We all learned at school that a sentence must have a subject and a verb, shouldn’t start with a conjunction and shouldn’t end with a preposition. As in ‘Not me’ and ‘But this was the culture we were brought up in’. Writing on the internet is very different from writing in other milieux. Take that last word for instance – Microsoft wants me to use the anglicised s, but I would always retain the French x and am left with a reproachful red squiggly line. The Oxford Dictionary is happy with either. Then take ‘anglicised’ where Microsoft is happy with an s or a z. I am fastidious about ‘proper’ punctuation in texts and emails, except I’m less fussy about upper case. For many people whether on-line or off-line punctuation is a matter of throwing all the punctuation marks up in the air and hoping that they land somewhere on the page.
Which brings me to Bloomsday, June 16th, the day in 1904 when James Joyce set his novel ‘Ulysses’ and has been celebrated every year since 1929. The thing that most people know about it, if they know anything at all, is that the last 46 pages (in my closely printed Penguin edition) have no punctuation. Mollie Bloom ‘s stream of consciousness and scandalous content led to it being banned and burned. There are certain books that many people know about and even talk about, but have not actually read: ‘Ulysses’ is one, perhaps ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’ and probably most of Dickens. I read ‘Ulysses’ in my early twenties, remember enjoying it but being thankful that I had read it and wouldn’t need to read it again. It’s one of those books that you tell yourself you could read during lockdown.
In it Leopold Bloom, sets out at 8am to live a very ordinary day in Dublin wandering haphazardly through various trivial meetings, conversations and a lot of thoughts, memories and fantasies. It takes about 700 pages to complete about 18 hours. I could do the same thing in Crich, but Crich is not Dublin and the next few lines will probably cover it.
I don’t think there is any reason here for banning my blog, so I’m going to dispense with punctuation. Perhaps that will make it a great work of literature and controversial.
I’ve been looking forward to my blood-test all week after all it’s a chance to get out and try out my new mask any outing requires decisions about what to wear and I settle for short sleeves to make the veins more accessible but I have to take my glasses off because they steam up I visit Betty and she shows me round her garden which has a lot of steps and some new paving stones and I collect some old fence posts I come home and try out my glasses in different positions on my nose to stop the steaming I do some gardening cutting the hedge we watch The Madness of King George.
Leopold Bloom would have queued at The Loaf and talked about the weather, queued at the Butcher’s and talked about queuing, queued at Nisa and talked about horse racing, queued at the Post Office and heard about someone’s death. He might have walked up to the Chemist’s and noted with regret the Glebe all closed up. He would have noted with much more regret the Black Swan’s door firmly shut. He might have had a chat at the bus-stop and scrutinised a young woman cyclist in pink Lycra pedalling by. He might have backed into the pyracantha hedge at the top of The Common as a tractor and trailer laden with manure roared through. He might have closed his day with fish and chips and wiped his fingers on his trousers.
This is the age of the internet and my blog cannot be burned but may be read irrespective of age or watershed.
What would Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ have to say about summer 2020?
“Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. ....... Heatwave. Won't last. Always passing, the stream of life.....”