Charity

I was up in Dublin again on Thursday - this is getting to be a habit - and after a heavy day's meetings we went off to the pub to celebrate a new a job (not mine, I just got one) and a new child-in-waiting (not mine, I've been genetically dead this last decade) and so I missed the bus home and had to wait for the next one. I elbowed my way past all the young people and got a seat in the front of the bus and, as often happens, another senior sat in beside me. Folks over 60 like to see where they're going and view public transport as an opportunity for a natter, while those under 40 see it as something to be endured.  While waiting for The Off, this bloke (slightly the worse for dhrink but far from legless) tried to blag his way onto the bus, because "he'd lost his wallet" and "sure didn't the driver know him" and "wasn't he up-and-down that route all the time".  The driver, quite properly, wasn't having any of this.  His job is to take money for the company and deliver us safe to where we want to go.  I've stuck my hand in my pocket before in such cases - who'd want to go to Castledermott in the middle of the night unless they had to? But despite assurances that I'd get the money back, and being compelled writing my address on the various scraps of paper, I've never seen folding-money in the post.  Nevertheless, what can you do?  Well you can do nothing and as happened a few years ago when I had to catch the bus in a hurry to get home and didn't have my phone to arrange a pick-up from the bus stop. I went up the aisle asking if anyone would send a txt on my behalf and the dozen or so me-people on the bus all resolutely looked out the window.  ANNyway, I was geeing myself up to do the human thing again, when the old dear beside me leaned forward and said she was good for a tenner.  It was too complicated to offer to go halves as I had intended and everyone knows that I am near when it comes to cash. So she stumped up, the bus-driver calmed down, the indigent got on and insisted on making tipsy-gracious small talk and asking for the lady's address.  Well, it being Ireland and a narrow corridor of Ireland at that, they soon established where their people were buried and a rattle of acquaintance was topped by the fact that his god-parents (deceased) had been her next-door neighbours.
So she has a better chance of retrieving her investment in kindness than I ever did.