dovegreyreader scribbles

Homeward Bound

Home safely yesterday evening even though I took a wrong turn heading for my departure gate at Dublin airport ( just how on earth did I manage that) and ended up in customs and passport control for flight arrivals and entry into Dublin. Fortunately no one else there and the policeman took one look at my face when he told me I'd need to walk out of the airport, walk right the way round, come back in, book in again, go through departures again, and I think fearing he'd have to make a 999 call if not resuscitate me himself if he didn't move fast, he whisked me through all the coded security doors and let me back into Ireland so I could leave again, and I promised not to tell anyone so if you could keep that bit quiet I'd be grateful.

As you can see a huge number of passengers alighting from the enormous plane at Plymouth airport...this was the sum total of us with a few more carrying on to Newquay. You can imagine the crush in baggage reclaim.

My window the second from the front and in that bag I am carrying...wait for it...

Some of you may recall my last visit and that really excellent twenty-one volume series of James Joyce Studies books for sale at the National Library in Dublin. Well to my delight, as I nipped in to see the Yeats exhibition once more, a little sign saying 'Library Shop - Closing Down Sale.'

Last visit, being a wimp and thinking I couldn't carry them all I bought about six volumes and had been unusually organised this time and noted down the ones I still needed, and at 1 euro each that seemed like a bargain. So I pulled them all out and then noticed the sign saying ' Complete Set 5 euros.' I think we can all do the maths there, so my right arm is straining under the weight of twenty one volumes of James Joyce Studies, the very weighty copy of Ulysses Unbound, a copy of Ulysses given to me at the talk, the books I took along to read, some wool, gifts for the family,...usual story.

So three very wonderful days, and my sincere thanks to blog-reader Brenda who I met yesterday morning and apart from the wonderful bookish natter, Brenda, a Dubliner born and bred, really got my history up to scratch before very kindly dropping me off at the prison.

Kilmainham Gaol the location for the execution of the prisoners after the 1916 Easter uprising, and Brenda was right, it is indeed very sobering to stand out in the stonebreaker's yard on the spot where James Connolloy was tied to that chair..

By my pedometer calculations about thirty miles of city walking done so I feel a bit jet-lagged today, I mean that flight was all of fifty-five minutes.

More about Dublin slotted in over the next few weeks but meanwhile today has been more preparation for the imminent arrival of the book room woodburning stove and we are bracing for one of life's inconvenient days tomorrow, major electricity work somewhere out on the grid so no power all day, which also means no water, no phone, no internet, no work, no e mails, might as well be round the dark side of the moon, so it'll be a bit like the olden days and I'll just have to read a book I suppose.

 

Dublin Friday...

A pictureleless post because the iTouch won't talk to the netbook but you can all add another 17,000 paces to the tally because we've walked miles.

Out along the banks of the River Liffey to the National Museum located at the imposing Collins Barracks complete with parade ground. When I asked where the cafe was and was told it's at 90 paces, the photos will explain all but 90 paces it was because I counted. Of particular interest was the Understanding 1916 The Easter Rising exhibition which I hadn't, and I can't carry on blaming the glaring gap in my 1960's history education (was that an intentional omission I wonder??) for my lack of knowledge about the uprising. I have it now and why I found the nightshirt that James Connolly was wearing during the GPO battle quite so moving I'm not sure, was it the stain that looked like blood wiped from a hand that had been holding a wound, or was it the fact that for the execution he was tied to a chair because he couldn't stand. Anyway I think I understand it all a little better now, though I don't feel any better for being English and knowing.

Then a very wet walk back into Dublin city centre, and right across town via St Stephen's Green to the Flying Book Club event in Lower Leeson Street, 'Feel the Fear and Read it Anyway' and an introduction to Ulysses. Now this was  so good that I'm going to think about it a little more before I write about it because...wait for it... I knew this would happen, I think I might want to read the book again. So much I knew I'd missed first time round and having now been here twice and listened to Dubliners talking about their book, and after a year's break, I can feel that promised more in-depth read coming on. I won't inflict it on all of you month by month but having had a really good approach explained, and then listened to a local read that episode about the dog....

The novelty of this idea may wear off when I get home but to make that a little less likely  I have already been to Hodges Figgis and made my sole book purchase spending 19.50 euros on the highly recommended (and apparently very readable,) Ulysses Unbound by Terence Killeen.

