The following is a brief extract from the recently unearthed sequel to James Joyce’s Ulysses, entitled ‘Twolysses’. This rigidly structured chapter was to be written as a sequence of questions and answers, and an early version originally appeared in a 1921 edition of Aston Villa’s match day souvenir programme.

WHAT DIVERGENT COURSES DID STEPHEN DEDALUS AND LEOPLOLD BLOOM’S RESPECTIVE TRAMS FOLLOW?

Stephen’s 11A tram followed Birmingham’s outer ring road in an anti-clockwise direction; Bloom’s 11C tram followed Birmingham’s outer ring road in a clockwise direction.

AT WHAT POINT ON THE ROUTE DID THEIR TWO TRAMS CONVERGE?

In Cotteridge.

WHAT WERE THE NAMES OF STEPHEN’S FELLOW PASSENGERS?

Rev Al Green, Mr Edward G. Baston, Mr Mose Lee, Mr Bart Lee Green, Mr Bill Slee, Mr Derek End, Mr Dud Heston, Mr Frank Lee, Mr Thor Ochs, Fr Garret Greene, Miss Cassandra L. Vale, Dr R. Bourne, Mrs Hayley Mills, Mr Lee Bank, Mr Laurence ‘Loz’ Ells, Miss Minnie ‘Min’ Worth, Mr Kit & Mrs Mia Greene, Mr Oz Kot, Mr Rube Berry, Miss Sally Oak, Mrs Sally Park, Mrs Shell Dunne, Lt Col Shaw Teeth (Retired), Mr Tighe Burne, Dr Winston Greene, Mr Wes Teeth, Mr Ty Slee and Mr Alan Rock.

IN WHAT STATE OF HEATH DID STEPHEN FIND HIMSELF?

Gravely Ill.

WHERE WAS STEPHEN’S TRAM LOCATED IN SPACE-TIME?

At 2.30pm on 14th June 1914, Stephen’s 11A tram (maximum seating capacity approximately 45) was negotiating Erdington’s Six Ways traffic roundabout as it followed the 27 mile imperfectly circular outer ring road of the city of Birmingham (population approximately 840,000): which was part of the county known as Warwickshire (population approximately 1.3 million): which was part of the country called England (population approximately 34 million); which was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (population approximately 46 million): which was part of the continent of Europe (population approximately 450 million): which was part of a planet known locally as Earth (population approximately 1.8 billion) which was currently following a 150,000,000 mile imperfectly circular orbit of its neighbouring Sun (maximum seating capacity approximately nil).

WHERE WAS BLOOM’S TRAM LOCATED IN SPACE-TIME?

In Stechford.

The high-brow world of literary scholarship was thrown into disarray earlier this week when lost manuscripts by the great Irish author James Joyce were discovered in one of Paris’ infamous northern suburbs by a team of French construction workers.

These priceless documents – which include fragments of a previously unknown sequel to Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses – were unearthed by the workmen during the building of a controversial new scenic landscape over a much-loved stretch of dual carriageway. This news comes as a further embarrassment to an already beleaguered intellectual community still reeling from several high-profile discoveries of lost Modernist texts by French construction workers.

Joyce’s Ulysses tells the story of Leopold Bloom (a middle-aged advertising salesman), Stephen Dedalus (a melancholic young writer) and Bloom’s wife Molly (a successful concert singer who suffers from a rare form of PDD, or Punctuation Deficiency Disorder). During the course of the vast novel, Bloom takes a stroll through the streets of Dublin, forms an unlikely bond with Stephen, visits a whorehouse and finds out that Molly has been cheating on him. These events all take place within the course of a single day – 16^th June 1904 – and, on account of this, the novel is often cited as a major influence on the hit television series ‘24’.

For Joyce’s legion of fans, 16^th June 1904 is now affectionately referred to as ‘Bloomsday’ and every year they celebrate its anniversary by dressing up in Edwardian clothes, walking through the streets of Dublin and visiting local whorehouses for charity.

