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Every year since at least 1954, fans of author James Joyce have celebrated Bloomsday on June 16 -- the date (in 1904) when his Ulysses takes place. For Joyce, the special significance of 16 June 1904 was that on that date he had his first date with Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid he'd met on 10 June on Nassau street.

Many will go to Dublin to do it, for that is what Mr Bloom had for breakfast in James Joyce's novel and no novel in the course of history has inspired so much devotion and prompted such a call to ritualised behaviour.

The action of the book takes place not only in a real place - Dublin, where else? - but also in a real time. The geographical locations are absolutely specific, and so is the time. It happened - or rather didn't happen, but the book contains so much genuine history that it seems a record of actual events - on Thursday June 16, 1904.

The anniversary is celebrated - well, religiously, since Joyce's work is full of religion. In Dublin, visitors dress up in Edwardian clothes and walk the streets to retrace the action, if it can be termed that way, of the book. Bloomsday itself exerts a strong ritual fascination for Joyce fans.

You can walk round Dublin and feed the seagulls at the place Bloom did, or have a drink at the pub where Bloom had a glass of Burgundy and a gorgonzola sandwich. You can cross the road where he helped the blind stripling across. You can even go to Sweney's the chemist, buy, just as Bloom did (or rather didn't), a piece of lemon soap, and walk on foreseeing your body stretched out in the bath "floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower".