Bloomsday, 2007

Forgetfullness yesterday meant no kidneys for breakfast. Instead, Molly and I had weetabix with maple syrup. Neither of us enjoyed it.

[just now I've realised that my little girl shares her diminutive name with Mrs Bloom]

My favourite bit has always been the "brothel scene", though I've not read it for years. I've just skimmed through a few pages this evening. What drug was that, then? The interweaving of reality and hallucination is beautifully done, but it's not quite like any such experience one's personally able to compare. Maybe it was absinthe? I've never been there.

But I am here, kind of. I'd like to put it on record, that my copy of Ulysses has a stamp in it saying PROPERTY OF DILKO ENGLISH BAKIRKOY BRANCH, however, I removed it in furtherance of an industrial dispute.

Like many schools of English, Bakirkoy Dilko's staffroom would have a shelf or two where EFL teachers (a profession notorious for their here-today-gone-tomorrow proclivities) would leave books, and pick them up: recycle them, we'd say now.

Anyhow, the astonshing control-freakery inherent in Turkish private language schools' management, (even a good one, which Dilko was), led to a clerk being instructed to stamp the teachers' collective bookshelf with the school's stamp.

I liberated it as a protest.

Or something.

It's falling apart now.

Worst of all, some previous reader - perhaps even its original owner - has written the most banal marginal notes. "It is only in this chapter that we find that Bloom is of Jewish descent." Fortunately, that person left the brothel scene unsullied.

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between his teeth).

Comments

  1. MichaelSun Jun 17, 08:01:00 pm BST

    I once almost lost a Penny Ur book in exactly the same way. Mind, my suitcase was slightly heavier with liberated goods on the return flight.

    ReplyDelete

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