Darts in Dublin 2013

When James Joyce was almost shot...
No other Irish is in Dublin as omnipresent as James Joyce.
And yet Joyce lived most of his life in voluntary exile on the European continent and when he died he was buried in Zürich because the officials refused to transfer his mortal remains to his hometown.

Evidently the relationship between the writer and his home country was problematic and nevertheless the same writer immortalized his hometown Dublin, even re-created it. To be able to reconcile antagonisms and contraries seems anyway to be a characteristic of the Irish...

Joyce was born in 1882 in Ireland and later studied modern languages (English, French, Italian) in Dublin. As his father Joyce spent a lot of time in the pubs and drank fiercely. 1902 he went after his graduation to Paris under the pretext to study medicine but more concentrated to live as a Bohemian. When it turned out that his mother was ill with cancer he returned 1903 to Dublin where he met his future wife on 16. June 1904. Another acquaintance from those days was Oliver St. John Gogarty in whose Martello Tower (today the James Joyce Tower) Joyce stayed a few days before he intended to return to the continent. During one of their drinking bouts Gogary started to shoot at some pans which hung above of Joyce's bed into which he already had withdrawn. That of course speeded his departure and he left Ireland together with his future wife Nora. His acquaintances had bought him a single ticket to "free Dublin from him".

All what he experienced in Ireland, all the different people he met had some influence on his short stories "Dubliners" and on his best known novel "Ulysses".
Especially in "Ulysses" not only the people from his milieu appear (like his wife, Oliver St. John Gogarty, an acquaintance of his father) but as well the premises where he sojourned - Gogarty's Martello Tower, the Forty Foot Pool where his main character Leopold Bloom takes a bath, a pub which Joyce often visited, the school where he gave lessons in 1904, a drugstore and so on. All this premises are - referring to Homer's "Odysseus" - the 18 stages which Bloom visits over a single day - the 16. June.

All this premises you still can have a look at when in Dublin and since 1954 every year on the 16. June Bloomsday is officially celebrated, which often enough ends in a drinking bout Joyce probably would have loved. It's one of the big attractions for tourists and probably worldwide the only holiday dedicated to a book.
Joyce himself to be sure had not as much Dublin on his mind when writing the novel - his main object was to renew and to enhance the English language.
Joyce died 1941 in Zürich, after he had many years worked as a teacher in different branches of Berlitz School and lived mostly on the support of some patrons.
Though he was a frequent pub visitor Joyce probably never had any contact with darts as it was in no way wide spread at his time. But a quote by him is nevertheless quite a good "bridge" to my second and last evening at the World Grand Prix:
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery".

On the second day of the World Grand Prix it was a little bit better with the internet in the press room but not really good and so I spent most of the time in the venue which was not crowded those first few days. There were still the same amount of steps leading up and some of the pros who had turn up after the matches in the press room didn't seem to be too happy about. Probably only Justin Pipe didn't felt it mattered.
A little bit surprising Wayne Jones won the first match of the evening against Mervyn King. And Kim Huybrechts had no chance at all against Andy Hamilton. Most impressive I though played Raymond van Barneveld on the evening. And Michael van Gerwen's cold seemed to have disappeared over night. With Brendan Dolan another of the local heroes were eliminated. unluckily Adrian Lewis was too strong for him on the day.

After the last match I returned immediately for the updates to my room. At the entrance to the hotel everybody was asked to show the keycard and you couldn't get near the rooms without a keycard either. Probably there are problems from time to time with "Unauthorizeds" who get lost in the hotel's hallways.

By the way - on my last day in Dublin I even found a standing stone - well at least something which looked quite similar...













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