Dr Albert Power, of the Bram Stoker Society writes:

‘On Tuesday 17th I drove specially into the city to check for myself, and – yes, there it was! [...] There’s no doubt that it’s the original plaque and not a replacement. The most recent photograph of it I had seen was John Moore’s from May 2008, when it had been coloured brown: it was blue back in 1983. Furthermore, upon close examination there looks like to be a faint shading or patina along its inner rim, which would suggest storage in a damp place or having been secreted under something which had left an impression. It also looked to me that it was hung ever so slightly askew. [...] It’s quite a while, to the best of my knowledge, since any of us did anything about this, and I for one had regarded the battle (with much sadness) as lost. Maybe the cumulative effect of all these efforts took its intended toll.

30 Kildare Street before the reinstatement of the plaque

At the bibliothèque Couronnes, a Perec mural

My essay on Georges Perec, the Situationists and Parisian geography appears in the third issue of the White Review, published this week.

I stood near the columbarium at Père Lachaise cemetery. I was there to see the locker-like vault containing the ashes of Georges Perec, kept alongside those of his aunt, Esther Bienenfeld. To the right of the plaque bearing their names and dates someone had affixed a wildflower to the wall with a Tom and Jerry sticking plaster. The columbarium contains thousands of urns stacked in a two-storey grid along one wall of the arcade. Its cloister-like arches surround the domed crematorium and its looming chimneys.

The grid became an obsession for Perec – his Lieux project and his novel la Vie mode d’emploi were planned using 12 by 12 and 10 by 10 grids respectively. Rather than being a limiting structure that undermined a creative impulse, the grid was seen as a constraint that would aid composition (in line with the literary group Oulipo’s view of the literary uses of limitation).

Perec’s Lieux project focused on 12 places in Paris, one of which was rue Vilin, the street where he had lived as a child.

Rue Vilin is in the neighbourhood of Belleville, in north-eastern Paris, and stands on hills overlooking the city centre. Perec’s Jewish family lived in an area described by his biographer David Bellos as ‘a whole Yiddish town within sight of the Eiffel Tower.’ While this street had an obvious emotional resonance for the writer, Perec sought to record his experience there as ‘simply, flatly’ as he could. A series of descriptive texts of each place made up one half of his project – the other half consisting of his memories of the same places. Perec’s descriptions of the rue Vilin capture a place that’s about to be erased: long designated a slum area, it has been marked for extensive redevelopment and reconstruction. It is far from a stable repository for Perec’s past.

Read more of the essay at the White Review. Or order a copy of issue three to read the whole article.

(Illustrator Badaude has contributed a poster to the same issue of The White Review that looks at Perec’s Tentative d’ épuisement d’un lieu Parisien; read her illustrated post about it here – I particularly like the tracing of pigeon trajectories around the place Saint Sulpice, something Perec does in his text. )

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Me with the 'Soccer in Tallaght' Luas Citywest poster; photo: Eamonn Hoban-Shelley

A few months ago I approached the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) to see if they’d be interested in putting posters up at their stops along the new Luas tram line to Saggart, known as ‘Luas Citywest’. The line wasn’t yet open, but I knew that it was due to begin operations in June or July. I had started work as a local history researcher in South Dublin Libraries, and much of my research up until that point had been into the Saggart area. I saw an opportunity to put some of this research, and the visual content we have in our digital archive, out there, so it could be seen by passengers during the couple of minutes they wait for the next tram. I also thought it would be something fun to do. Ultimately, I wanted to put something at each station that I – and, hopefully, other people – would be interested in reading.

Aviation poster on a shelter at Belgard Luas station

In searching for precedents for this sort of thing, I looked towards France. I really admire the history posters on the Paris Métro, and a few months ago Laura and I stopped at the Hôtel de Ville Métro station in order to see the array of posters on display there, and to take some photos.

Raymond Queneau poster at Hotel de Ville Metro station, Paris

The aims of the Parisian project were, in the words of the RATP website:

‘[to make] the general public aware of the historical and cultural value of unknown or little-known aspects of the transportation network and its surroundings […] The information boards provide a link between the overarching historical picture and the personal stories, as well as between the transport facility and the surrounding urban area, enriching passengers’ travel experience.’

