Day 20 - Writers Museum

I rise early enough to acquit myself of the free breakfast, although early risings are increasingly a struggle. The host of the B&B prepares a passable bacon, eggs and sausage, giving me enough carbs to support the long walks I invariably undertake as a traveller. When you're exploring a new city, an hour's walk is a stroll in the park. New streets and boutiques, different fashions, houses the like you've never seen with gaudy coloured doors flanked by classical pillars (my host has a poster of 'Dublin Doors' in the lobby). 

Nothing looks far apart on a tourist map.  Around the corner is the Writers Museum and this is where I immediately head. It's actually a half hour walk but this takes me through what I think is Chinatown in Dublin - at least there are lots of Asian eateries and mobile phone stores. At one of these stores I ask for an international sim card but the seller can't clearly explain the benefits of the card he offers me. I'm used to Lyca or Lebara which give you international calls from 1c a minute. As the shopkeeper really can't say anything more than that the card fits in your phone and works, I decline his offer.

The Writers Museum is in John Jameson's old house and this is good place to start my day as I'll go to his  distillery later. An audio tour is included in the admission price - I've tried to avoid these as they usually don't say anything more than what is written on the placards. And it's a bit antisocial walking through a museum holding a black box to your ear.

Just what should one find in a writers museum? Indeed is it worth having museums for writers at all? Behold tourists, come and read about writers, see their relics, typewriters, unpublished masterpieces scrawled on table cloths.

The Irish Writers Museum is quite handy for me because apart from patches of Joyce and Yeats what else have I read of Irish flavour? I know of Shaw, haven't read him. I've read a fair bit of Wilde but he's only Irish-born, spending his professional years in London before his exile to Paris. I learn that Joyce also took a similar path, believing a writer shouldn't confine himself to a particular culture - at the age of 22 Joyce left Ireland for the continent. Yeats was more parochial, searching out Irish identity, confounding Dublin's Abbey Theatre over a hundred years ago.

The musuem has Joyce's old piano in the centre of one of its rooms and although of course it's locked, I'm tempted to touch it, to feel the very wood of this inspired man where he passed his more leisurely hours. For some reason I refrain, though I'm the only soul in the room and the piano literally begs for an idolatrous caress. Perhaps I believe that if I ever make something of my writing it's not going to be because I touched Joyce's piano.