BLOOMSDAY arrived two days early in Dublin yesterday, causing mild chaos and a 1904 style traffic jam on St Stephen's Green.
1996 style drivers looked on with a mixture of amusement and bemusement as the "Bloomsday Messenger Bike Rally" wove its unsteady way around the Green twice, to kick off a weekend of Joycean excesses.
Bicycles which had not seen active service or fresh paint since the Boer War were dusted off for the event, along with boaters, blazers, shawls and shifts.
Any suggest ion that the rally might have a competitive edge was quickly dispelled. The cyclists' chief priority was to survive intact.
A group of modern bicycle couriers, dressed in very 1996 style luminous yellow lycra, watched from the Grafton Street corner of the Green, speechless.
More in keeping with the period atmosphere, if accidentally, a line of tired looking horses waited in harness across the road for tourists to hire their carriages. They displayed no apparent reaction to the cyclists but then, for horses employed in the Dublin tourism industry, every year is 1904.
The period peloton of about 40 bikes did not qualify for a Garda escort. It did, however, contain a couple of members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police who, having supervised a reasonably orderly event, handed the Green back to the modern day police authority, with obvious relief.
The "Bloomstime" events continue today with a re-enactment of Paddy Dignam's funeral in Glasnevin Cemetery. The climax of the weekend is a Molly Bloom Ball in the James Joyce Centre tomorrow night.
