IF you haven't read Nuala O'Faolain's column last Monday on the behaviour of Telecom and Dublin Tourism, do so. She points out that the new phone cabins in Dublin have no information on operator services, and Dublin Tourism's telephone service to tourists depends on a pay while you wait principle, not dissimilar to a sex line, which in both my case and Nuala's must depend on what we imagine happens.
Sometimes it seems our entire administrative culture is based on the notion that we shouldn't expect help from the administration of the state or its services, but should simply ask a citizen. Which is what happened to Nuala. A foreign tourist, unable to find out anything about the Casino in Marino, asked her to help out. Nuala obliged, poor fool.
She embarked upon a long day's telephonic journey into the night, which ended up with her shovelling pounds and pounds into a payphone, trying to find out about the Casino, Marino. All she got was a series of recorded messages informing her about sporting events, bungee jumping, hedgehog steeplechase, cow handicap, or whatever.
The culture that a) people know or b) can ask, infuses the attitude of the state and semi states towards the people of the State. Any Irish person driving from Dublin to Dalkey will soon realise that the wretched signposting which brought them halfway to their destination, and has abandoned them at a ten exit roundabout in the middle of a housing estate, is a spent force now is the time to ask.
Baffling Signposts
I have written about this before. I expect to write about it again. And again. The notion that the duty of those who erect signposts is to make the signposts sufficient unto themselves, without the need to ask for further assistance, is foreign to our signpost erectors. Instead, they like to encourage social inter activeness halfway through the journey, by obliging us to ask for directions.
It is impossible to follow any series of signs in Dublin all the way through to one's destination, unless it is to Dublin City Port, which for some reason is well signposted - perhaps to enable demented tourists to escape before they slay the signpost erectors of our land by an adroit use of stout metal posts.
On the Continent, they assume that visitors to cities a) will not know their way and b), not be able to ask their way. In dear old anglophone Dublin, we assume that visitors can speak English and will get to their destination, one way or another. Hence the scores of baffled tourists standing in the rain, turning maps around, and twisting their heads to get the proper orientation. They were to be seen all over the capital city in recent weeks, looking for the unsignposted Temple Bar or the unsignposted O'Connell Bridge.
Many tourists looking for Temple Bar will opt for Dublin Bus; there they will discover an ark from the past, buses which use cash. But the old fashioned buses had conductors to collect fares. The modern Dublin bus, compels the passengers to pay in coins and be given change as they enter; and the queue shuffles slowly on to the bus.
Ornamental Doors
If, that is, the bus had stopped in the first place. Dublin buses are by request. People at a stop must indicate to the approaching driver that they want his bus. But nowhere on Dublin bus stops is this information given. I have seen so many tourists standing, slackjawed, while buses thunder by, no doubt wondering what sort of company Dublin Bus is. A good question. It is the sort of company which introduced two door buses some twenty years ago, at huge expense, but still does not use the second door, even though the buses instruct the passengers to exit from it.
Of course Ulf and Sigismund, our foreign tourists, who have actually managed to get on to a bus for Temple Bar after a wait of several days, cannot possibly know that the second door is a special and expensive ornament, without any utilitarian function whatsoever. After their bus has taken half an hour to travel a distance it would take a pedestrian five minutes to walk, U & S will cluster expectantly around the rear exit, ready to bail out when Temple Bar is reached, and will remain expectantly there until they are back at the terminus, with the last bus of the night gone.
They might choose at this point to get a taxi to Temple Bar, a vain endeavour in Dublin these days. There are no taxis at night. The entire taxi system is a government run, monopolistic conspiracy against the public. The purpose of the system is to ensure a return on expensive taxi plates, not to provide a cheap, flexible service to the people of Dublin.
Ulf and Sigismund, our stranded tourists at the bus depot (if they can find a phonebox which has a list of operator services) will be able to call a hackney. But the administrative system which has so little regard for the bemused foreigner, here comes into its own. That system has made it illegal for hackneys to have fare meters. Instead, the driver has to look at a chart he alone possesses, and read the tachometer he alone can see, and by a process of divination come up with a fare which he alone knows the meaning of.
On Reaching Temple Bar
And Ulf and Sigismund must pay the fare. They are finally at Temple Bar. But it is closed. Nothing is open. The administrative system which cannot manage to put up a logical sequence of signposts, and which makes it illegal for hackneys to have meters, also decides that it is a criminal offence for a pub to sell Guinness at ten past two in the morning.
Time to go home. But Ulf and Sigismund cannot remember the address of their B & B. There is no phone book in the kiosk. They phone directory enquiries with the name of the B & B. Though the B & B's address is listed in the phone book, Telecom operators decline to give it, or any other address over the phone. Instead, Ulf and Sigismund will have to knock on a door, and do what the driver looking for Dalkey must do. Ask a citizen; because the State won't help you.