I had an emergency “rapid renewal appointment” at the passport office at the bottom of Lower Mount Street at 10:10am today.
At 10:01am I had reached the North West corner of Merrion Square, probably a five or six minute walk from the office. For some reason of which I’m still not quite sure, instead of continuing walking along Merrion Square North in the direction of the office, I decided to walk to the Dublin bike station on Merrion Square East, opposite the back of Government buildings, to take out a Dublin bike to cycle the last bit of the journey.
I arrived at the bike station in front of the passport office at 10:06am, but there was no vacant slot to deposit the bike in, and there was another person already waiting to deposit their bike there.
Four minutes later, nobody had taken a bike out to release a slot to deposit one in, and in any event the first guy was still waiting to deposit his bike. I was now panicking that I would miss my meeting, in a visibly agitated state, and being laughed at by three chaps smoking cigarettes outside the adjacent Spar shop. I didn’t want to leave the bike unattended outside the office as I assumed it would be stolen, resulting in me being fined €300 or whatever it is for the loss of a bike.
As the clock hit 10:10am I lost my head completely and tried to bring the bike into the passport office, but was, entirely predictably, immediately stopped from doing so by security and had to leave again. I decided to cycle to another bike station, but not being sure where the nearest one was, I cycled aimlessly around for the next ten minutes up Merrion Square East, down part of Baggot Street, around to Grand Canal Street, passing three more bike stations with no vacant slots, before returning to the one outside the passport office, which was still full.
Eventually I ended up cycling all the way back to the same station on Merrion Square West from which I had take the bike out, and walked back to the passport office, arriving at around 10:35am, 25 minutes late. I explained the situation to the chap at reception. “Ah, that’s grand”, he said.