1977 – “Are You Right There, Patricia, Are You Right?”

Nenagh Guardian, 2 November 1977

“You’ve heard of Columbus’s sailing
Across the Atlantical Sea
But he never feared of being stranded
On a cold platform in Ballybrophy…”

“Patricia” was a regular columnist with the Nenagh Guardian in the 1970s, and her weekly musings gave an insight into the machinations of a Tipperary woman’s mind at that time. Her instalment of the first week of November 1977 told of her deep seated phobia of rail travel. This fear, it appeared, was borne not out of the prospect of an horrific collision but, instead, the possibility of being left in the lurch in a remote station miles from anywhere. Suffering from a small attack of timetable bewilderment, she recalls how she involved herself in an episode that would have brought a smile to the face of Percy French;