Experts have already determined that the Ulysses sequel – which Joyce provisionally entitled ‘Twolysses‘ – was to take place on 16^th June 1914, exactly 10 years’ after Ulysses and just prior to the outbreak of the First World War (which, as historians have been quick to point out, eventually had a sequel of its own). As well as a new date, there was also a new location: while its illustrious predecessor was famously set in the Irish capital city of Dublin, for the sequel Joyce relocated the inaction to the English second city of Birmingham (or ‘Brum’, as it was then known).

According to local historian Professor Charlie Chin, this change in setting was prompted by an “innovative local government cultural regeneration initiative” that offered “bostin’ (tr. ‘splendid’) tax breaks” to “arty-farty types” who agreed to move to “Birmingham”. Joyce, of course, was unwilling to leave Paris on account of his fondness for mille-feuille, pain au chocolat and other French pastries, so negotiated a deal with Birmingham’s civic leaders to relocate his characters instead. Ironically, the Irish government launched a similar scheme in 1969 to lure artistic migrants to the Emerald Isle, but the tax cuts were funded by an inheritance tax hike and Joyce would have ended up financially worse off on account of him already being dead.

The sequel was to feature the three main protagonists of Ulysses – Bloom, Stephen and Molly – interacting with fellow fictional characters and real-life historical figures from the area like Joseph Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain and Richard Chamberlain. As the novel opens, we find Stephen Dedalus – now in his early 30s – living in Perrott’s Folly, an abandoned Martello Tower in the Edgbaston district of the city which dates back to a time when Birmingham had a thriving coastline. Stephen shares the tower with a group of boisterous history students from the nearby University whose excessive drinking and late-night partying remind him bitterly of how he used to behave in a previous novel. At the end of the first chapter he storms into the communal kitchen area and confronts his tormentors by shouting: “Historians are the nightmare that keep me awake at nights!” This becomes a recurring theme of the novel, despite the fact that nobody in the book takes any notice of it.

Disillusioned by life, Stephen has all but abandoned his literary ambitions and now works at Digbeth’s famous Old Crown public house as its resident balladeer-balladist (an early form of singer-songwriter). His attempts at turning his complex theories on theology, philosophy and dermatology into toe-tapping crowd-pleasers have so far met with mixed success. This is partly due to the fact his radical and esoteric ideas are out of step with jingoistic pre-war mood of the period, and partly due to the venue’s poor acoustics.

Meanwhile, Bloom and Molly arrive in Birmingham at the nearby Digbeth Coach and Horse Station. When questioned by an obnoxious taxi driver en route to their lodgings at the Bartons Arms pub, Bloom claims he has come to the city to accompany his wife who has been booked to perform a selection of her hits at the prestigious Aston Hippodrome music hall. Privately, though, the advertising salesman is motivated by a strong desire to avoid Dublin on 16^th June as the Bloomsday festivities are starting to get embarrassing.

When Bloom discovers that Stephen Dedalus is living in the city, the two arrange to meet on the Number 11 Outer Circle tram so the “Bull Ring Befriending Bard” can take him on a guided tour of the city’s key residential areas, even though most of them are still fields. Unfortunately, Bloom boards a number 11 that is travelling along the route in a clockwise direction and Stephen boards another heading the opposite way. As a result the two characters never actually meet, although their respective buses briefly pass each other in Cotteridge. This seems to be an oblique reference to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics which states that any two particles moving in the opposite direction will eventually pass each other in Cotteridge.

Bloom and Stephen’s journeys are told in a variety of literary styles paralleling both their journey through the external environment of the Outer Circle route and their own respective inner-journeys of self-realization. This includes a chapter that’s written in the style of a bus timetable.

When Molly finds out about her husband’s planned rendezvous she’s incensed, having never forgiven Stephen for leaving the previous novel so abruptly. By way of revenge, she decides to resume her affair with sleazy showbiz impresario Blazes Boylan. Unfortunately, a bizarre backstage accident at the Hippodrome involving a case of HP Sauce falling from an overhead gantry renders Boylan incapacitated for several vital chapters and, in desperation, Molly is forced to arrange a hasty tryst with the woodwind section of the CBSO.

