Although the James Joyce Centre is the main the museum dedicated to the author in his native city, it has very few artefacts that are directly associated with him. The table owned by one of Joyce’s friends at which Joyce met to discuss the translation of his work is of marginal interest. It would be more interesting to see the table at which the writer himself wrote the original work.

One reason for the absence of Joyce’s possessions maybe his peripatetic lifestyle. Another explanation for the relative poverty of the Joyce Centre’s collection is suggested by the copies of paintings of Joyce’s family which hang in one of the rooms: the Joyce Centre has to make do with the copies because most of the originals are in American collections, which presumably have much greater purchasing power.

Ulysses

The museum has a number of interesting interactive displays and documentaries on show. However, even these are displayed in a careless manner with a number of the charts outlining Joyce’s biography either missing or in the wrong order.

Despite these disappointments, Joyce’s life seems to have been so colourful and the speculation surrounding his masterpiece Ulysses is so great that it is impossible to leave without picking up a couple of fascinating theories or biographical details.

The door of 7 Eccles Street, home of Leopold Bloom, the hero of Ulysses, is by far the most interesting artefact on display at the museum. But why did Joyce choose to use that particular address?

Leopold Bloom

According to the museum, 7 Eccles Street was the real-life address of Joyce’s friend John Francis Byrne. When Joyce returned to Ireland for a brief visit in 1909, he stayed with Byrne on Eccles Street.

During his stay in Dublin, Joyce became upset when an acquaintance told him that he had been going out with Joyce’s partner Nora at the time same time as Joyce several years earlier. Joyce wrote angry letters to Nora demanding to know the truth, until his host reassured him that he was worrying about nothing and that there was no truth in the rumour.

In recognition of his kindness and for putting his mind at rest, Joyce chose Byrne’s home on Eccles Street as the address of the one of the most famous literary characters of the twentieth century. Not stopping there, Joyce even used Byrne’s exact measurement for Bloom, after obtaining them when Byrne stopped off at a chemist to measure and weigh himself, during Joyce’s visit

Whatever its deficiencies, the Joyce Centre is still worth a visit for fascinating nuggets like these.

The problem is that my kitchen is separated from my neighbours in the adjoining building by only a couple of metres across a courtyard. And when I wake in the morning, I can expect to find either a young mother preparing her children for school, a middle-aged couple poring over the Telegraph or a woman at her make-up table, depending on which floor in the building I look at.

As I am living alone, the company and distraction are often welcome. But the situation also raises questions about the etiquette of living in a built-up environment which, as someone from the rolling planes of Dublin city, I feel ill-equipped to answer.

In the beginning, as a keen-to-please new arrival, I was inclined to think that some sort of acknowledgement was required when I saw one of my neighbours across the way –a wave would be too much, but a smile or raised eyebrow perhaps. However, my fellow residents appeared uninterested in engaging me.

Despite their lack of reaction, I find it hard to believe that they don’t notice me a couple of feet away and aren’t in some way curious. I wonder, for example, what the reaction be if I turned up for breakfast one morning brandishing a bull whip and wearing a leather thong. Would the apparent obliviousness continue? I doubt it.

Even if they really are not interested in me, you have probably realised that I am quite curious about my neighbours. When the entire view from your kitchen window is filled by your neighbours’ homes, it seems ridiculous to pretend that they don’t exist. But sometimes when I find myself craning my neck so that I can better see the neighbour’s dog, I start to wonder if I have crossed a line.

In the porch on the way into my building, there are security guidelines warning people to make sure they shut the front door properly and don’t let strangers in. I only wish that somebody would pin a similar set of instructions to the notice board with advice along the lines of: “Residents in this building live at close quarters to their neighbours. Peering is natural and understandable, but outright gawking is not. We also ask that you refrain from making judgements about your neighbours based on the cleanliness of their kitchens or their appearance at eight o’clock in the morning…”

The Hoerengracht was created during the 1980s and preserves many day-to-day details of life at the time. At first, the piece reminded me of an exhibit at the Geffrye Museum, which specialises in recreating domestic interiors from earlier eras. My eye was caught by period details such as the old radios, a Joni Mitchell cassette and a plastic hanger in the shape of spread legs. While these items were interesting in themselves, the way Hoerengracht has aged now distracts from the serious subject of prostitution and even makes it appear slightly quaint.

The absence of men in Hoerengracht is very noticeable. In part, the intention seems to be to unsettle visitors by implicating them in the scene. However, there is also something dignified about showing the women separate from the men who define their lives. Standing alone in shop windows, the women look like religious icons –with glowing red lights and cigarettes instead of candles and rosary beads.

