Offal was clearly the order of the day as Joyce fans, some plump, many stately, tucked into their Bloomsday breakfast at Caviston’s in Sandycove this morning.
Nutty gizzards and fried mutton kidneys were on the morning’s menu, as proprietor Peter Caviston jumped from table to table, pressed and dapper in his Joycean best and sporting the obligatory Bloomsday hat. “Glasthule and Sandycove are the eating, drinking and fun side of Bloomsday,” he said, before hopping up to find parking space for two Joycean looking gentlemen who’ve pulled up in a 1929 Baby Austen.
Regular Bloomsday diners Jim Bennett and Michael Carney were in early attendance, bespectacled, straw-hatted and dicky-bowed, with two well-thumbed copies of Ulysses nestled beside the bread basket.
“In a sense, you can read Ulysses nonstop,” said Carney to which Bennett replied: “You could read it ten times and you still wouldn’t come to grips with it.”
Both men are members of the Bloomsday Committee, and were set for a day of Joycean peregrinations, to include a dip in the forty foot, lunch at Davey Byrne’s pub and readings at Farrington’s in Temple Bar, with the whole thing winding up in Mulligan’s.
Outside, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport Mary Hanafin had arrived for her annual Bloomsday breakfast. “What’s remarkable about Bloomsday is the fact that it’s a fictitious day!” she said. “For me it’s linking two things: The cultural element through Joyce and the tourist element.”
As the restaurant filled up, writer and historian Tim Pat Coogan pulled up in the back of a 1926 Lancia Lambda. “Molly Bloom’s soliloquy is a wonderfully apposite thing this year,” he said.
“I believe Richard Bruton has passed out the soliloquy to all his followers, and they’re all saying ‘Yes, I will, Yes!’”
After breakfast, some took a stroll round the corner to the James Joyce Tower, where readings were taking place over the course of the day on the spot to which the famously stately, plump Buck Mulligan ascends in the opening chapter of Ulysses.
Back at the James Joyce Centre on North Great George’s street, Senator David Norris was holding forth between the centre’s three breakfast sittings on the joys and genius of Joyce. “On a lovely day he gives us cause to celebrate life and to laugh,” he said, adding that those attending the breakfasts were “convulsed with laughter” at the performances and readings from the book, to which they were treated over their rashers and kidneys.
Claiming credit as the first to begin the Bloomsday tradition of dressing up in clothes from Joyce’s time, Senator Norris acknowledged: “I’ve become a fashion statement.”
Taking their cue from Norris, writers Roisin McDevitt and Audrey Dunphy were bedecked in full period regalia, on their way in for the third breakfast sitting of the morning. “I’m not looking forward to the kidneys, but I’m looking forward to the rest,” said McDermott.
“Ever sine he mentioned the urine in the kidneys, I haven’t been able to eat them.”
Those who missed the Joycean breakfasts about town had the opportunity to gorge on gorgonzola in Davey Byrne’s for lunch, and them amble over to Meeting House square where the day continued with Alan Stanford coordinating a series of readings and performances, including a further appearance by the ubiquitous Senator Norris.
The Order of the Finnegans, a group of Spanish writers who make an annual pilgrimage to Dublin, were also in attendance, enjoying some cooling beverages in the shade of Il Baccaro at the square’s edge.
Fresh from his Davey Byrne’s repast, Joyce fan Sean Carr from Donegal found himself was spoiled for events to attend as Bloomsday continued into the afternoon with revelers and readers turning up in various pockets around Dublin and its environs.
“There are so many things happening,” he said. His companion, Johanna Hegarty, didn’t seem to mind where their Bloomsday wanderings led them. “It’s a great bit of fun,” she said.
“There’s so much doom and gloom. But this is a celebration of life, and of Dublin!”