The joys of shopping

We'd been invited to a two-hander theatre piece this morning. It was in Fitzgerald's put in Sandycove, a spot long associated with James Joyce and full of references to his life and works on the walls, behind the bar and so on. The theatre piece consisted on an imagined conversation between Joyce and Marcel Proust. The two only met fleetingly according to reports, during a late-night soirée in Paris. The story goes that they did not get on at all well.

Today's imagined conversation was first performed in the James Joyce Tower in Sandycove, timed to mark the double centenary of Proust's death and the publication of Ulysses. The piece itself was fine, and quite witty in spots, though acting honours were heavily in favour of the guy who played Marcel. He was really excellent, but the Joyce guy was wooden and unconvincing. The overall event was rather spoiled by a very long and long-winded 'introduction' devoted the Proust. The lady presented had a multi-page A4 printout and was determined to read the entire thing out loud despite heavy hints from the audience that she should cut it short.

We stopped off at O'Dwyer's in Kilmacud for a light lunch. We won't hurry back. There was only one person looking after the bar and she was utterly unable to cope. It took forever, and several reminders, before a shandy and a sparkling water finally arrived, and it took a long time after that for out food to make it to the table. We'd both ordered soup, but we had to spend another while trying to attract the attention of the young guy who was racing all over the place taking orders before we got spoons to eat the soup with.

From there we went on to Dundrum 'Town Centre' (which should really be called Dundrum Shopping Centre). Our time there was actually enjoyable. We were quite responsible and came away with only a few items..

We had an hour and a half to kill after shopping before meeting our friend Tom for one of our Chew & Chat encounters. We ate in Rasam's in Glalsthule. This had been quite a regular haunt when Carl lived nearby, but this time it was just okay rather then the excellent experience we'd been used to 'back in the day'.