Trapped like animals

To start with, the piece felt weaker because of the absence of any direct reference to the women’s relationships with their male customers and pimps. When I looked closely, however, I became more affected by the loneliness and isolation of the women, trapped like animals in the windows of pet shops.

Photos in the introduction to the exhibition show the artists making casts of prostitutes in Amsterdam, which they used to create the bodies of the women in the installation. To emphasise the idea that the prostitutes in Hoerengracht are commodities, however, the artists put mannequins’ heads on top of the bodies. The blank faces of the mannequins staring out at us from the windows are surprisingly strong; they convey the tedium and numbness which must come from selling your body for sex on a daily basis.

Dripping with glue

The most striking feature of the installation is the transparent glue which has been dripped all over it. Coming down the sides of the buildings, the glue looks like rain and contributes to the cold and depressing atmosphere of the scene. On the inside of the windows, it might be interpreted as steam -a reference to what is happening in the bedroom, as well as emphasising how trapped the women are.

On the bodies of the prostitutes, however, the presence of this sticky glue can only be interpreted as sexual. Running down their faces and all over their clothes, it is the most powerful evocation of the misery, indignity and abuse of life as a sexual worker. The message is very powerful, but I am not sure that it affects viewers in the way which the artists really want.

The Kienholzs obviously felt sympathy for the prostitutes they met during their trips to Amsterdam in the 1980s. In the introduction to the installation, Nancy is quoted as saying: “I would only hope that The Hoerengracht is a kind portrait of the profession and that eventually the profession will be legal and the girls can get police protection rather than prosecution.”

Hoerengracht effectively evokes the misery of life as a prostitute and would discourage anybody from participating in it. But the Kienholzs have made the women in their installation look repellent by covering them in icky, sexually suggestive glue. Their intention seems to have been to improve the lot of prostitutes by rousing sympathy for them. In fact, the Kienholzs have further stigmatised and marginalised prostitutes, by putting so much emphasis on the idea that they are diseased and unclean.

Almost ten years ago when I was studying business for the Leaving, I remember my teacher using the collapsible, stainless steel scooter then popular in the primary school, as an example of a product at the end of its product life. In Kensington, however, such predictions are still being defied. And if you leave the house before nine in the morning, you need to watch your step or you risk having your toes crushed as convoys of children gleefully scoot by.

Despite their parents’ commitment to the latest trends, the old-fashioned scooter has caught the imagination of a generation of younger Kensington residents. While older children scoot independently, their younger siblings -often too small to see over the handlebars- insist on being towed by their parents on specially adapted three- and four-wheel models.

Competiton

Pumping their way to school in the morning, the fitness and energy of the children at such an early hour is enviable. As I trudge up Kensington Church Street to the Tube, I often find myself in competition with families of children whose school is also at the top of the hill. I have the advantage over my under-12 competitors of not having to wait for my mother before I can cross each intersecting road. I cross smugly, leaving the kids in my tracks. But by the time I reach the end of the next block, they have inevitably passed me out and are waiting equally smugly for me to catch up so that we can repeat the humiliating exercise. By the time we part company at the top of the hill, I am often left wondering why I bothered to have a shower at all that morning.

Of course, the children don’t always play fair: younger siblings can be used as obstacles to slow pedestrians’ progress and there are often minor collisions.

Even if the children do manage to avoid bumping into you –or, more likely, you avoid them- they are often responsible for secondary accidents, as unaccustomed pedestrians like myself are distracted by the spectacle of a neighbourhood of children gliding past and forget to pay attention to where they are going. 

Yummy Mummies

Those fortunate enough not to leave home until after nine, may catch the even the more amusing sight of the return journey, when yummy mummies briefly forget their inhibitions and ride their children’s scooters home. The more athletic lead the charge in their gym clothes, rushing to make to it to Pilates classes on time; while the couture fanatics bring up the rear, balancing awkwardly in heeled boots.

The Mayor, Boris Johnson, is a keen cyclist, who often makes a point of arriving at public functions on his bike. He is investing millions in cycle safety and cycle lanes, in order to make London a world-class ‘cycling city’ in time for the 2012 Olympics. If he is to win the support of the next generation of voters in the Tory stronghold of Kensington, however, perhaps it is time he broadens his transport strategy to also include the scooter.

In between items about climate change and the justice system, the rapper was interviewed about a new business and self-help book he has published.

The unexpected inclusion of a popular rapper on Radio 4’s high-brow breakfast show reminded me of a similar instance when Dizzee Rascal appeared as a guest on Newsnight.

