Captain Moonlight: The Grave's a fine and public place

FINE scenes will be expected on Wednesday when a blue plaque is to be unveiled on the wall of the only London home of James Joyce the flat at 28b Campden Grove he called Campden Grave and from where he married at Kensington Register Office Nora Barnacle his Galway chambermaid 37 years after their elopement and where he worked on the final draft of Finnegans Wake whose only similarity with this sentence is the punctuation. Wednesday is Joyce's 112th birthday, and Campden Grove, where he spent the summer of 1931, is one of some 19 Joyce abodes, according to Paul Joyce, great- grandson of Joyce's brother, and only about the fifth to be plaqued. The unveiling will be carried out by Edna O'Brien, who says that if he were in Campden Grove today he would still be working on the final draft of Finnegans Wake. Ms O'Brien says she'd better get her hair done or something for the occasion. She believes unveiling speeches should last no longer than two minutes, so if you want to catch her, you'd better be there at 12 noon sharp.

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