The novel ends with Molly meeting Bloom at a bus stop in Perry Barr and pledging to make him a breakfast of tea, toast, eggs and haddock the next morning. Bloom realizes that Molly only ever promises to makes him a breakfast of tea, toast, eggs and haddock after she’s been unfaithful, but decides it’s not worth having a row about. Stephen, of course, has already wandered out of the novel, just like he did the last time.

It now seems likely that Twolysses was part of the short-lived Modernist follow-up fad of the mid-1920s, in which many of the writers of the period tried to cash-in on their artistic credentials by turning their masterpieces into money-spinning franchises. The craze was started by the American poet T.S. Eliot, who ruthlessly exploited the popularity of his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by churning out several dozen artistically inferior and increasingly tawdry spin-offs. These included The Protest Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Power Ballad of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Hardcore Dance Anthem of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Eliot’s fellow experimental writers were quick to jump on board this lucrative bandwagon. Besides Ulysses, other classic Modernist texts to receive the sequel treatment include Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (‘Second Wave’), William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (‘2 Loud 2 Furious’) and Ezra Pound’s Cantos (‘The Wrath of Cantos’).

The follow-up fad came to an abrupt end in 1927 during a party held at Ernest Hemmingway’s Parisian home to commemorate the removal of one of the great writer’s more troublesome wisdom teeth. Joyce, Picasso and other leading lights of the Modernist movement were in attendance when a drunken Gertrude Stein gatecrashed the gathering, making lewd and disparaging comments about the guests’ artistic integrity and the host’s choice of hors d’oeuvres.

Devastated by these comments, Joyce swiftly threw away his canapé and discarded his drafts of Twolysses. Like so many other abandoned Modernist sequels of this period, it was subsequently used as roadfill by the local authorities.

In addition to the sequel to Ulysses, the recently discovered Joycean hoard also contained journals and personal correspondence together with an unfinished screenplay for a Laurel & Hardy feature film entitled ‘Agenbite of Nitwits’. From next week, members of the public will be able to view a selection of the documents at museums in Dublin and Birmingham for a limited period. After this, the manuscripts will return to France where they will be housed in the permanent collection of Modernist literature located at the Paris headquarters of the National Union of French Construction Workers.

So, Britain’s best-selling red-top is back in the blue camp again. I can’t say I was particularly surprised when The Sun’s 12 year love-in with New Labour came to an end the other week. Maybe it’s because my political conscience first rolled off the production line during the 1980s, but I’ve always struggled to think of the Soaraway One as anything other than a vicious little Tory rag. For me, at least, its recent volte-face was a bit like the Angling Times announcing a return to fishing-themed coverage after a decade or so spent focusing on musical theatre.

I’ve never much liked The Sun, but I don’t expect that revelation will come as a tremendous surprise to anyone who knows me and/or reads this blog. I don’t really fall into its target demographic, you see. It’s not pitched at those of us lumbered with left-leaning tendencies, celebrity tat allergies and a phobia of xenophobic homophobes. Mind you, this probably won’t give the Murdoch clan too many sleepless nights.

In The Sun’s defence, however, at least it’s not the Daily Mail. I may dislike The Sun, but I really do hate the Daily Mail almost as much as it seems to hate benefit cheats, asylum seekers and Jonathan Ross. That probably won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, either. Still, I shouldn’t just pick on the obvious targets. While I’m on the subject, I detest the Daily Express, despise the Daily Star and wouldn’t eat chips out of most of the broadsheets, either.

These paper prejudices have been with me for years. They weren’t the result of some misspent life of political activism, a disastrous career on Fleet Street or even a Media Studies evening course at the local FE College. No, they have their roots in something far more mundane than that.

It was my paper round wot did it.

(more…)

Last December I was driving past the former Matthew Boulton College building on Sherlock Street in Birmingham as it was being demolished. Clare was in the passenger seat, but seeing as though neither of us were former students at the place and it wasn’t an old cinema it failed to elicit any kind of emotional response worth mentioning.

A few weeks later we drove past it again. All that was left of the college was a big pile of rubble, but that didn’t particularly bother me, either. Civil engineering was never my strong suit, but the one thing I do know is that rubble is an inevitable byproduct of knocking down a building.

A few weeks ago Clare & I once again passed the former Matthew Boulton College on Sherlock Street in Birmingham. On the site of the erstwhile big pile of rubble was a reasonably large field. This didn’t look like freshly rolled-out turf: it looked like it had been there forever. Despite the fact we were driving past it at a reasonable speed we could even see weeds.

“I remember when all this was buildings,” said Clare, wistfully.

CONFESSIONS OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (1974)

Cert X, Dir. Alan Smithee

Stockland Green Plaza from 16th June, 1974. Showtimes vary.

Based on the acclaimed novel by cult science-fiction satirist Jimmy Joyce, this new British sex comedy stars the ever-popular Robin Askwith as Steve Dedalus, a chirpy young aspiring novelist who yearns to break free from the suffocating straitjacket of conformity by embarking on an illustrious literary career. Steve soon finds, however, that it takes more than an abundance of talent, ruthless tenacity and sheer luck to make it big in the book business: it also requires a willingness to subject oneself to a series of back-breaking romps with various ladies of letters. This hardback harem of softback sirens include a licentious librarian (Sally Geeson), a lascivious literary agent (Rula Lenska) and a saucy censor (Irene Handl), and Steve’s so-called ‘epiphanies’ take place in a variety of ludicrously lewd literary-themed locations including a marquee at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the back of a mobile library and the top deck of the number 11 bus.

This, it must be said, is something of a departure from the source material.

Next week’s auction of rare manuscripts by the great Irish author James Joyce looks set to ignite a bitter dispute between private collectors, leading academics and fans of a West Midlands football team. The documents – made up of original, handwritten drafts of what many believe to be his earliest published work – consist of over 1500 pages of articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles that Joyce wrote between 1919 and 1924 for Aston Villa’s weekly match day souvenir programme.

‘This has got us all worried,’ says Harry H. Earwicker, Aston Villa supporter and spokesperson for the Anglo-Irish ‘soccerlit’ pressure group, Villa Yootha Joyce. ‘There’s a very real danger that some well-heeled foreign buyer could take the manuscripts out of North Birmingham. These documents form part of this great club’s history. They are the only surviving link between the modern-day Claret and Blue Army and the lost world of Modernist literature. They should remain at Villa Park or, at the very least, somewhere in Witton.’

As well as being one of the most important writers of the last century, James Joyce will also be remembered as one of Aston Villa’s original ‘famous fans’. In this respect, he was very much the Nigel Kennedy of his day. Joyce would often boast about this in public, despite the fact that – in the 1920s at least – no serious artist wanted to be compared to Nigel Kennedy. What first attracted the Dublin-born writer to this legendary North Birmingham club remains a mystery, however. Some Joycean scholars have tentatively suggested that he supported Aston Villa as an defiant act of artistic rebellion against the dated literary conventions of Victorian novelists like Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope and the Brontë sisters who were, for the most part, Birmingham City supporters.

Whatever the case, his obsession for the club found its way into the early drafts of many of his most famous books. His autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was originally entitled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fan, while his masterpiece Ulysses – in which the entire narrative famously took place on a single day, 16^th June, 1904 – was originally scheduled to take place on 2^nd April, 1897, the date of Villa’s first FA Cup victory.

Joyce began writing for the club’s souvenir programme in 1919. He was living in impoverished exile in Zurich with his lover, Nora Barnacle, and was desperately struggling to make ends meet. By the time his ends eventually did meet it was too late, as the pair had already moved to Paris. To help alleviate Joyce’s poverty his well-connected patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, put in a good word with Aston Villa’s owners. In those days, the football souvenir programme industry was a melting pot of Modernist talent and many of the great artists of the day got their first break working for these publications. The likes of T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Marcel Proust cut their creative teeth writing articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles until people started taking them seriously. Writers weren’t the only people to benefit from this industry, of course. Pablo Picasso famously produced a series of lurid strip cartoons for Birmingham City’s souvenir programme during what later became known as his ‘Blues period’.

