We were in the car the other day listening to Umberto Tozzi (no you probably don’t want to know) and Mr. Waffle explained to the Princess that she was in Belgium listening to an Italian man singing in Spanish on a tape which her Irish parents bought in Portugal. “La, la, la” she said sourly. Umberto Tozzi isn’t to everyone’s taste.
on 16 June 2004 at 00:28
“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry.”
[Remembering Shem the Penman; for the day that’s in it….] 
on 16 June 2004 at 08:45
And will you be partaking in the Bloomsday/Denny big breakfast. I see in the w/end Observer that Mr. Banville somewhat sourly comments that the breakfast will include that quintessentially Irish element, the hash brown.
on 16 June 2004 at 23:36
Banville is more or less on the money this time, sadly. The breakfast was Saturday – unless I’m much mistaken – 50,000 Denny Sausages consumed on teh Spire Plaza. (Don’t even ask….)
And truth to tell, I’m not much of a breakfast man these days. Had a ticket for the Joyce Centre Breakfast, but couldn’t see straight enough to get out of bed at the necessarily ungodly hour, so instead I set out to go swinging by Davy Byrne’s for a lunchtime glass of burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich. Ended up in the food court of the Liffey Valley. That more or less sums things up… 😉