what I did on my holidays

Fufilled one of those strange ambitions that you promise to yourself but never really hold as feasible, not in so far as they are unrealistic or somehow out-of-reach, more that you just hold it in your mind as something you'd do if you ever found yourself in the area, or in this instance, just a short train journey away.
The Martello Tower pecrched precariously by the 'scrotumtightening' sea at SandyCove, country Kildare, Ireland, was one such place that I've imagined visiting since I developed an interest in Joyce back when I was preparing for A-levels. The weather was fantastic, and after a bizarre morning spent at the National Museum, Dublin, looking at Bog Bodies - those peculiar leatherine corpses that are occasionally unearthed in peat bogs providing a rare glimpse at the sacrificial tendencies of our ancestors - we took the Dart out to SandyCove which lies about 30 minutes outside of Dublin towards the South East. The tower itself houses a small but nevertheless impressive collection of Joycean relics, letters and even several copies of his death mask. By far the best insigt offered by the tower was the view from the battlements, the same, surprisingly small roofspace where Joyce himself has paced in his day. Just standing there, looking out to sea with the opening lines of Ulysses running through my head was a fantasticly moving experience, and we both stood there for some time casting our thoughts to the distance trying to picture the man in his own way.
The good people at the Martello museum have restored the living room/bedroom space to something resembling Joyce's literary desription, complete with a porclain panther waiting to pounce from the fireplace, and a motheaten, ragbag of a bed festering in one dank corner, I remember thinking it very befitting that the small stairs reeked of piss and seaweed.
In my mind, when Mulligan descends the stiar he is descending from an ante room or higher bedroom level. In fact he is descneding from the roof, where he was stood shaving in the early morning breeze. To make the same trip yourself is something of a revelation for Joyce groupies like myself. What is perhaps a great shame is that the place was almost completely empty, which, considering that you can't move in Dublin without knocking someone's pint off a Joycean sculpture or statue, is a crying shame, but well suited a misanthrope like me. Just beneath the tower there is a small rocky cove, which on Sunday was festooned with gently reddening Irish folk and children, and it's easy to picture Jouce and his gang slipping down to the water for a dip. To stand so close to something that up until that point existed only your imagination is a truly wonderful experience, and one made all the more poignant when you have invested that image with the words and turns of phrase of a great writer, without which it would have just been another speck in the distance.

We ate icecream
Two satisfied souls
On the harbour wall