I kept these aspirations in mind when sketching out my own proposal. In this, I had the help and support of Maria Fitzgerald and Freya Smith – the project archaeologists from the RPA who both managed the poster project and were heavily involved in the creative process, including the research and writing of two of the six posters, at Fettercairn and Saggart. My boss at South Dublin Libraries, Síle Coleman, was extremely active in the sourcing of specific heritage material to illustrate the posters to a strict deadline (of which more later).

Luas poster: 'Aviation in Belgard and Baldonnel'

I had earmarked six stops for the heritage poster treatment: Belgard, Fettercairn, Cheeverstown, Citywest, Fortunestown and Saggart. I knew I wanted each poster to address a specific theme, and in the end we settled on: Aviation, Tower Houses and Dublin’s Frontiers, Soccer, Industry, the Dublin and Blessington Steam Tramway, and the archaeology of Saggart.

We already had extensive holdings for some of these topics: we had visual material about the airstrip at Belgard, the Library has published books about the tramway and the Urney factory on Belgard Road, and the RPA has published a pamphlet (PDF) on the archaeology along the Citywest line. (I’ve also written about the tramway for the Irish Times here.)

'Soccer in Tallaght' poster

What we didn’t have was much on soccer in Tallaght, but this was soon remedied by a quick with material gathered from Richard, a Shamrock Rovers fan who works in the library, and from the collection of photos held by Tallaght Stadium. For the Aviation poster, we had hoped to get clearance from the New York Post for the famous ‘backwards’ headline related to Douglas ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan’s solo flight across the Atlantic to Baldonnel, but we were sadly unable to achieve this before deadline. So here it is:

New York Post; source: Wikipedia

In the end, having spent a few months thinking about the posters, they were written and produced to deadline in just over a week: between the 19th and the 28th of July. And now, a couple of weeks after that, they’ve gone up at the stops. Get along to see them, if you can: they’re up for the month of August only!

See all the posters at the South Dublin Libraries site or the Luas site.

We’re organising a free guided heritage walk of Saggart at 2pm on Saturday 20th August. Find out more here.

This is how it begins:

‘On a frosty morning at the end of last November, I set out from my parents’ house to walk around the edges of Tallaght: it was the day the government was due to announce cuts ahead of yet another emergency budget, but I wasn’t much in the mood to pay attention to the news. The idea was to try to stitch together my memories of the places I knew with less familiar areas. I also wanted to see if this far-flung zone was still traversable by foot – seeing it by car would not suffice, and anyway I can’t drive.’

Continue Reading here.

I’ll be discussing perceptions of the city, especially of Dublin. I’ll also discuss the walk I undertook around Tallaght back in November, about which I’ve written an essay (to be published soon).

Other speakers at the event: Andrew Hetherington, Co-Founder of Fund It, and Pat Cooke, from the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD.

To round it all off, there’ll be a roundtable session about funding and the future of the arts in Ireland.

I switched on the radio instinctively, as if I was going to hear news reports about the end of the world on TSF Jazz, interrupting some interminable vocal jazz performance.

In the end, though, it turned out that this is just a test: the sirens are tested on the first Wednesday of every month, all over Paris. One of the reasons for the sirens being used is that they need to be kept in shape just in case of nuclear war. Perhaps not the cheeriest way of looking at things, but practical too, I suppose.

The effect of hearing the sirens ring out across the city is to drag one back to a primal time where everything one did in everyday life was carried out under threat of war. The sound of sirens would trigger a set of responses that were almost programmed, so habitual had they become: run for shelter, wait for things to pass, put out lights. Cower and wait. All these actions ran through my mind when I first heard the sirens, as if I was regressing to a long-ago rehearsed set of habits that weren’t necessarily my own. When the sirens were again set off at 12.10, I expected them (I had instantly done an internet search to find an explanation), and even recorded them on video for posterity. This is how the most unusual phenomenon come to be accepted in everyday life: through repetition, which, when carried out enough times, breeds familiarity, then invisibility.

My friend Conor and I were on our way to see a lower league football game between Red Star 93 – based in the Stade Docteur Bauer just north of the flea market – and L’Entente SSG, a club from a few miles up the road in Saint-Gratien.

The weekend was a tale of two matches. Firstly, a trip back in time to historic Red Star, and then back to the present: a journey to French football’s biggest fixture of the year.

Red Star was founded in 1897, and the club was a powerhouse of French football between the wars – winning the Coupe de France five times – before going into a period of decline that was arrested somewhat when they spent the majority of the seasons between 1965 and 1975 in Ligue 1. However, now a much reduced force, they play in group A of the French Amateur League – effectively the fourth tier of French football.

