Cork 2005: Morning: It's time, I think, to call in to see the knitting map. To get to the hall which runs beneath the massif of St Luke's de-consecrated church, one has to climb the hill leading to Montenotte. High terraces rise in regiments around Military Hill and Wellington Road, their gardens crumbling down on one another. Some restorations show what might be done to resurrect one of Cork's most spectacular, and most spectacularly neglected, urban landscapes.
The civic shame of this detritus is, for now, offset by the industry within the walls of St Luke's Hall, reached from the still-corrugated incline of Mahony's Avenue. Here a floored and panelled work-station has been installed to accommodate as many as 20 knitters at a time, working to patterns set out on 10 computer consoles. This seated area is raised and the richly patterned material cascades onto the floor, while more monitors display information and websites all pertaining to the work in hand and to the half/angel company's concept of computerised imagery transformed into wool.
The knitting map has had its critics and has led to some questioning of the financial decisions made by Cork 2005; comparative costs and their results can seem mystifying. But here the realisation dawns that the map is not quixotic or inconsequential: the work goes on, overseen by a project co-ordinator and going right ahead, as promised.
Lunch-time: A downhill stroll ends at Gallery 44 in MacCurtain Street where Colm Murphy's exhibition of new paintings, Sticks and Stones, continues until next Saturday. Having given this much less than the time it deserves for an adequate appreciation, the journey is on to the premises of Alliance Française in Mary Street where the artist Claude Roguet Scoquart is presenting her work for the first time in Ireland. Her Dreams in the Loire Valley is a sequence of oils, watercolours and pastels of intensely observed landscapes. This ended last week but the Alliance will host an exhibition Souvenirs des Pierres by Francoise Rio from Wednesday.
A step across the South Mall and over the widened pavements of Patrick Street takes the culture-seeker to the Crawford Gallery. Uncharacteristically crowded for a Saturday afternoon, this is the venue for the stunning Airgeadóir, an exhibition of Cork silver and gold over four centuries. The crowd, it turns out, mostly consists of a group of British dealers and connoisseurs who have come to Cork specifically to see, for the first time, a collection of this rare material.
Best entered via the sculpture hall, the two-storey display is both enthralling and entertaining: the fun of following the panelled introductions and information sheets is enhanced by the calmly beautiful presentation, the items shown in glass-fronted cabinets rimmed in polished steel and ranging from ceremonial maces to domestic nutmeg-graters, from sauce-boats to sanders, bleeding-bowls to butter-dishes, chalices, communion cups, salvers and asparagus-tongs.
3.30pm: Time is pressing; Theo Dorgan is launching Songs of Earth and Light as part of the Munster Literature Centre's "Translations" series over at the city library, which is itself engaged in an open-air festival in honour of the Catalan Sant Jorge - who is also, in a coincidence the library preferred not to notice, the English St George of dragon fame and this is his day, too.
The Grand Parade has become like a souk: I buy oils, olives, soap, conserves and second-hand books from the stalls lining the closed-off street. Maire Bradshaw presents her new releases and Mike Collins represents Cork University Press. From a marquee come the ripples of laughter aroused by Carol Ann Duffy's reading (this line-up included Leanne O'Sullivan, Martine Evans and Marta Pessarrodona), and rival laughter erupts from the park where stories are being animated as part of a children's literary festival.
Inside, John Miller, whose Enlargement programme at the Vision Centre features Slovenia this month, watches as the Slovenian Charge d'Affaires Leon Marcs speaks (in the perfect English we have all allowed ourselves to expect) of Joyce in Trieste on the Slovene-Italian border. Pat Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre introduces Barbara Korun of Ljubljana, who reads a selection of her work turn and turn about with translator Theo Dorgan, who describes the poems as "living on a bridge: trans latere". All this, with wine white and red, takes place against the thump and slide of books being checked out at the library counter where business continues as usual. But the sunlight has come in from the street and customers and guests mingle in the happy queues lining up for signatures on copies of the elegant book.
Just such a queue was formed last night too, when Anthony Cronin, looking absurdly young without his spectacles, gave a reading as part of the library's World Book Day celebrations which, assisted by urns of tea and coffee, plate-loads of biscuits, a female barber-shop quartet, plays, films and more readings, continued until 10 the next morning.
7.30pm: Off to the North Cathedral, where a performance of Messiah by the Cork Symphony Orchestra and Cantus Choralis, conducted by Keith Pascoe of the RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet, brings this one Saturday in Cork's year as European Capital of Culture to a close. But in case Sunday begins to drag, the Cherry Cup bell-ringing competition is held during the afternoon at St Fin Barre's Cathedral, which later is the scene for an evening organ recital by cathedral organist and master of the choristers Colin Nicholls.
