Making Plans for Niggling

It was a long drive to the airport. I had planned the road journey meticulously on the internet but somewhat as an afterthought. Start point postcode, destination postcode, fastest route on motorways or major routes avoiding trouble spots and toll bridges.That easy. The printer spewed out three pages of instructions and I was ready for the 194.6 mile journey over an estimated 3 hours and 36 minutes duration. My failing, not at all a consideration in the short organisational period, was that the journey was to take place in the dark. The bright features and measured order of a printed plan are worthless when there are no real marker points or reliable features discernible to the eye or at least whilst trying to concentrate on the position and stability on a busy road and the possibility of a speed camera lurking about against the leeward side of a bridge parapet. Chaos, indecision and panic. Something was obviously awry with my reliance on internet sourced navigational aids when after some 4 hours and 17 minutes the skyline of Canary Wharf, London came into view. My manual trip counter on the dashboard, zeroed on my driveway, now read 240 miles.I knew exactly what the problem was. I had betrayed my roots. I grew up to love maps. From an early age I could easily fully deploy and then re-fold an Ordnance Survey sheet true to its original creases so as to sit flat and neat. I was well versed in the standard symbols and could pin point where we were at any one time with an instinctive notion of in what compass direction I was going. This natural intuition is all very well as a party piece but on the more recent cases of when it has deserted me I have been completely lost in all meanings of the word. On a particularly bad day I took a sub-division of my family almost into the occupied territory on Cyprus in a pride induced but wholly foolish attempt to self navigate to a hotel. I have in the past been in possession of a Readers Digest Book of the Road, a compendium of up to date driving maps and useful data but disliked the relentless chase from that organisation to subscribe to or buy its other core products. That Tom Champagne and his promise of my selection to an exclusive group of potential winners with an excellent chance of securing the top prize in a forthcoming draw. I actually sold up and moved house to shake off a pursuit by the Readers Digest over a dispute which came down to my word against theirs that I had not agreed to take a full set of condensed novels even though I admit that I did keep the complimentary signing up gift of a pneumatic bottle opener. So, devoid of an up to date series of road maps I had resorted to an on line resource and had relied upon this in full denial of my own skills. A previous vehicle I had owned had a built in sat nav which I just kept on all the time as a reassuring beacon on the dashboard, even for a very short drive to the corner shop. This caused me to lapse into total reliance on such systems. I read today of an intiative by Government to try to put an end to the misery and anguish, notwithstanding the waste of time, fuel and road-user hours caused by the persistence of out of date information on sat navs. I have witnessed an abvious misadventure at the hands or throaty voice of Ms Garmin in the reversing of a large overseas truck from a narrow lane terminating at a pedestrian width footbridge only really suited to a game of pooh-sticks. My own built in sat nav relied on subscribing to a service to regularly update the data but I must admit that over some 3 years of ownership I had not spent any further monies on such a luxury. In my unsuccessful attempt to locate such a large feature as an airport I reluctantly agreed to help from The Boy who fired up his smart phone and its GPS function. By this time we were not only lost but also hungry. As if by magic the GPS revealed that there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken within a further 20 miles and wonder upon wonder the disinterested voice would take us there. I resisted the persuasive manner of the accurately plotted map by adopting the spoiling tactic of a few consecutive laps of roundabouts whilst squinting to make out the road names and numbers. After all I did have some pride and true to being a man had to stick to my convictions even if, as was being App-tly demonstrated , these were outdated and ridiculous. The GPS, despite my best attempts at sabotage landed us right on the doorstep of the KFC on Ilford High Street just in time to avert a low blood sugar induced meltdown . Waiting patiently until we had polished off a good selection of herb and spiced dressed chicken the GPS got us out of some rather dodgy urban areas and back to the motorway. The airport was now in sight and then a short detour to the hotel to rest up before a ridiculously early flight check-in time. One shortcoming of the sat nav now emerged. A postcode based system can be quite good in a city and town but in an open rural area, as we now were, the radius of a single postcode can be quite some square miles. Another major shortcoming was the complete failure of the sat nav on account on a depleted phone battery. We were now hopelessly lost. Pride and embarassment and also a regional accent prevented asking for directions from the population of Essex. The road was now no more than a very narrow, tree lined lane with rabbits munching away on the verge or very evidently not being  successful in getting clear of our vehicle as they tried to dash across into the natural cover on the opposite side. The last resort was to actually read the old style wooden road signs and logically follow a reasoning that the hotel name was a clue to it's location and appearance. We found The White Hall Hotel, Church End to be a large White Hall operating as a Hotel and at the hammerhead of a cul de sac just past the village Church. The reception staff were bemused by our bedraggled appearance at close to 10pm and especially as the web based booking agency had not informed them of our reservation. Fortunately, on a weekday night in early january there is not a high demand on hotel rooms in deepest Essex and we were soon safely in a more than adequate refuge. I went straight to bed in complete loss of faith in anything technologically based. Traditional use whilst a hotel guest of kettle, trouser press, steam iron, entertainment system and massive plasma TV were shunned and I was soon asleep, only vaguely concerned at the passing low overhead, every 10 minutes,of a large number of wide bodied passenger jets on take-off from the nearby airport.