One of our reasons for travelling out to this evocative old stadium on the edge of the city was an Irish connection: Tony Cascarino had joined Red Star from his previous club AS Nancy in the summer of 2000, putting a brave face on stepping down from the top league, hoping it meant a new start. But it didn’t provide the reinvigoration Cascarino was seeking: he only played two games at the beginning of the season, and was soon on his way. Nevertheless, with that short-lived transfer a glancing relationship with Irish football was established, one we were keen to explore.

Our other trip that weekend was to Parc des Princes, to see Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) take on Olympique de Marseille – another of journeyman Cascarino’s ex-clubs – in the grudge match that has become known as ‘la Classique’. PSG’s past provides a sharp contrast to that of Red Star. Red Star has all the history, the connection with a literally iconic figure (the first World Cup trophy was named after their founder, Jules Rimet), yet PSG, formed only in 1970 through the merger of two Paris clubs, have the success – and the crowds – that Red Star lack.

PSG’s first game in Parc des Princes had been in 1973, in a second division game against Red Star. In 1974, both Red Star and PSG were promoted to Ligue 1; this was Red Star’s last season in the top division. The teams passed each other quietly, like ships in the night, embodying two dramatically different eras.

The experience of arriving at Red Star’s ground tells you this is a big club that has fallen far: you turn a corner, pass a church, and reach a muddy car-park behind a large stand, a covered terrace behind one of the goals. The stadium’s capacity far exceeds the relatively small demand for tickets. It’s obvious that the club once had much larger crowds, filling all four corners of the ground.

The floodlights are on, the incandescent light bleeding past the stands into the surrounding streets. From the noise of the crowd you can hear that the game has already kicked off. You buy two tickets at the window, each costing only 4 euro, double-checking the price with the seller in disbelief. Once inside, you’re on a concrete terrace, surrounded by chanting fans who keep up the noise for the whole game, fans of mixed ages and of different races: North African, Sub-Saharan African and Middle-Eastern. People drink cheap beer from plastic glasses; some smoke; in the middle of the stand, there’s a children’s section where at half-time a young lad stands on the terrace practicing his free-kicks with an invisible ball, trying to target its imaginary flight towards somewhere near the centre circle.

At one end of the Stade Bauer stands a wedge-shaped apartment block coloured in brown and yellow, making it resemble nothing so much as an extremely large pizza slice. Silhouetted in the windows, you can see people sitting, watching the game.

The match was played at a good pace, and with remarkable skill, by players who looked good enough to be playing at a much higher level. Two excellent goals in the first half, both spectacular – the first from distance, initially looking like a cross that beat the unfortunate goalkeeper, the second a low swerving shot hit hard from the right that curled inside the post – meant that Red Star ended the game as deserving victors. Afterwards we went across the road to a bar; above the counter was a team photo taken in the summer of 2000 with, unmistakeably, the figure of Tony Cascarino lurking in the back row.

The next day’s game was an altogether different experience. Parc des Princes is a vast concrete amphitheatre in the west of the city, a sharp contrast to the intimacy of Red Star’s ground. For this trip, we were joined by my girlfriend Laura. We arrived in a packed Métro train not far from the ground, not knowing what to expect. PSG fans have a reputation for violence, something that was more than hinted at by the battalions of riot police stationed along the streets outside the stadium. Marseille supporters, sworn enemies of the PSG crowd, were not allowed in, leaving the corner of the stadium reserved for away fans oddly empty.

After several checkpoints and searches, we arrived in our seats. The atmosphere was explosive – PSG had been overshadowed in their midweek European nil-all stalemate by Marseille’s 7-0 away win against Zilnia. The newspapers were full of quotes from Marseille sources about the club’s ‘tradition’ and ‘history’ – an obvious slight to PSG, which celebrates only the 40th anniversary of its founding this year.

Against the grain, PSG ground out a famous victory, scoring two early goals, then conceding a goal from Marseille on the break, before holding on heroically until the end. The crowd, never less than volatile up until the final whistle, erupted in an unwieldy combination of sheer relief and triumphal aggression.

On the train on the way back into the city, PSG fans chanted insulting songs aimed at their absent Marseille counterparts. For tonight, at least, Parisian football would have the upper hand.

