Isabella, aged 5, phoned me the other day: "My front tooth has gone sideways," she sobbed, "and I want it to go back the way it was." I know the feeling: I want everything to go back the way it was but the trouble is, nothing does; and nowhere is this more evident than in Donegal.
It's a long time since I first ventured out of the Pale to settle, on and off, in this most rural and distant of counties. In those days, wine was something you brought up with you from Dublin, The Irish Times was a paper the shop in Donegal town (15 miles away) got in the odd time, for visitors, and Killybegs was a small fishing port. Not any more.
Today, there's a large ship in Killybegs harbour (Panamanian flag, Russian-speaking crew) loading fish to take to Egypt. I can cycle the four miles to my nearest shop and pick up the Guardian - and a bottle of wine while I'm at it. The Irish Times I get on the web and in this lies the greatest change: the phone line has opened the door to other worlds.
Geography is history
Last week, I had a message from a neighbour. "It seems strange," she said, "to be sending an e-mail to someone in the next townland." Little did she know that together with hers from the townland of Tullintain came an e-mail from an Iraqi friend in the city of Baghdad. The internet is now our magic carpet, making geography history.
But while it's fun - on a dry day - to cycle to the shop for the paper, it's another thing altogether to get to Killybegs or Donegal. Without a car, without generous neighbours, without the services of a hackney cab, you stay put. That, at any rate, was how things were.
But a year ago, a group of people in the Killybegs area submitted a business proposal to the Government's Rural Transport Initiative, laying out their plans for a rural bus route that would serve their community. Only two such schemes in Donegal went forward to the second round and both were accepted, along with another 32 throughout the state. Last month, the service went into operation, with the two buses in the scheme travelling a total of nine routes and serving places that Bus Éireann never reaches, including Ardara, Malinbeg, St John's Point and Glencolmcille.
Last week, on the way from Killybegs to Glen, a birthday party broke out on board, complete with cake and candles, with the driver tooting the horn in time to the singing. The road signs - Mailinn Mhór, An Charraig - told us we were in the Gaeltacht and so did a sign on the bus which read: "I don't speak English." In English. The sea glistened in the sun, the mountains shaded into a distant blue and when we met a tractor, we had a traffic jam.
"Donegal Safari"
This is a bus journey that will have the summer tourists gasping at the scenery. "It's the Donegal safari," said the driver, Conall Gillespie, and anyone who knows the spectacular Glengesh Pass will know what he means.
Yet this much-needed service is provided not for the tourist industry but for the many local people isolated in the Donegal hinterland who need to collect their pension or keep an appointment with the doctor or who, housebound with pre-school children, simply need to do the shopping - in other words, for the people whom the Government left out of its transport infrastructure.
Tickets cost between €2 and €10 (free if you have a bus pass) and both buses have a travel assistant to help people with shopping and buggies. Best of all, customers can ring up and ask to be picked up at their farm gate or turning.
"Here to stay"
Last week, Seirbhís Iompair Tuaithe Teo - Community Transport Service - received its promised grant of €120.000. (Kerry received a total of €1 million, though to be fair, these will have to cover some seven projects throughout the Kingdom.) "The grant will be used for our first year's running costs," said Clarrie Pringle, a prime mover in the scheme. "But," she added, for the benefit of the politicians who had miraculously appeared for the photo-call at last week's launch, "this is not a commercial undertaking. It's a service run by the community for the people of south-west Donegal and we're here to stay."
Donegal faces a hard time ahead with job losses expected throughout the fishing industry and the shock announcement that the Back to Work Scheme is to be curtailed, a cruel blow to a county where unemployment already looks set to rise.
The Community Bus however, is proof that when the going gets tough, the people - and not the politicians - can make things happen.
Nothing, after all, stays the same - and a good thing too.