Deliveroooo

The redoubtable Dau.I and Dau.II came home for part of the Easter weekend, and it was delightful. I don't mind washing up 2x the number of plates, mugs and glasses - because the corollary is there are more cooks making and baking: whc yum yum. My quid pro quo is to make industrial quantities of Knockroti - for consumption and take-away, both. Anyway, they came, we ate, they returned to Dublin on Easter Monday. When their return journey was irretrievably committed, Dau.I realised that her rain-jacket was still hanging in the hall back home. And a few minutes later remembered that her keys (bike, front-door and office) were in the pocket. Dang! 

Could I mail her the keys asap?  I could/would not (who knows how long that would take; what would be the cost; what guarantees of delivery???) . . . but I could by-pass the Post Office and go to the train-station.  Costs nothing [Free Travel!] but time; and I have an audiobook on the go. Turned out that The Beloved had a meeting in the County Town at noon. Irish Railways are woefully under-utilized so there isn't a whole lot of flex in scheduling an out&return journey to anywhere from anywhere. But there was an option on:
Rural 10:10 → 11:15 Dublin
Rural 13:30 ← 12:25 Dublin
because Dau.II a) had the day off work b) lives 2 LUAS stops and a 5 min hike from Heuston Station. It worked as intended. I arrived at their flat, unloaded the jacket and keys and some more Knockroti; flubbed down and accepted a cup of tea with a slice of buttered brack. It was cosy and civilized until Dau.II stood up and firmly announced "I'll walk you down to the LUAS".  It was past noon and I was between 15 and 25 minutes from the station. It was fine, I sat into my train seat with +8 minutes to spare and the trip down country was uneventful. In any case, missed train? there was a another, quicker, at 13:15.

But it triggered the memory of a much closer-run transfer across Paris in 1989.  I retired [retire early and retire often!] from my last job in England in August of that year with the intention of walking up the coast of Portugal from Sagres to Corunna. I had no idea how long that would take; single airline tickets were riotously expensive; so I booked an open return rail ticket from London to Lisboa via Newhaven, Dieppe, Paris and Hendaye. A bit of a schlepp but certainly achievable.

Just before leaving, I discovered that I was requested and required to attend a job interview in Paris ten days after I started my walk. An Italian professor in France was going to decide if the EU should pay for me to move from UK to work with a Brit in Ireland; on a retraining fellowship in a more EUseful field than population genetics of domestic cats and pigeons. I had one friend, John, in Paris, whom I hadn't seen since we left college 12 years before. But I called him up and asked if he would please hold my charcoal-grey interview suit + a clean shirt & tie, until I flew in from Lisboa to CDG [on the EU nickel!] to collect it. A bit of an extra schlepp but surely achievable. I had 2 hours to make the transfer from Gare du Nord [from Dieppe] to Gare d'Austerlitz [to Lisboa].

I caught the Metro to John's flat where he fed me tea and toast for breakfast. We chattered away catching up on the last decade . . . until, with a start, I twigged that time flies when you're having fun and I had 25 minutes to make my train to Lisbon. I skeltered down four fights of stairs, flagged down a taxi and gasped "Le Gare d'Austerlitz, se vite que possible!", like I was in a movie.  The chauffeur responded with a supremely gallic shrug and set off at normal speed. At the station, I ran through the concourse and climbed aboard the last carriage 90 seconds before departure. I didn't reach my seat until we were chugging through les banlieues. Missing that train would have meant a 24 hour lay-over in Paris and a surcharge for changing the reservation.