Georges Perec lived at the apartment building at 13 rue Linné. When I passed it, I photographed the building from across the street, then crossed and took a picture of the courtyard, a bicycle visible inside the gate, leaning against a wall.

The urge to wander has struck me in every city I’ve visited, even those towns in the American west that lack event the most basic amenities for pedestrians (e.g., footpaths). While walking these towns and cities I’m motivated by two impulses: the impulse to get lost, to find new streets and corners of the city; and the impulse to map new territory, to utilise the newly discovered places of the city to aid future navigation. The getting lost is play: it is loose and undefined, and allows you to make mistakes and then correct them, without the pressure of having to conform to the framework of a map, an adherence to which may restrict your wandering.

Nevertheless, my journey this morning was also informed by a sketchy knowledge of the geography of the area: rue Monge runs along a steep hill, sloping down towards the Seine. In walking uphill, you are invariably heading south. Although, just to mix things up a little, this is not always the case: small hills derail you from any over-determined geography of the area, injecting a sense of play into proceedings once you realise you’ve left your map of Paris on the kitchen table.

Went along to see Joanna Newsom (above, being attacked by a wolf) in Dublin’s Daniel Libeskind-designed Grand Canal Theatre last night. Good gig and everything, but while I was there something occurred to me: where did all these hipsters come from? Thousands of them streamed through the doors of the theatre, indifferent to their surroundings and eager to bed in for a night’s largely-silent devotion to la Newsom. Was it simply the proximity of Googletown (strip of land between Ranelagh and the Liffey that’s home to many expensive apartment developments, a number of half-completed gentrification projects, and the offices of said search engine)? Or is there something else going on that I’m missing? Enlighten me, please.

When you get to the Pigeon House Road, a road that seems to lead nowhere, you see a bank of containers in a commercial shipping yard to your left, and a tall barrier shielding the site to your right. Behind this barrier is the bulldozed site of the Irish Glass Bottle Factory, one of the most controversial property purchases made during Ireland’s boom. Intended as a mixed-use, high-rise mini Manhattan, it’s now little more than a muddy field churned up by heavy machinery.

I went straight ahead at the end of the road, which I learned is not the way to go: it leads to a dead end, where railings and gates block your path towards the grassy wastelands that border the south side of the peninsula.

I returned the way I had come, then turned right, past the entrance to the container yard, where juggernauts were queuing up to deposit their loads. Cycling along this road, you’re immediately assailed by the smell of sewage, which has been processed and expelled on this site for about a century. As you can imagine, the stench is pretty disgusting. Nevertheless, I stopped to take a photo of the canal of effluent that emerges from under the road, then runs parallel to it before joining the Liffey just before it reaches the generating station. Opposite me at this point was the site of the Poolbeg waste incinerator, another oddly-located site of controversy on this peculiar outcrop.

Canal of stench

Poolbeg incinerator site

Straight ahead, the looming towers of the Pigeon House, and in front of them a large redbrick building dating from 1902: the first electricity generating station in Dublin. James Joyce mentions it in Ulysses (set in 1904):

‘the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power station at the Pigeonhouse, and the Poolbeg light.’

Generating station (1902 station in foreground)

A large granite building next to the generating station was built as a hotel in the late 18^th century, then converted into barracks soon after the 1798 rebellion, when British troops were stationed there. Essentially this tip of the peninsula remained military property for around a hundred years, after which it was sold to the corporation and used for electricity generation, feeding the substation in Fleet Street in central Dublin.

Cycling past the gates to the Pigeon House, you come across an incongruous line of cannon, which obviously reference the site’s military history. Taking a sharp right turn down a narrow roadway, you emerge at a wide stretch of sand dune, providing a view of the south county and the Dublin mountains.

Continuing on along the road, you pass the generating station, then reach the sea wall, a mile-long construction that was built in the eighteenth century as a means of clearing the mouth of the Liffey of the sand and silt that had made it such a danger to shipping. At the end of the wall, the Poolbeg lighthouse was built (it became operational in 1767).

As I walked along the rough granite of the sea wall, I watched the activity in the surprisingly busy shipping lane, as passenger ferries and container traffic came and went. I thought of how, when in the centre of the city, you never thought about Dublin as a port – you carried on oblivious to the continual traffic just a couple of miles down the river.

The Pigeon House area is an intriguing place, full of surprises and traces of Dublin’s industrial and civic past. It also smells, really badly.