On that occasion, Jeremy Paxman was accused of being ‘patronising’ and ‘crass’ for asking, ‘Mr. Rascal, do feel yourself to be British?’ And Dizzee Rascal was criticised for fuelling negative stereotypes of black people through his poor grammar and unserious attitude.

Youth Culture

On the Today programme, however, the presenter Evan Davis proved to be far more in touch with youth culture than might be expected of a man who shares a studio with John Humphreys on a daily basis. He appeared as comfortable questioning the platinum-selling rapper as he would a Member of Parliament, and was able to refer to other rappers and 50 Cent’s career without appearing unnatural.

50 Cent was softly spoken and thoughtful. His ideas are probably not the most original –the principal being that you have to conquer your fears in order to succeed in business and life in general. Though the parallels he drew between business life and life on the street were interesting, if at times slightly uncomfortable.

At the beginning of the interview 50 Cent compared criminal bosses who murder to people in the corporate world who speak metaphorically about killing the competition.

If such comparisons made for slightly uncomfortable listening, references to 50 Cent’s own experience of violent crime were more problematic.

Face Slashed

At one point Davis referred to an incident from 50 Cent’s past, in which he slashed the face of rival’s assistant. In response, the rapper told Davis that if he had had the choice he would rather not have gone through such experiences, but did not express remorse for what he had done.

In September, the BBC was criticised for a programme in which the disgraced former Conservative MP Jonathan Aitken revisited the house in which he grew up. Criticism of the programme centred on the fact that it provided Aitken, who spent seven months in prison for perjury, a platform for restoring his public image.

If the BBC can be criticised for helping to rehabilitate a man who has committed perjury, surely it deserves greater criticism for helping to promote the work of a man who has committed serious violent crime –and who stops short of apologising for it. In the case of 50 Cent, he is already incredibly successful and does not need help to rebuild a career, though the respectability which the BBC provides could still be beneficial.

Puzzled

Aside from the ethics of broadcasting such an interview, I found myself puzzled by its inclusion on a programme like Today.

In spite of all that I have said, I found the item interesting and a welcomed break from the other hard news stories which made up the show. But I am sure that I belong to a small minority of Today listeners who knew anything about 50 Cent and his music.

If Today was trying to represent a more multicultural worldview and broaden the horizons of its middle-aged, middle class listenership, these are highly commendable objectives. But I fear that by choosing an interviewee such as 50 Cent, they maybe have been compounding, rather than combating, negative views which some of their listeners may have about minority groups.

I was sent to a sleepy suburban town on Wednesday to try to find a hard news story. When I arrived at the local court, however, it turned out to be a more serious operation than I had expected –with airport style security at the entrance and barristers rushing about in billowing gowns and wigs.

A gold mine for a journalist, no doubt. But getting to the gold without offending the judiciary, as I would soon discover, was going to be tricky.

Shushed

In the first case I sat in on, a man was accused of spying on a teenage girl. It sounded fascinating, if disturbing. Taking notes on the case was a problem however, as members of the public are not allowed to do so. I tried to explain to the usher that I am a journalism student but was shushed before I had a chance to open my mouth. When I took out my notepad regardless, she rushed from her desk angrily and I realised it was time to leave.

Armed with a written note explaining who I am, I decided to try my luck elsewhere.

Slipping into another a courtroom, the usher took my note and passed it up to the judge. While I waited anxiously for a reply, I tried to memorise the details of the case quickly proceeding in front of me. I finally got the nod from the judge and was told that I could stay for the next case which involved ABH -translated as assault causing actual bodily harm, when I naively asked for an explanation.

Contempt of court

To avoid breaking the law or being what is called ‘in contempt of court’, when reporting on court cases, journalists must only report what is said as part of the formal court proceedings and may not speak to anybody directly involved in the case. In the classroom, these two basic rules seemed simple enough to follow. However, in practise, in a tiny suburban courtroom, where I was the only member of the public, maintaining such detachment proved more complicated.

Waiting for the ABH case to start, I found myself alone in the public gallery with the defendant’s father. He was keen to explain the case to me and put his son’s side of the story across before it was completely contradicted by the victim and prosecution witnesses. Because he was not directly involved in the case and because I knew not to report what he said, our conversation was permissible and would even be encouraged as good journalistic practise.

When the case began and the witnesses started to come to sit with the defendant’s father and me in the public gallery, however, the stakes suddenly leapt up, as I was surrounded by people I was not allowed to speak to.