Over the next five years Joyce was a prolific contributor to the publication. He produced 276 articles, 573 match reports, 834 play-by-play tactical analysis charts and over 15,000 in-depth player profiles. This prodigious output was all the more remarkable as he spent most of this period living abroad and, as a result, was rarely able to attend home games. Instead, he had to rely heavily on detailed telegrams, eyewitness accounts and conjecture.

According to Earwicker, Joyce’s early articles for the souvenir programme featured ‘a winning combination of hard-hitting match analysis, erudite Irish wit and obscure literary allusions that proved to be a big hit with Villa fans.’ His classic work during this period included the groundbreaking match report Villa v QPR (1919) and its disappointing sequel, Villa v QPR (1920), and during Villa’s 1919-20 FA Cup campaign Joyce received widespread acclaim for his detailed account of the long road to Wembley, which was entitled ‘The M1.’

Unfortunately, Joyce’s love affair with Aston Villa was not to last. Egged on by fellow Villa fan Ezra Pound, he began to introduce increasingly experimental literary techniques into his Villa programme contributions. His play-by-play tactical analysis reports featured an increased use of multiple-viewpoint narration and Lobachevskian geometry. This confused scores of Villa fans who were more familiar traditional third-person narrative approaches and Euclidian geometry. He also abandon many of the traditional rules of punctuation: a 1921 interview with Frank Barson upset the legendary ‘hard man’ striker after Joyce removed all the quotation marks and replaced them with inverted commas.

The situation finally came to a head in 1924 with his controversial profile of one of Villa’a most notorious fans. A precursor to the modern-day streaker, Macintosh Brown would interrupt Villa matches by charging across the field wearing nothing but a brown macintosh. Joyce’s profile of this shady exhibitionist – complete with pop-up illustrations – resulted in a highly-publicised obscenity trial and Joyce was forced to accept a three-match ban.

The club’s owners were furious with Joyce. When Villa were defeated by Newcastle United in that year’s FA Cup final, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word match report which featured passing references to Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell, Catholic theologian St Thomas Aquinas and Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. The club owners urged Joyce to remove these references which, they felt, were ‘somewhat irrelevant’ and ‘confusing to younger fans’. Angered by this perceived attack on his artistic integrity, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word profile of Parnell, Aquinas and Vico which made only passing reference to the FA Cup Final. In retaliation, the club owners published a clumsily edited version the original article and attributed it to one of Joyce’s uncles, who he didn’t like.

For Joyce this was the final straw. He sent the club a blunt, two-word resignation letter in Latin which read: ‘Non-serviam.’ The club responded with a blunt, two-word response in Anglo Saxon, which – unfortunately – was lost in the post. After turning his back on his religion and then his country, Joyce finally turned his back on his favorite team. In a fit of rage he attempted to set fire to his vast collection of Aston Villa scarves, track suits and other paraphernalia. Unfortunately, due to his failing eyesight, he instead set fire to a pair of curtains and an early draft of a planned sequel to Ulysses that was provisionally entitled Twolysses.

Nearly a century later, Joyce’s influence still remains strong at Villa Park. According to Earwicker, his ghost has often been witnessed sitting on the top deck of a bus that passes close to the ground and shouting abuse from the terraces. Most touchingly, perhaps, many of his early, lyrical poems have formed the basis of some of the club’s most enduring supporter chants. These include the touching ‘We Love You Villa, We Do’, the rousing ‘We are the Boys from the Holte Army’ and, of course, the ever-popular ‘Shit on the City.’

I popped into Birmingham music emporium Swordfish Records yesterday in order to fulfil my obligatory Record Store Day obligation. As this blog is committed to transparency and a full disclosure of contributions to the music industry, I’ll fess up now and admit that I purchased Television’s People by the rather marvellous Brum-based endorphin-pumpers Misty’s Big Adventure. I also bought an additional CD and two vinyl LPs from their £1 clearance section, but – as this blogger is committed to protecting what’s left of his credibility – I’ll refrain from telling you what they were.

