A friend presented me with this bar of lemon soap the other day. He bought it on Bloomsday while attending a reading of Ulysses in Sweny's Pharmacy, the very place where Joyce's Bloom bought his famous lemon soap. Sweny's is a curious little place. Preserved in something close to it's original state, they sell, in addition to copious amounts of lemon soap, second hand books and vintage jewellery and hats, as well as a random assortment of pharmacy type wares. One of the most interesting things is their collection of old photos. There are drawers full of packets of photos from the fifties and sixties that were left there apparently forgotten about and uncollected after development. You can view some of them here to see if you recognise anyone, or just look at the strange foreign land that is Ireland fifty years ago.
For more on Sweny's Pharmacy see http://sweny.ie/
They're at 1 Lincoln Place and are closed of a Sunday. Ulysses readings are weekly on Thursdays at 7.
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