Map Man

Barry Dalby [multiprev] the cartographer [EastWest Mapping] lives close enough that, 20+years ago, I helped barrow the concrete for his kitchen extension. That's what neighbours do. In 2013, he published a 1:25,000 scale rambler's map was definitionally (50/25)² = 4x and possibly10x more informative that the equivalent 1:50,000 map put out by the salarymen at  OSI Ordnance Survey Ireland. 

Back then, at the birth of The Blob, that map was the handiest, handsomest, most convenient data-source for "Blackstairs, Mount Leinster & The Barrow Valley". Part of Dalby's job was seeing that his creation was stocked in local shops. I made and framed a publicity poster and screwed it to the side of one of our sheds [still there, as R]; tempting passing hill-walkers to buy their own copy. Periodically, I'd go visit EastWest Centraal and purchase a bunch of Blackstairs maps, knowing I'd be giving them away to visitors (and passing strangers!). Barry generously cut me a wholesale deal. Which, fair enough, I was possibly shifting as many as Bowe's, Kiltealy or O'Shea's, Borris.

Then, as Coronarama ebbed, I gave away my last copy of 'our' map and contacted Barry for more. But the cupboard was bare! It had taken him 10 years to off-load all copies of the first print-run [joy!] . . . but a  second edition was in process [we're notnin America so defered gratification is okay]. And last year, Dalby went sideways and self-published a book "Map Man ~ Irish Maps & Mapping" a snip at €21!. On my way home from a [miserable washed-out] organic open day in Wicklow, I left the motorway and pootled across country to EastWest Mapping with €100 burning a hole in my pocket. There, after catching up on descendants over a cup of tea, I bought a) a spare copy of EastWest Comeraghs for when we're down the Déise b) a copy of Map Man to work out how Barry ticks c) the balance in Blackstairs II maps to share over our gate at home.

Map Man is profusely illustrated [✓] but the pics are only slightly larger than postage-stamps. Years ago I was advised to illustrate The Blob because a wall-of-text is alienating. I bent to the pressure and almost every post since has a pic. But I obsess about bandwidth on behalf of my fans in the third world reading on dial-up. So my pictures are both blurry and pokey to save pixels. Dalby has similar issues although for a print-book there must be another driver than bandwidth. Example [L], the body-text font on the right is 12pt [guessing] so the text in this adjacent illustration might be 2pt and unreadable without a jeweller's loup.

~35 years ago, I published a book . . . with an ISBN and all. We were wildly optimistic about the desirability of this product; printed-and-bound 250 copies; gave way a couple of dozen; sold [eventually] a couple of dozen; dumped 200. I am glad to have had the experience, could afford the loss, but wouldn't repeat. I wrote another book (on the Process of Pilgrimage) in 2004-2005 but was smart enough, burnt enough, not to try printing or publishing it. Dalby is made of sterner, bomb-proof stuff - he is a serial risk-taker: investing time and [loadsa] money in developing product which needs to be stored and distributed for years before the investment is recouped, let alone converted into shoes and sliced pans.

Life ain't fair. When we hefted concrete at Caislean Dalby in the 00s they lived halfway up a hill close to the CW-WW-WX triple point with stunning views to the South and SouthWest. Coillte had acquired and planted land on the other side of the L road. Those trees now form the standard Coillte dark green cliff which completely occludes the outlook towards the Blackstairs and the Plains of Wexford. They can do that because property rights over-ride mental health rights in Ireland. I've never heard Barry complain, though. Perhaps because as a professional cartographer he knows that the other side of his bohereen was forest at least as far back as the first Ordnance Survey in the 1830s. 

What he does complain about is VAT on maps. And being in competition with Ordnance Survey Ireland which The Man regards as essential civil and military infrastructure & allocates a wodge of tax-payers money each and every budget since 1825. Other creatives [novelists, poets, painters, musicians] get tax breaks because The State has decided their contributions raise the cultural tide for all of us and/but they can't sell enough of their product to make a living. Books, including atlases, have been zero-rated for VAT since 1972. But the consumer must pay an impost for maps . . . unless they are produced by The State through the Ordnance Survey.

I believe EastWest Mapping, in the person of Barry Dalby, has done the state some service by recording place-names and other aspects of landscape heritage. The State treats him like a maker and retailer of cuff-links.; nice if you fancy that sort of thing but not, like, essential. But like Luther, he kann nichts anders, and his creations are works of art, engineering and data-science. I urge you to buy one of his minority maps - they are a fire hazard stacked up in the poor fellow's attic. Luther? I didn't realise until the last few pages of Map Man, that Dalby and I [King's County etc.] both come from the Protestant tradition [as R a gem of 19thC church]. As an envoi to his autobiography, he suggests that members of the Church of Ireland have punched above their weight in cherishing, recording and creating the cultural heritage of Ireland . . . because as the outsiders-within they/we do not take it for granted. Go Barry, stick it to An Fear!