Michael Moynihan: How mapping memory reveals the real story of Cork’s streets and spaces
That corner near Paul Street would be illustrated by a wrinkled nose. Picture: Denis Minihane
Readers are probably familiar with those maps you sometimes see online, the ones which purport to show things as they really are compared to how they’re usually represented on paper.
By ‘really look’, of course, I mean accurate dimensions. Take the famous case of Africa v Europe. According to the Mercator projection, which distorts landmass size, Africa is often shown on old maps as not much bigger than Europe. In reality, it’s bigger than the United States, China, India, Japan, and all of Europe put together. Look online and you’ll see what I mean.
Another classic example is the London Underground. Its multicoloured lines and neat array of stations will be familiar in map form to many, but the underground is very different in reality. Its status as a design classic — as a handy poster guide for users — is easily understood, but in real life the stations aren’t spaced out as neatly on the various lines. Anything but.
Nothing untoward with that. The traditional map known to all is designed for ease of use, with nobody about to head for the High Court because one station is further away from its neighbour than the map suggests.
But it does make you think about the reality of what maps are showing us.
At least it did for me. All of this came into sharp relief when reading Geoff Dyer’s new book, . Dyer has a string of great books to his name — I strongly recommend , about one of the greatest movies ever made.
is a memoir about his childhood in 70s Britain, and has much to recommend it, but I was a little distracted by something he said to the about the book: “Originally, I had the idea of it being an extended version of this map of Cheltenham I had made for an anthology. That map, which appears in a box set called , is a version of the Ordnance Survey maps of my part of the world.
“But instead of a symbol where the post office would be, in my map, I had a symbol like a fist, in the place where I got punched in the face. Or there were lips to show where I’d had a romantic episode.”
Anyone familiar with Dyer’s work will recognise it as a source of great ideas, and this struck me as one of the best. Not just because of its applicability, but because of assigning importance to places through the prism of memory. There are so many different maps you could draw just to illustrate your own history.
Another one at the bottom of Lover’s Walk to the east of the city, where I had to run away from a motorcyclist one time. A last fist — underlined a couple of times — superimposed on a well-known hostelry on Oliver Plunkett Street, where a debate with a couple of large gentlemen became more demonstrative than anyone had planned. Still, no hard feelings, eh?
Mentioning hostelries brings me to a whole other set of symbols for our map.
How about an empty glass at a particular point on Coburg Street where the (very) old Greyhound Bar stood once? Long gone, it was the first place I ever met my classmates for (underage) alcohol.
The second empty glass can be put nearby — I think the Panna Bread shop in Merchant’s Quay corresponds roughly to the second place I had underage drinks, the (also very) old Underground Bar. Although that at least was the night of our Leaving Cert results.
Duck back across the river and near the back of the Metropole Hotel we place yet another empty glass: Isaac Bell’s, a small bar marked by terrific staff and, if my memory does not betray me, a car bonnet emerging from the wall in the back room.
For Dyer’s teardrop marking, I have a few possibilities. One is the fire station on Anglesea Street, where I used to call in to see my late father when he was on duty, particularly on Thursday evenings when I was in college (for obvious reasons). For one of those Thursday evenings again!
Or the old Pavilion Cinema, where my late mother brought me 50 years ago to see the movie sensation of the year. She watched between her fingers, I ate Taytos, and Brody told Quint that a bigger boat would be needed.
Or maybe the place on North Main Street where we were all having coffee when my sister had to deliver the bleakest news imaginable. A double teardrop for that spot.
Dyer’s categories suggest others, of course. How about a little twinkling star for any encounter with celebrity?
I could offer one just outside the Imperial Hotel, where as a child I encountered Johnny Giles, who was smaller than I expected but very kind to a nosy kid. Another star, a few yards along from Waterstone’s, where I once passed Dean Gaffney of — even smaller, though I got no sense of his personality.
One more star off the South Mall for my brief meeting with the great Paul McGrath, who was a good deal bigger than I had anticipated, but just as pleasant as Giles.
Once you start mapping the city in this fashion, in fact, it becomes hard to stop, and little wonder. This system has much to recommend it in a practical sense.
How about a wrinkled nose symbol for the parts of the city with the most distinctive smells (Shortlist: that particular corner of Paul Street near the shopping centre, the roundabout in the middle of Douglas between McDonald’s and KFC, and the Watercourse Road along from Murphy’s Brewery c 1979)?
Anyway, you realise eventually that Dyer’s sly trick is not to get you invested in geography, despite what you might think. By mapping a place according to your experience, it seems to be a matter of physical events, but of course the experience gets the upper hand. It’s not geography, but history. Your own history.
Colson Whitehead, another great writer, once wrote about his experience of New York: “We see ourselves in this city every day when we walk down the sidewalk and catch our reflections in store windows, seek ourselves in this city each time we reminisce about what was there five, 10, 40 years ago, because all our old places are proof that we were here.”
True there. True here because the Greyhound, the Pavilion, and the old reek from Murphy’s Brewery prove it.
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