Bloomsday

Yesterday, June 16th, apparently was “Bloomsday”, which probably would have passed you by unless you were of a literary inclination. It would most certainly have passed me by, had it not been for an advertisement for a free show with a cocktail reception after that come into my email inbox the other day.

Anyway Anna and I trooped along to the Teatro Sao Luiz, in downtown Lisbon, to see what it was all about. Bloomsday celebrates the fictitious day in 1904, described by James Joyce in his classic book “Ulysses” and the Irish Association here in Lisbon had put on this one man show called “Jimmy Joyced!” in which the actor Donal O’Kelly delivered in the space of an hour and twenty minutes what amounted to a one-man dramatised year in the life of the writer James Joyce

Anna thought it might be a drag, one actor and a bare stage, but I had a hunch we were in for a treat. The Irish have a knack for storytelling in a way that keeps you enthralled to the end, even when it’s Norman McCracken up in the pulpit of 1st Presbyterian Coleraine telling one of his "shaggy dog" stories. As it happened, we were enthralled and enjoyed the evening immensely. The theatre was filled with what I guess would have been a mixture of the expat community and the Portuguese literati. The Irish may not have colonised the world like the British the Spanish or the Portuguese yet they have created a form of cultural colonisation with the likes of James Joyce and U2, so that wherever you go in the world there’s a warm and positive welcome if your Irish.

Contrast that with today’s news from the gentle emerald isle of racial tension and Romanian families in South Belfast being rehoused for their safety from thugs and vandals. That’s the eternal enigma of the Irish. Yes, the welcome’s there in the parlour, we’re warm, expansive generous and hospitable, but at the very same time, we can be narrow, bitter, intolerant and hard. And in Christian terms we have one of the highest concentrations of churches and evangelical communities in Western Europe, but we still find it tough to express the love of Christ in a way that wins over the man in the street.

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