Source of curiosity

As the only person with no connection to the case, scribbling madly in the public gallery, I was obviously a source of curiosity. Standing between the two parties, waiting for the courtroom to open again after lunch, I stared straight ahead and tried to avoid eye contact. When somebody came to ask me what my interest in the case was, it had to be the most important person in the trial: the victim. With the weight of the British legal system bearing down on me, I succinctly explained that I was not allowed to speak to him as I was preparing a report and got back to staring blankly ahead.    

With the courtroom closed, trying to clarify the participants’ personal details without being in contempt of court, so that I could return to college and write my report, proved to be a problem.

I spotted a man who was in the defence’s group but who had not given evidence. He confirmed that he was not directly involved in the case and grudgingly agreed to confirm the spelling of his friends’ names for me, but only with their permission. Unfortunately they did not want to speak to me.

Refused to speak

On the other side, the defendant’s father had also suddenly become shy and when I asked him about his son’s age and occupation, he refused to speak to me.

Luckily, the court reporter was less coy and slipped inside to get me a copy of the cast list. And I eventually managed to get all of the information I needed without breaking the law or upsetting anybody.

It had been a fascinating morning, but I was happy when I could leave and quit the tense tightrope-walking act that court reporting had turned out to be.

Labour peer, Lord Swraj Paul maintained in his expenses claims that a one-bedroom flat he owns in Oxfordshire was his main address, though The Sunday Times revealed he never slept a night there. According to Lord Paul, the flat was his main address simply because it was available to him and he could have slept there if he wanted.

Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, former home secretary Jacqui Smith is feeling hard done by because the expenses watchdog has refused to accept that her first home is in Peckham, London, where she slept at her sister’s house two or three nights a week.

Having recently moved to London from my family home in Dublin, the question of home is one which has also been playing on my mind recently.

For legal purposes, definitions of home usually centre on the where you slept the most nights during a certain period, but may also take into consideration where you were born, where you grew up and where your family live.

New Criteria

In the interests of clearing up the present confusion, however, I would like to propose two new criteria on which the designation of one’s home can more soundly be based: where you do your washing and where you get your hair cut

Washing your clothes is a tedious and unpleasant business, which most people will put off for as long as possible. When on holidays, it is not uncommon to stockpile dirty laundry for weeks on end rather than let it interrupt the fun you are having.

Therefore I suggest that nothing announces more clearly that you are not on holiday and that you now consider a certain place your home, than the decision to do something as mundane as wash your clothes there.  

As anybody who has left a hairdresser’s with a mullet when what they asked for was a short-back-and-sides will tell you, where you get your hair cut is an issue of trust. For fear of being misunderstood; for fear of regional, stylistic differences or just plain incompetence, many people return to the same hairdresser’s year on year and would never dream of having their hair cut elsewhere.

Initiation

In the absence of a formal initiation, therefore, it seems to me that the haircut stands in as a ritual which marks one’s acceptance of certain people and their fashions, and of a place as your home.

The groups charged with investigating parliamentary expenses have been admirable for their thoroughness -checking Jacqui Smith’s version of events against police logbooks, in one instance. However, I wonder if isn’t time they now check the receipts of hairdressers in the Peckham area and Lord Paul’s washing machine in Oxfordshire.

As for myself, most of my wardrobe has by now been thoroughly soaked several times in a mixture of Persil and the Thames’ finest. But as my fringe continues to creep past my eyebrows unchecked and with a plane ticket back to Dublin for next weekend, it remains to be seen whether I have wholeheartedly embraced London as my new home.

Having offended as many people as possible in an article about the Strictly Come Dancing race controversy , Liddle came to the conclusion that minority groups who are the subject of racism ‘are aghast for a while and then, with dignity and common sense, move on’. Meanwhile the mostly white liberals in charge of organisations such as the BBC feel the need to make a show of their shock and disgust by overreacting.

When I originally read this opinion, I put it down to anti-BBC, anti-political correct provocation. Liddle fell out with the BBC when he was editor of the Today programme, and I guessed that his opinion was more of a reflection on his relationship with the broadcaster than anything else.

However, the difference between my reaction to the Strictly debacle and another story about the publication of Irish jokes has made me reconsider.

When I heard that the dancer Anton du Beke had told his Strictly Come Dancing partner that she ‘looked like a Paki’ because she was wearing fake tan, I found it strongly offensive.

Smiled

But when I read the following two jokes about Irish people, which appeared in a newspaper for prisoners in Britain, I agreed that they shouldn’t have been published, but didn’t feel particularly offended and even smiled though the jokes are not especially witty:

  “A condemned man sat in the electric chair awaiting his execution, but there was a fault. They called in Paddy the electrician to try and sort out the problems. After two hours, he still hadn’t found it and told the Governor, ‘This thing is a bloody death-trap.’”

