Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing takeaway from Mickey D's. Holding an Egg McMuffin aloft over his head, he intoned:

- You deserve a break today, you fearful jesuit!

Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms upon the rail, forgetting his displeasure and sleepiness as Buck uncapped a cup of the Bray's Head McDonalds' premium - supersized, with lemon and honey, but without the Sandycove dairy substitute.

In the gloomy, doomed livingroom of the tower, Haines opined:

- By jove, it is tea!

And Buck took his razor to make of Egg McMuffin a trinity, with a Happy Breakfast of scrambles and homefries with margarine, all melting, and the old woman at the threshold said:

- If all Ireland could live on a breakfast as that, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts, streets paved with dust and horsedung and consumptive spits!

And Stephen laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a napkin of brightly colored cartoons and action-figures from America's most-favourite film. For the rest, let look who will.

Leopold Bloom relished chopped and formed flesh of swine, seared and pressed between lobes of buttermilk biscuit; he watched, curiously, as lithe, black cats prowled round his booth and mewled until the concierge shook her broom, festooned with black and purple stickers from America's formerly-favourite film. Cup o' tea, now, styrofoam. He strolled from Westland row McDonald's, round the corner past drooping nags of hazard, cabman's shelter, ruins and tenements. Fingering the letter in his waistcoat. Foresaw his pale body reclined in a Turkish bath - a hot McApple pie in fist, dark, tangled curls of public hair floating languorously atop the stream of life.

- Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked of Mr. Power and Simon Dedalus. Come along, Bloom.

Their creaking carriage began to move, creaking and swaying, Ronaldsfoot air freshener spewing fragrance and Mr. Bloom pointed to a young man, clad in mourning.

- There's a friend of yours, Dedalus, your son and heir.

- Was that Mulligan cad with him? Dedalus snarled. Contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian, vegan's son. Mr. Bloom lowered his glance, scrolling down the newspaper, scanning the deaths.

Coffin now. Pallbearers, requiem, pomp of death, cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits! Would better fare at Prospects' Mickey D. Paltry funeral for poor Paddy Digdum; shoveling the dead into the earth like sliders. Billions and billions served! Mr. Bloom dropped his folded newspaper and knelt.

- He doesn't see us, Mr. Power pointed at the Dead Mass.

- Who, Mr. Dedalus asked.

- Blazes Boylan. There's the rascal, nibbling tatties hot from the sack.

Mr. Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right. Shouldn't kip fries at poor little Paddy's funeral, he frowned.

Did somebody say McDonald's? Cunningham sighed, drinking the aroma. Shake a dozen into Paddy's box, see if he donna pop up as Finn MacCool.

That is another story, sleep: on Digdum, now.

- In paradisum.

They bent their silk hats and followed the barrow to the chilly place, tossed monster crazy bones into the yawning grave; bartsimpson puppets, beanie babies yearsgonne Halloween pails of Happy Meals and Corey Kelleher fell asleep, standing up, in gloomy gardens of the gloomy morningsglory grinding. Far and away a donkey brayed and Leopold Bloom winced at the jog of a Frankish charcuterie; weary and aching horseflesh penned, waiting to be ground into tartare, devoured raw, with horseradish. Pain is fur.

O won't you come to les Halles knackerie

They inclined their silk hats, straightening regimental Arch ties. How many! All these here walking round Dublin, lifting a pint and Bacon Cheeseburgers. As you are now, so once were we! Carpe carne!

Leopold Bloom groaned and canvassed and, at the lemon's hour, crossed O'Donnell's Bridge, taking the gravecakes from his pocket, breaking them into powdery crumbs he skipped towards Liffey's gulls. Live by their flaps. Hot grease and griddle fumes pouring out from each greasy-griddle competitor on Harrison, perdition every corner.

Duke Street. Here we are. Must eat!

A special feeling - warm, perfumed human plumpness behind the counter, retirees and bairns alike flipping burgers, measuring fries, ringing up pense. Gleaming polyester, red and yellow, black formica nametags, paper bonnets. Takeaway window voices, scratchy and automatic.

- Hey, darling!

- Burger, two cheeseburger, two fry, chokeshake, coke, hotpie four an' six!

- Naguaaga choy grbaghast...

- Face the Klown, sire, and enunciate!

His heart astir, Bloom pushed in the door: pungent meatjuice, flakes of green. Swilling, wolfing, masticating. In paradisum! Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. I'll have a chokeshake and . . . let me see.

