Dublin

A trip to Dublin is always a treat for a Joycean.  Best is 16^th June but any time will do.

Just to wander in the footsteps of Bloom and Dedalus is distraction enough while LotH is off to Grafton and Henry Streets to try and rescue the Irish economy single-handedly.

We stayed at Dalkey with superb views over Sandycove and Dublin Bay, at the top of the hill where Joyce taught at Clifton School. 

 Dublin Bay with the Martello tower in foreground

To climb the narrow winding stair of the Martello tower is to hear Buck Mulligan’s voice from the gun emplacement.

“Come up Kinch. You fearful Jesuit”

 A quick trip on the DART train took us to the heart of Dublin and shoe leather did the rest.

 

To visit Sweney’s chemist shop and buy  lemon scented soap, pause at the National Library before taking coffee at Bewley’s on Grafton Street just by Thornton’s where Blazes Boylan bought peaches and pears for Molly…..Grand stuff.

A diversion to St Stephen’s cathedral allowed me to pay homage to Jonathon Swift whose jaundiced view of humanity belied his deeply held beliefs and quiet charity.

Returning home and reading Milo O’Shea’s obituary in The Times brought another Joycean trip but this time down the years.

In 1968, we boarded a bus to the next city to see a film banned by the local council.

“Ulysses” had suffered more cuts than a Chinese torture victim and continuity, always a difficulty with Joyce, was almost lost but, to this day, Leopold Bloom has Milo O’Shea’s face and I could never see T.P.Mckenna on television, usually playing a doctor, without hearing him intoning

“Introibus ad altare Dei”

over his shaving bowl on the parapet of the Martello tower above the “snot-green sea”.

 

 LotH is keen for a return trip.  There must be at least one shop left unpatronised, so, hopefully, it will be June16th, 2014….but it will still be Milo O’Shea having a glass of Burgundy and gorgonzola in Davy Byrne’s pub and picking over the book stalls at Merchants Arch.

The ineluctable modality of the memory!!

  Merchants Arch








Night-town but never as J.J. knew it!