“An Irishman goes for a job on a building site. The boss asks, ‘Can you brew tea?’ Yes, he says. The boss then asks, ‘Can you drive a fork-lift?’ ‘Why, how big is the tea-pot?’”

Trying to explain the difference in my reaction to the two events, I wondered if Liddle was right after all.

Though he is hardly the first person to suggest it, perhaps it is true that in the West, out of a sense of guilt or self-consciousness, white people react most strongly when minority groups are the victims of racism –anxious to differentiate themselves from the abusers.

But that’s probably only half the story.

Improved Status

Another part of the explanation is the improved status of Irish people internationally and the fact that they are no longer regularly the victims of serious racial abuse in the same way that Pakistanis are in Britain.

My reaction can be explained by the experiences of those who grew up during the Celtic Tiger, when Irish people became more likely to be buying buildings in Britain or financing their construction than working on building sites. As a result the stereotype of the thick Irish labourer has become even further removed from reality than it once was and is less capable of offending.

According to a follow-up piece in the Irish Times today, I am not the only one who was not offended by the jokes, though there are those who were.

One of the things which has been emphasised on the course so far is the necessity to keep readers interested -and even entertained- even when reporting events which are important to their lives, but dull.

To do this, one tip we have been given is to refer in the opening line of our articles to a group that most of the readers will identify with. So when this week I came to write about Mayor Boris Johnson’s announcement that he would not introduce new road charges in London, I decided to use the word ‘motorists’ prominently in the first sentence, in the hope of piquing people’s interest.

When one of the lecturers saw the article, he suggested that it could be given more impact by using the present tense to describe the announcement and by ‘burying’ the fact that the announcement had been made at Mayor’s Question Time because it would turn most readers off.

The idea of ‘burying’ information, or no mentioning it until towards the end of an article, is something which has come up several times in class.

Cage Fighters Article

In one instance we read an article from the front page of the Metro about two cage fighters who had been attacked because they were dressed in women’s clothes. The fact that the attack had taken place more than a month ago was ‘buried’ several paragraphs down because it would take away from the news value of the story. And the fact that the attackers had been sentenced the previous day was ‘buried’ even further down because it was deemed less interesting than the attack itself and might have interrupted the flow of the story.

All of which raises the question for reporters of where to draw the line between informing and entertaining their readers. I don’t think there is an easy answer to this question and I am sure it varies from publication to publication. But hopefully over the coming months I will have come up with my own.

Mid-way through Mayor’s Question Time yesterday, one of the Assembly Members took the time to welcome a group of retired teachers who were on their second visit to such a meeting. By the time he did so, I could understand what had attracted the group back.

Although stretched out over a daunting two and half hour period, the monthly meeting at City Hall, which is open to the public, proved to be highly engaging and frequently entertaining.

Among the topics raised by Assembly Members yesterday were the money being spent to provide disabled access at Tube stations, the Mayor’s decision not to introduce any new road charges and his views on whether Muslims should be invited to participate in Christian festivals.

Accessible Issues

Having previously visited the Irish Dail and the E.U., what made the Mayor’s Question Time more interesting was the accessibility of the issues discussed and the immediacy of their impact on Londoners.

The other big difference was the level of humour. With Mayor Boris Johnson at the centre of attention, the meeting could hardly fail to be amusing.

 Johnson didn’t disappoint -starting as he meant to go on, by welcoming the return of chocolate to the City Hall canteen at the end of his opening address. But he did not have a monopoly on making the audience laugh.

Throughout the morning there were frequent quips and much repartee between Assembly Members on subjects from punctures in the car park to a proposal to cycle to the Treasury to demand extra funds.

Gruelling

While the jokes did help to make what could have been a gruelling meeting proceed more enjoyably, I wonder about their effect on the proper functioning of the Assembly.

As one of my fellow students pointed out, Boris Johnson tends to use humour and his hapless media image to get out of difficult questions. On several occasions yesterday, the Mayor’s humorous reaction to a question helped to distract the audience from what he had been asked.

Also, on several occasions I found myself reacting negatively to an Assembly Member, not because I disagreed with what s/he said, but simply because s/he interrupted the banter taking place in the chamber by making a serious interjection.

A lot of worthwhile issues were discussed yesterday and serious work was done, but I wonder could more have been done if Mayor’s Question Time had been an incredible bore rather than the enjoyable morning it turned out to be.