Although I like the DART - I like trains as a mode of transport generally - I don't take it that often. It's just not worth it for the trip to work and I don't spend much time travelling up and down the coastline otherwise - if there was a spur which went off to Templeogue or Rathfarnham I'd use it a lot more.
It's useful, though, if you want to go to Blackrock or Dun Laoghaire for some retail therapy because, let's face it, who in their right mind would actually want to drive through Blackrock or Dun Laoghaire unless they absolutely had to?
One of the best things about living in Clontarf is being able to pop across the river to the Southside shopping emporia while having no equivalents to drag the Range Rover and Volvo estate set to clog up Northside roads!
Anyway, last Saturday I was heading all the way to Bray so the DART was perfect for my purposes. Since I actually had to be there at a particular time, I checked the timetable first - normally I don't bother. The thing is, I'm never 100 per cent convinced about any public transport timetable in Dublin so I decided to arrive a little early for the 10.05 a.m train. Just as well, it went at a couple of minutes to 10. And the next train was another 20 minutes later.
I got the man to check the timetable afterwards, just in case last week's illness was still affecting my brain, but he reckoned that 10.05 was what it said too. So either the train left early, or the timetable is wrong, or both of us are unable to read it properly. Whichever, it makes you very uncertain about planning a journey around the timetable.
But I let the little frisson of DART-rage subside - after all I was going to be early, not late - and allowed the train to take the strain.
And the Saturday morning journey said more about the changing face of Ireland than anything else ever could. Leaving aside the fact that sweeping past Pearse Street station all you could see was apartment and office blocks under construction, it was my fellow passengers that attracted my attention.
The shoppers got off the train at Tara Street and, for the rest of the journey, the occupants of my carriage were - myself, a Scottish couple on some kind of walking holiday, an English couple on a weekend break, eight Arab girls on what seemed to be the last day of their holiday and a woman with two friends.
Obviously the Arab girls were easy enough to identify and the fact that they were taking photographs of themselves, the scenery and themselves again was enough to make you realise that it was a holiday. The Scottish couple were touting huge backpacks and were talking about Wicklow. The English couple were talking about the Paddington rail disaster.
And the woman and her friends? The Arab girls asked her to take photographs of them, no doubt on the basis that the friendly Irish traveller would be only too pleased to do so. As it turned out, she was a friendly German traveller and she was happy to take their photos.
It just felt very odd being the only Irish person in the carriage. And, in case you're thinking that this was an isolated incident, on the return journey the carriage was filled with an English schoolboys trip, far outnumbering the Irish shoppers!
The other thing about the DART now, of course, is that there has to be a number of obligatory mobile phone conversations on each trip. And I confess here to having made one myself (never one to shirk giving the cringing news). The reason I had to make one was because I was, once again, totally unable to answer my own phone. I never realise my phone is ringing until the caller at the other end has slammed down in frustration and so I have to call back. As the man said, for someone who has almost mastered the video, I'm incredibly inept with the phone!
Mobile phones, of course, are hot news at the moment with the Mannesmann bid for Orange dominating the media headlines. Mannesmann has been a company in the headlines quite a lot lately as it has raised large amounts of capital through bond issues this year.
Regretfully for the bondholders, these issues have been more a lemon than an orange - as the company's indebtedness grows the ratings agencies have placed Mannesmann on negative watch and the bond values have declined.
Of some concern, too, to the bondholders, is that a ratings decline would push Mannesmann into triple B territory, forcing those who can only hold A rated bonds to sell at a loss.
Mannesmann's bold move (it's always slightly unnerving when companies make bold moves) hasn't, as yet, helped the share price either and the initial reaction in price was an almost 10 per cent fall. The bid for Orange is £19.8 billion sterling (€30.8 billion) which is a huge price to pay for a company which is currently making losses and isn't a dot.com.
However, the mobile phone sector is such a rapidly changing one that maybe £19.8 billion will look like small beer in a few months time. And possibly so, since - despite the fact that so many people on the trains have mobile phones - only around 30 per cent of the UK population owns one.
The deal certainly makes mobile phone companies look interesting as a sector, since almost all of them now look undervalued against the price paid for Orange. It's a little bit like saying that every house on the road should go for a phenomenal price just because someone paid over the top for the corner site. But, hey, we've seen that before!!
I decided to investigate the mobile phone scenario a little bit more myself when I got back into town from Bray. I am now swamped with information about phones that can ring in 40 different tones, can talk to my computer, that can send silly pictures, that can vibrate, change colour, and order a pint of beer in seven different languages. Oh, OK, I'm lying about the last. But it's only a matter of time. . .
Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist at NCB Stockbrokers
