Slimming for the Beach

you can click to enlarge and see slide show (hover mouse over mid­dle right or left edge).
June 16 is of course famous through­out the world as Blooms­day, the day on which James Joyce first walked out with his future wife Nora Bar­na­cle, an event he marked by set­ting his novel Ulysses on that day.

This is a a fam­ily Blooms­day story which we’d like to share with the greater fam­ily and friends through­out the globe, but of course if you’re nei­ther, you’re wel­come to share our happy mem­o­ries too. I should have pub­lished this sev­eral weeks ago, but maybe it’s appro­pri­ate that it appears on the day Dublin was des­ig­nated a UNESCO City of Literature.

June 16 was also my aunt Kaa’s birth­day. She died last Novem­ber and is sorely missed. Her real name was Kather­ine Philom­ena, short­ened to Kamena, and then to Kaa.

Some weeks before, my cousin Eamonn men­tioned to me in an email that he and Kaa had always joked about going to Dublin for Blooms­day . I remem­bered that Kaa and I also always shared a joke about Blooms­day on her birth­day. It was one of her many kind­nesses that she was aware that I loved the work of James Joyce, and she was well and humor­ously aware that I remem­bered to ring her on her birth­day only because of the Blooms­day cel­e­bra­tion. Then Eamonn sug­gested that we cel­e­brate Blooms­day in Dublin in mem­ory of Kaa and her eldest son Michael thought it was a great idea and imme­di­ately said he would come.

We had all been fran­ti­cally busy in the mean­time, so the arrange­ments were very last minute, but the idea crys­tallised thus: Michael and Eamonn would come to my house at mid­day, with a photo of Kaa.

(Kaa’s daugh­ter Alexis actu­ally sent it by post and it arrived just in time) and we would have some lunch and then walk to sev­eral places in Dublin asso­ci­ated with Blooms­day, and read a few pas­sages from Ulysses along the way.

We were met by some­one who would rather remain anony­mous in Jervis Park, and we took some pho­tos with The Church and Mary Street, where Joyce set up a cin­ema around 1907, as background.

Our first stop was The Church, a for­mer Protes­tant church where Wes­ley preached, Arthur Guin­ness was mar­ried and Sean O’Casey was bap­tised. It’s been very taste­fully restored with many plaques and reli­gious signs, and the organ, still as remark­able fea­tures. Our anony­mous bene­fac­tor stood us a round of drinks and went back to work.

Then Eamonn spot­ted this above where I was sitting.

“This do in Remem­brance of Me”.

It was an obvi­ous photo.


Then, in brief, we went to the Joyce statue in North Earl Street, the cricket grounds in Trin­ity Col­lege where we read appro­pri­ate pas­sages from Ulysses (and were caught in the act by Bren­dan Ken­nelly)
and Sweny’s Phar­macy (where Michael did the hon­ours and bought lemon soap), all men­tioned in Ulysses.

Then Ais­ling joined us in Lin­coln Place, out­side what was once Finn’s Hotel where Nora Bar­na­cle worked when Joyce met her, and we went for cool drinks in The National Library, also asso­ci­ated with Ulysses.



After which we went to Stephen’s Green for final pho­tos at Joyce’s statue there, and retired for a much-needed drink in Neary’s pub.


We then came back to my place, uploaded the pho­tos and sent them to as many fam­ily mem­bers as we had email addresses for.

It was quite a day.

By the way, we’ve renamed Blooms­day KaaBlooms­day, at least as far as our fam­ily is concerned!