As I drove to the store I was listening to Frank Zappa’s 1983 album, The Man From Utopia. It’s not one of his best but it seemed appropriate, to me at least. Zappa has always reminded me of Swordfish Records, and Swordfish Records has always reminded me of Zappa. I’d like to offer some deep and thoughtful insight into the roots of this weird interrelationship, but instead I’ll just tell you the truth: Zappa reminds me of Swordfish Records because the staff used to play his music all the time.

Of course, with the twin onslaught of download culture and deep discounting supermarkets, even the major High Street record stores have been having a tough time of it lately. It can’t be easy for independent retailers, either. One of the advantages that independent record stores will always have over the competition, though, is that your average major supermarket or High Street record store is unlikely to play weird, subversive shit like Willie the Pimp, The Illinois Enema Bandit or Why Does it Hurt When I Pee? over the tannoy anytime soon. Too bad.

Independent record stores also tend to be staffed by people who are passionate and knowledgeable about music. If you were to ask a member of staff at, say, Sainsbury’s to point you in the direction of the Zappa album that featured the original studio cuts of Suzy Creamcheese and Bobby Brown Goes Down you’re unlikely to get a detailed, well-informed response. I’m making a sweeping generalisation, of course. This might only be the case at my local branch.

As I rifled through the racks at Swordfish yesterday, a Zappa album was playing in the background. I smiled, wistfully.

Which, in case you don’t know, “is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music.”

I’ll endeavour to pop into my favourite local indie music store, Swordfish Records, at some point later today and I might even try to observe a minute’s silence for its fallen comrades in arms, like Frank’s Wild Records and the Plastic Factory.

You can find the Record Store Day site here.

Stateless, scrawny James Joyce and his mistressmusewife, Nora Barnacle, were waiting for a number eleven omnibus in the Perry Barr district of Birmingham. It was twenty-six days, five months and one hundred and four years after 16th June 1904, although they didn’t necessarily spend all that time waiting for a bus.

At what precise location in Perry Barr was their bus stop located?

By a clay bark’s bank, where a stone lane meets a field of birch.

Do you mean by the Barclays Bank on the Corner of Aston Lane and Birchfield Road?

Um, yes.

What obsolete vernacular term for acute dental dysfunction can be used to describe the approximate time of the bus’s arrival?

Tooth hurty.

What action did the author make upon the arrival of his omnibus?

He inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his senior citizen’s bus pass.

Was it there?

No. It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding.

Why was this quadruply irritating?

Because he had forgotten; because he had previously reminded Nora to remind him not to forget; because Nora was now reminding him that she had previously remembered to remind him not to forget; because the previous trousers were now at the dry cleaners.

Was the controversial author of such groundbreaking classics as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake entitled to free travel on bus, train and Metro services throughout the West Midlands and environs?

Yes, insofar as the author was 126 years of age and could therefore be classified as a pensioner.

Due to the aforementioned bus pass oversight, was Joyce required to tender the full adult off-peak fare?

No. The stately, plump bus driver was in a charitable mood and let him off on a technicality.

What was the technicality?

The fact that Joyce had been dead since 1941.

Briefly outline Joyce’s initial observations with regards to the distribution of passengers in the lower deck of the number 11 bus.

The lower deck contained twelve adult females (two with infants), nine adult males, and eight juveniles (five female and three male) of varying ages, races and creeds; five adults (three female and two male) were reading (or appearing to read) daily newspapers, monthly magazines or this week’s Take a Break; two adults (male and female) and one juvenile (male) were listening to music (or appearing to listen to music) on portable MP3 players; one adult (male) and one juvenile (female) were conducting (or appearing to conduct) mobile telephone conversations with unidentified parties on matters pertaining to, in the first instance, a somewhat contentious business transaction involving an otter,and, in the second, a highly detailed account of a series of regrettable and somewhat lurid romantic entanglements involving a third party known only as Our Sonia.

There were no available seats on the lower deck, then?

Indeed.

What parallel course did Joyce and Nora subsequently follow?

