For years I spent a surprising amount of time near O’Connell Bridge waiting for people who had never met me.
That’s a large part of being a walking guide.
You arrive early because being late is unforgivable. The group arrives in stages because apparently meeting at a specific place at a specific time is more of a suggestion when you’re on holiday.
So you wait.
O’Connell Bridge was a good place for it. It was central and easy to find. Or at least it should have been easy to find. There were still people who managed to stand on the wrong side of the river and look annoyed that I wasn’t there.
I would watch them checking their phones and examining every other person who looked vaguely like they might know something about Dublin.
Then one of them would spot me.
There’s a particular look people give a tour guide when they think they’ve found the right one but don’t want to commit. A half-smile. A small step forward. Sometimes a hopeful raising of the eyebrows.
I got good at recognising it.
The waiting also told you quite a lot about the group before the tour had started.
Some people arrived twenty minutes early with sensible shoes and a printed booking confirmation. Others appeared at the exact starting time carrying coffee and looking as if they had only just remembered they were in Ireland.
Couples usually disagreed about which direction they had come from. Families counted children. Solo travellers stood close enough to join but far enough away to escape if I turned out to be selling something.
Nobody had said a word to me yet and I already had a fair idea how the next few hours might go.
That corner of Dublin was busy enough to make waiting interesting. Buses came and went. People crossed the river in both directions. Office workers moved through quickly while visitors stopped in places nobody sensible would stop.
The city never arranged itself for the benefit of a walking tour. You had to work around deliveries, roadworks and sudden clusters of people studying the same map.
Most groups wanted to begin with a fact.
When was the bridge built? Why was the river that colour? Which direction was Temple Bar?
I usually wanted to begin by making sure nobody was still missing.
There was nearly always somebody missing.
Waiting near O’Connell Bridge became part of the job in the same way that walking backwards and pointing at buildings became part of it. I didn’t think of it as one of my favourite places then. It was simply where I stood before work.
That has happened with several places in Dublin.
The bench in St Stephen’s Green mattered because I sat there after tours. The pub where nobody asked questions mattered because I could stop talking for a while.
O’Connell Bridge was different. It was where the talking was about to start.
I could stand there feeling tired or distracted and then the first person would arrive. They would ask if I was Declan. I would say yes and within a few minutes I was telling the same stories I had told hundreds of times.
They never felt quite the same because the people listening were different.
Some groups laughed immediately. Some needed time. A few looked concerned when they realised I wasn’t going to deliver a solemn lecture with dates in the correct order.
You adjusted.
I haven’t waited there for a group in a while. I still pass the area and sometimes find myself looking around for the uncertain faces. It takes a second to remember that nobody is looking for me.
If I do leave Dublin, that may be one of the things I miss. Standing in the middle of the city with ten minutes to spare, watching strangers work out whether I was the man they were supposed to follow for the afternoon.
Then somebody would walk over and ask the question.
“Are you the guide?”
