woman, bent forward, her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)

THE GAFFER: (Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout.) And when Cairns came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for Derwan’s plasterers.

THE LOITERERS: (Guffaw with cleft palates.) O jays!

(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)

BLOOM: Coincidence too.