Starting united both at normal walking pace from the driver’s cabin, they turned right and approached the steps leading to the upper deck. Joyce, a well-mannered man, insisted that Nora go first; Nora, a feminist icon, insisted that Joyce go first. He eventually acquiesced, for fear of getting a punch on the nose.

What change in circumstance almost thwarted their ascent?

The vehicle’s sudden and unexpected transition in relative state from at rest (statum) to moving (agitato) caused Joyce to lose his footing on the narrow stairwell, ricochet off the handrail and launch into a form of graceless backflip commonly referred to as arse over tit (ineptio).

What prevented Joyce from sustaining a serious head injury?

The fact he collided, face first, into the ample cleavage of his mistress, Nora Barnacle.

What was Nora’s initial reaction to this?

NORA: Get off me Jim, ye wee skitter! I’m not falling for that one again!

What was crestfallen (and chestfallen) Joyce’s initial reaction to that?

Shock: embarrassment: shame: mild titillation: guilt: a profound sense of irony.

Why irony?

Because he had now done by accident something that he had previously done on purpose; because when he previously did it on purpose he pretended it was an accident.

What was the origin of this hitherto intentional stair-stumbling, cleavage-colliding phenomenon?

A high risk seduction stratagem Joyce called The Epiphany Accelerator.

Where and when did this previously happen?

With Nora, along a set of stone steps in Ringsend, Dublin, on 16th June 1904.

Shall we move on?

I think we should.

Were there available seats on the upper deck?

There were.

Where did Joyce and Nora decide to sit?

On the left hand side of the deck, at an equidistant point between a cackle of truants sitting on the back seat and a skinnylooking galoot and his girlfriend sitting at the front.

Why did Joyce take an irrational dislike to the skinnylooking galoot?

He was making witless remarks, scribbling furiously in a note pad and looked like a blogger.

What course did the number 11 omnibus subsequently follow?

Travelling in a south-easterly direction at an average speed of 26 mph, it left the field of birch and its broken librubble and followed Aston Lane’s Path, past Roddy Tufnol’s factoray and the new 24 our tescosuperstore.

What was the skinnylooking galoot’s reaction to the broken librubble?

- Where the fuck did that go?

What was the skinnylooking galoot’s reaction to the new tescosuperstore?

- Where the fuck did that come from?

What was Joyce’s reaction to the skinnylooking galoot’s reactions?

He let out a pair of audible tuts.

Was Joyce the first great 20th century novelist to have used the number 11 bus despite being dead?

No.

Can you elaborate on your answer?

Can you be more specific with your question?

Alright, then. Was Joyce the first dead 20th Century Modernist author to use Birmingham’s number 11 bus?

No. Ernest Hemmingway spent some time on the Outer Circle route during an otherwise regrettable trip to Birmingham.

Why was the trip regrettable?

He didn’t realize the Bull Ring was a shopping centre.

Well we know where we’re goin’
But we dont know where we’ve been
And we know what were knowin’
But we can’t say what weve seen

Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere

It’s about 1.50pm, Clare and I are still in Harborne and we’re still sitting on the front seat of the top deck of Birmingham’s legendary number 11 bus. We’re sitting to the right of the bus, and – on Lordswood Road – a girl sitting to our left gets up and click-clacks her way down the steps in a pair of presumably-fashionable high heel plimsoles. This may seem fairly inconsequential to you, but for me it was the catalyst for a minor revalation: sitting on the front seat of the top deck might give you a great view of the road ahead, but when it comes to interbus people-watching it’s far from ideal. Visibility is seriously impaired due to the fact that almost everybody else is sitting behind you.

It was, of course, Clare who noticed her shoes: footwear observations aren’t exactly my forte. I wouldn’t have clocked what was on her feet if she staggered past me in a pair of of Elton John’s 4 foot tall Doc Martens.

I assume she’s a regular passenger, not some eejit with a blog and a day off work whose partial to a bit of public transport-based sociological high jinks. This is someone with a destination in mind, who knows exactly where she’s going. She’s the kind of person who uses the bus to get from A to B, not someone who misuses the bus to get from A to A.

It’s probably best if I don’t dwell on the metaphorical implications of any of this.