Minister for Health, whom one of them refers to as "the Mata Hari", gather on the train with all the anxiousness of a group of kids on an outing to Dublin. They count themselves on; four here, two joining them in Limerick and some driving. They check their statistics, adding the latest. Saying that they shouldn't overestimate the importance of the medical profession, one of them quotes from The Observer article of the day before, which recalls that during a month-long strike of doctors in Israel some years ago, the death rate in the country actually went down. Much hollow laughter.

As we near Limerick, one is assigned to make the dash to the station kiosk to buy the newspapers and a moment of tension creeps in when an Irish Times reader seems destined to get stuck with the Indo. He puts his foot down and two ITs are agreed on, all to be purchased from the €12 change due to one of them from the ticket purchase.

There is one woman among them. The men check out who is without a tie and explain why. The woman says she has a scissors to trim her fly away hair before meeting the Minister. The men look slightly alarmed. I'm wondering if Mary Harney's people think to run the metal detectors over the delegations. Remove the scissors. Let them tear their hair out instead.

The newspapers reported subsequently that the delegation pointed out to the Minister that "the lives of Clare patients are being put at risk due to seriously 'unsafe' practices, along with a lack of consultants and modern medical equipment at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Ennis."

I don't know why it is but the train folk have become more serious of late. More subdued. In the late summer and autumn, it seemed full of people who effed and blinded and worse into their cell phones from the time we left Dublin on the Friday return journey. Some effers got off in Templemore and some blinders in Thurles and it must be said that a fair few who were not short on the C-word survived until Limerick and Ennis.

It took some getting used to. Sitting maybe with an older couple and behind you a mother and two children and across the way a young man getting an update on the Olympics and expressing his amazement "F off, you're jokin' me, you effin' C you." We all look out the window. Nobody tackles him. Nobody dares.

My personal lowest moment was caused by a young man who phoned his friend (or was it friends?) every 15 minutes of a three-hour journey, each conversation commencing with a low pitched, guttural, "How're ya, Horse?" Around him, we graduated from sharing surreptitious smiles to exasperated sighs; from disbelief to Waiting for Godot resignation. The survivors burst ahead of him like corks out of a bottle when the train reached Ennis. But it wasn't over, because in the silence of the night and in the midst of the most emotional or intimate moments, I have found that "How're ya, Horse?" still rears.

But the cursing and swearing have lessened of late. It is mostly reserved for novice travellers who stayed faffing around Heuston until 25 minutes before the 5.10pm departure and, on boarding, are horrified to find that there is hardly a seat left empty. The regulars are queuing up 50 minutes before departure. We are silent and cunning. Run for the magazine and the cup of coffee and place ourselves for the chance of a window seat.

Friday after Friday we board the train for Ennis, but for the Iarnród Éireann staff it is really the Limerick train and the Ennis thing is a kind of aberration, an extra, like when the CIÉ buses would deliver cardboard boxes of day-old chicks. We may or may not have to change in Limerick for the connection to Ennis. We only find out in the minutes before arrival in Limerick when a crackly voice will say either "All those travelling to Ennis, change in Limerick. Limerick now, last stop". Which is pretty straightforward, but we are just as likely to be told "All those travelling to Ennis, remain on the train. Limerick now, last stop". Only the novices buy into the confusion.

One way or another, whether we stay on the big Dublin train, and rattle on to Ennis in great roomy splendour, or whether we are packed sardine-tight into a wee, four-carriage commuter train, all of us who live not where we love will reach home. As we trundled through one of the less salubrious housing estates of Limerick last Friday, a thrown stone hopped off the metal above the window.

Who knows if the stone was thrown in protest against Clare County Council's "not an inch" response last week to mounting pressure from Limerick to give up land in the east Clare area. It's a phrase that contributed to a lot more than stone-throwing elsewhere on this island. And it's a lot more worrying than "How're ya, Horse?".