Burgers on the griddle. Single, double, with cheese. Big Mac. Fish. Happy meal with a Teletubby clinging to thy trousers, Poe? Sophisticated raven. Do they still serve McRibs? Israelites? Kosher? Milk and meat in the golden time together . . . know thyself, Jester.

- Double bacon cheeseburger and fries!

- Supersize?

Supersize fries, pluck out thine eyes. Nor eagles dare, but pigeons will peck, and that's another story too: munch on, Bloom, now. Nice plastic booth, nicely cast. Nice, here. Microbes at Davey Burne's and Burton's, not here. The door closed with a slam - they say we are to have a literary surprise ventured Stephen Dedalus across the table, Padriac Column, Richard Starkey. What softens the heart of a man sunders, suffices? Parafoxes in wild oats, boilt to porridge for the palate of grave McLysses.

Mabbot Street aperture to nighttown, rows of flimsy houses with gaping doors curving downwards in wisps to distant, promised Golden Arches. Stephen Dedalus and Bloom pass through the stunted crowd in goldentime, munching cold fries from pockets and a scrofulous slut, still young, sings shrilly from a lane:

CISSY CAFFREY

I gave it to Molly... because she was jolly...

The Quarter-Pounder, with cheese!

A dark horse, riderless, bolts Animal Alley like a phantom, out o'the monies following: skeleton horses pursued by aproned knackers wielding cleavers. Cissy cries - Police!

Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds darken the midnight sun; Pandaemonium! Birds of prey swoop from eyries, beast machines do the bacon roll rumble - Nightscream, Rattrap and Thrust! Dead patriots and scoundrels shake gravedirt from cloaks, whores screeching like multimixers with bent wingnuts. Mr. Bloom stirs coffee for Stephen who takes the scalding styrofoam with trembling fingers - not a barrister in sight!

- You ought to eat more solid food Mr. Bloom urges.

We cannot change the constitution. Let us change the subject.

What repast did Mr. Bloom and Stephen take at Mabbot Street's McDonald's?

Big Mac, fries, onion rings, tea, hot cherry pie from a carton bearing pictures from an American film that, truth be told, was neither very good, nor well-attended. Stephen ordered only another coffee, but kipped a few fries from Bloom's portion. At the counter, Bloom ordered takeaway McNuggets for Molly.

What was the composition of the dipping sauces that accompanied the McNuggets?

American barbecue (with imitation smoke flavouring), sweet and sour in the Oriental mode, honeyed mustard in three plastic tubs the approximate circumference of a draughtsman's thumb.

How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?

Standing perpendicular at the door, the soles of Stephen Dedalus proceeding thence at an angle ninety degrees obtuse down Abbey Street toward Saint Gregory's, whose chime impelled Leopold Bloom oppositely. . . thence at right angles down Middle and Lower Gardiner to the housesteps of the 4th equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7 Eccles Street.

Bloom's last acts?

He deposits articles of clothing on a chair, inserts head and arms into the apertures of a long white nightshirt. McNuggets and their dipping sauces extended, he enters into the bed where Molly already reclines. Kissing her plump mellow yellow melons, they crunch and dip and converse of geometry and pornography until he rests. He has traveled.

With?

With Sinbad the Sailor and Pinbad the Pallor, Harry the Potter and Hannibal the Rotter and all the tie-in gargoyles, plastic Kitty Foyles of Hollywood, with Batman and Catman and Ratman, with Spiderman and Irishman, Hot-Wheels Barbie and Bitsy Beanie Babies Hadrian, Skeezix and Shem, the Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese and, manifesting through the sizzle of gristle striking griddle and steam of Skilleries, reading aloud from the Book o'Pooh, Ronald MacDonald, Hisowenself!

Yes because he ne'er did a thing like that before - barbecue sauce, as if chives and sour creme no longer satisficed knowing I despise ruddy stains on the bedclothes Crunch! so either it was one of those night women or some Fry Kid at Westland, ay the one! Crunch! I wish some clown or other would share his Arch Deluxe with me, kiss me with the tang of adult seasonings and share secret sauce until I must have confession with Father Corrigan, with the onions on his breath. Boylan talking of breakfasts, right Hamburglar him! the boxer and the dentist, the lieutenant and Lord Mastyasty in bloomers and everybody wi' their poor Crunch! troubles and do I suppose the queerlooking counterman in Bray's Head knows his meat and all the Doyles in parliament and all the chives no longer and dead o'graves and Ireland O! I shall Crunch! wear red, remember how he kissed me under the Golden Arches in old Gibraltar and asked me Crunch! if I would and I Crunch! and yes I said and yes, yes, Crunch! Yes!

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