Sir, – The sign in the carriage in the train to Galway states, “Do not sit in pre-booked seats”.
I did but did not realise they were booked for a party of four.
There was nothing to indicate in an initially empty carriage what seats were booked. So I looked around to see if the words "reserved" or "booked" were attached to any seat or table. Nothing was flagged so I sat down, spread out my Irish Times, sipped my latté and waited for the off.
A polite gentleman with his entourage cast a shadow across my paper as he called out the seat numbers he had reserved. I got up and moved my paper, coffee and myself to the next table, with fingers crossed that I would not meet the same fate again.
Part of me wanted to stay where I was. It was not my fault that there was no indication of what construed a “reserved seat”. I could have argued but good manners cost nothing.
Irish Rail needs to cop itself on and identify the seats that are out of bounds on their trains. – Yours, etc,
JOHN CUFFE ,
Dunboyne, Co Meath.