Where’s Me Knitting Map?

26th Jun 2012

It measures three hundred metres square, cost €258,000 of our money and belongs to Cork but when it comes to where it might actually be seven years after the Cork2005 celebrations the collective shoulder shrugging is all a bit strange (see this Echo article).

This is like the captain of the ferry to Sherkin telling dumbfounded passengers that the island has suddenly gone missing and like a bout of collective mafia style ‘omerta’ nobody claims the saw anything.

We commissioned a barstool reporter to investigate the mysterious disappearance and come up with some suggestions.

Lord Mayor’s Den
The Lorda’s chambers got a revamp recently which had many councillors red faced over the mind-boggling €30,000 euro cost – mainly for a posh carpet with the coat of arms and a set of thick curtains we hear. Perhaps the weight of the curtains help to dull the dissenting voices out on Angelsea Street. Was the knitting map transformed into lavish décor for the First Citizen’s mam cave?

30k carpet: C'mere love, did you clean your boots on the way in?

New Quay Walls
After the floods of 2009 the quay walls at Grenville Place have finally been restored and traffic is flowing again. We know things are tight at City Hall (aside from the Lorda’s salary and luxury office trimmings of course) so was the great woollen map chopped up and used to back fill behind the limestone walls? Only time and the level of disregard for Cork city at the ESB’s Iniscarra dam will tell.

Soakage at the Pairc
The annual summer monsoon arrived last week with reports saying more water fell from the skies on Wednesday alone than the volume of the entire Atlantic Ocean. Or maybe it was The Lough – anyway, they’re equally almost the same size so it doesn’t matter.

Those of you who were at Pairc Úi Chaoimh for the metaphorical drowning of Kerry football two weeks ago will have noticed how suspiciously dry and firm the turf was despite manky weather all week.

The famous knitting map in 2005. It has been "lost". Seriously.

Hardly anyone lost their footing during the game - even the Kingdom’s chief diver Aidan O’Mahony didn’t risk faking a fall. The knitting map would fit neatly under the pitch – shouldn’t we be suspicious of the supersized soakage?

Occupy Cork
Twas fairly cold during the winter while the hippies manned their tents in the Peace Park on South Mall. Did a sympathetic soul toss them a giant blanket some cold January night?

Occupy Cork in February: they look suspiciously cosy.

Regardless of your opinion of the camp, you’d have to be impressed by their perseverance despite the assumed thin veil of cloth between their sleeping bodies and the icy conditions outside. Maybe the insulation of a certain thick woollen “blanket” is why they became the longest running Occupy night in the history of the world.

Mick Wallace’s Head
Is it possible for a man in his fifties like Wexford TD Mick Wallace to grow hair as thick and woolly as that? If he’s capable of deliberately knitting a pathetic story about his falsified tax returns then we can’t rule out that his grey locks are carefully cut strands from Cork’s knitting map. Revenue need to investigate Wallace’s affairs with a fine toothed comb and a bottle of industrial detergent.

Imagine the stuff that could be hiding in this chancer's head.

NAMA
Anything left in the state worth over €200,000 seems to be in the bad bank and as NAMA are being so secretive about their properties maybe that’s why nobody has seen or heard anything. Let’s hope they sell it for a profit to some crowd like Blarney Woollen Mills.

Weatherwan Jean Byrne
Ah c’mere those excuses for dresses this one wears on the box for her nightly weather forecasts are gone beyond altogether with their psychedelic colours, stripes and two-sizes-too-small fit. Can somebody check her frocks against patterns with Cork’s Knitting Map please? We have a hunch.

Jean Byrne's dresses look VERY like some of the patterns on the knitting map

Crimecall
A special edition of Crimecall on RTE dedicated to the missing Knitting Map should be produced. With over 2,500 witnesses there must be a “definite line of enquiry” the boys in blue could follow.

At a staggering 300 metres squared this enormous piece of material would easily show up on a half decent satellite image (has anyone checked google maps by the way?) Maybe it blew up on top of the roof of Fás building on Sullivan’s Quay some night and nobody has looked? Morto if it is like