On my way to that event I took a route through all those locations that Helen Berry mentions in her forthcoming book The Castrato and His Wife, Fishamble Street, Dame Street, Molesworth Street treading in the footsteps of Tenducci. My delight at finding a Chop House dating from 1760 knew no bounds and despite being dripping wet I stood there and imagined the man himself walking down the cobbled street having sung for his supper.

So I have to pack my bag and check out this morning but have a day in the city planned before my early evening flight. Take That are in town and playing Croke Park tonight, much more to my liking would have been Paul Simon in Dublin for a concert on Monday.

Bloomsday and that Martello tower...

Oooops ...SandyCOVE not SandyMOUNT...so did you all buy the train ticket that didn't take you far enough and then wouldn't let you through the turnstile at the other end as well?? My fault, sorry.

And didn't we get a little soaking there, my Gaelic with the help of signs is clearly improving. I'm very taken with listening to the weather forecast that's for sure, what an intriguing language. I walked past a party of Gaelic-speaking schoolchildren en route and the chatter was incredible but we were right about the rain.

So having headed out to SandyCOVE on the Dart train because it said that's were the James Joyce Museum and the mythical Martello tower were, except you then find it's a bit of a trick because there it was on the very far and distant horizon like a mirage. So we took a long but pleasant forced march walk around the sea front to get there and you can all add 16,000 steps to your pedometers for today...but Team Ulysses and supporters, thanks to the Irish Tourist Board, (and I am very grateful, they have been very kind) we have been there at last.

Past the Forty Foot bathing pool...

and on into the tower.

A nice collection of James Joyce memorabilia and a stove to be reckoned with

I nipped up onto the roof just so I could say I'd been on the roof of the Martello tower that features in Ulysses and that involved the narrowest little spiral staircase known to mankind but worth it for the view back across the walk we'd just done...yes, ALL of that..


The stairs made even more impossible with a rucksack so I had to keep unwedging myself and hope no one was thinking of coming up while I was thinking of going down.

A centenary stone to mull over in the park nearby...

And in the end there was nothing for it ..I've been taking hits on your behalf all day.

So if my precious little camera was going to break anywhere I can't think of a nicer, more special place for it to have happened...this its final picture, the very last gasp before it keeled over, the automatic lenses went into a frolic of their own, made some wheezing death rattle noises and refused to play anymore. If it's really gone I shall be sad, RIP my trusty Olympus All-Weather AF Zoom 5.8- 17.4mm 6.0 megapixels, which has mediated between my eye and almost every picture on this blog, we've been friends for a very long time.

I feel as if my right arm's been chopped off.

Good excuse to upgrade...I'm over it.

Bloomsday Breakfast at The Gresham Hotel

So I looked a lamb's kidney in the eye but that's as far as it went...I'm sorry I just couldn't.


But a really sumptuous breakfast of cholesterol plus trimmings on a plate (hope the Practice Nurse isn't reading this) in the Ballroom of the Gresham Hotel on O'Connell Street where, surrounded by Edwardian costume (even the babies) I felt distinctly under-dressed in my walking togs.

There followed a brilliantly acted homage to scenes various from Ulysses, very very funny when it is brought to life in this way ..

And I managed to snap Leopold tucking into his breakfast as I left.


To Sandymount this afternoon, lovely warm sunny day though I felt sure the TV weather forecast rain, but it was in Gaelic so I could be wrong.

OK follow me, we're off to that Martello Tower.

Happy Bloomsday...

I'm in Dublin somewhere... stand by

 

Failte chuig Baile Atha Cliath

I am very reliably informed that means Welcome to Dublin and I have ignition on the wireless signal so we are all systems go, though I'm working on my tiny netbook so seeing the screen and hitting the right keys is a bit haphazard, my apologies for typos.

I think I might know why Plymouth Airport is closing... and I'm not complaining at all but I have never known security like it and I guess with so few flights leaving they do have the time to be thorough. So my suitcase, and only mine was selected for a spot check and complete unpack at check-in. Might as well have had it all in a carrier bag and packed it on the counter.

Do I look shifty??

