There was a golden past, when giants trod the earth, and current times represent a precipitous, lamentable decline. That's the idea of "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." If it's more memorable in Joyce's telling than grandma's, that may be an instance of damning with faint praise.
Here are a few of the characters, together with their physical descriptions. Old Jack "had an old man's face, very bony and hairy." Mat O'Connor is "a grey-haired young man, whose face was disfigured by many blotches and pimples." Mr Henchy's entrance is accompanied by more than one reference to his "snuffling" nose. Mr Crofton "was a very fat man, whose blue serge clothes seemed to be in danger of falling from his sloping figure." Father Keon's "face, shining with raindrops, had the appearance of damp yellow cheese save where two rosy spots indicated the cheekbones."
There is in Joyce a tendency to sneer, and it's in his least successful fictions that one's attention is singularly drawn to his expressions of contempt.