Anyway into departures after much more bag searching and shoe removal where I made friends with a lovely Irish nun going back home for a week. Sister Mary told me she was always being stopped and searched because no one trusts a nun these days, it's the garb of choice for the drug smuggler apparently. And the metal head band in her wimple always sets off the alarms and we agreed that she could indeed get a fair stash of all manner of illegal bounty under her veil. I am working on the assumption that she really was Sister Mary of course.

But 'twas lovely to fly up and over Plymouth and as the plane headed towards Newquay I feel sure we must have flown over home, and many apologies to the Canadian gentleman sitting in the window seat next to me who had to put up with me leaning across and snapping away with the camera. But we had a geography lesson too and how incredible the Tamar looks from the air and then the china clay pits in Cornwall, a really dramatic impact on the landscape.

So I am installed, have had a wander through Trinity College and meant to go to St Stephen's Green but found myself in the wonderful Hodges Figgis bookshop and well, doesn't time fly.


Tomorrow it's Bloomsday Breakfast along O'Connell Street and it's suddenly dawned on me that it might be fried kidneys which is likely to turn it into more of a bushtucker trial where I'm concerned, but I'll do my best for you all.

 

 

Bloomsday Eve

Never mind all this going to Italy from the armchair (and I am so looking forward to that reading holiday through August,) when I really should have been concentrating more on the fact that today, thanks to the Irish Tourist Board, I am flying to Dublin again, this time to be in the city for Bloomsday on June 16th, tomorrow.

Excited?? Hell yes I should say so.

I've been revisiting Team Ulysses  and my copy of the book in readiness, and to my surprise it is still as fresh and vibrant in my mind as it was last year, so I am really looking forward to seeing how Dublin marks this day of all days and I think it will be pretty amazing.

My copy of the book now full of postcards and pictures from my last trip, and this visit I have a little more time so I'm hoping to get to Sandymount and I will be doing one of the organised James Joyce walks too. I've been invited to a quiz night, themed questions on Dublin 1904, so I may not exactly be an asset to the team that gets lumbered with me. I'm also looking forward to a session at The Flying Book Club entitled 'Feel the Fear and Read it Anyway!' ...a guide through reading Ulysses. I'm still unlikely to be an asset but at least, thanks to Team Ulysses, I'll know what the talk is about. As on every trip I try to catch up with some of you too so I am hoping to meet Brenda in or near the wool shop she very kindly told me about after my last visit.

To get in the Dublin mood I've also been dipping into W.B.Yeats & George Yeats The Letters and if the book didn't weigh as much as my entire packed bag I'd be taking it with me. The twenty-two years of correspondence between Mr & Mrs in a beauteous new edition from OUP. From homes in Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares Dobbs kept 'Willie's irons hot in Dublin' while he travelled, wrote, networked, earned money on lecture tours and wrote home to ask for things like a spare vest or some money in the bank account. The little details that I love to find in letters, the everyday in amongst the creative genius.

If my technology holds up you won't miss out ...if it fails then I'll catch up when I get home.

I have travel reading sorted too. I have almost finished James Cain's Mildred Pierce on my Kindle and have skimmed but not read an article this weekend, about Kate Winslett's recent role in the TV dramatisation of the book (and heaven knows how we get to see it on Sky Atlantic on June 25th... America I think you are getting it first on HBO??) so I'm keen to tie up all the loose ends on that and will write more soon.

Plus I will be sharing more about some of the authors I hope to be meeting in the dovegreyreader tent at the Port Eliot Festival in the coming weeks, but suffice to say this week I am concentrating very hard on the writing of Gillian Slovo, with her memoir Every Secret Thing and her novel Black Orchids. Both so good that I will have to break my 'travel light' rule and take the books with me. Fortunately I have read Ice Road or that would have severely tested the baggage strategy.

But how sad is this, all these years that Plymouth has had an airport, sixty to be exact and I have never used it until today because they never seem to have flights to where I want to go, so we trek up to Exeter or even further up to Bristol. I can't be the only one because through lack of use Plymouth City Airport is closing down later this year and suddenly I'm going to miss it.

We drive right past the runways on our way into Plymouth, always enjoy seeing a plane taking off in front of us (we don't get out much) and soon it will be gone, and once more Plymouth becomes that isolated outpost that's a little to far west for shops like Habitat or Ikea to consider. But at least I'm going to get today's aerial view of the city we've lived in or near since 1976 and on my way to Dublin and Bloomsday 2011.