Sat Nag

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Don’t always trust your handy little electronic co-pilot!

It may seem like the world’s best invention since kitchen towels but let me take you briefly to the dark side.

Having often hankered after a magical, time-saving, stress-saving satellite navigation system of my own, one dropped right into my hands at the most unexpected of moments, lent in a moment of seemingly genuine generosity to cover a number of previously unchartered trips.

I should have been suspicious right from the start, for the machine clearly had a little black soul all of its very own and for trip number one it didn’t want to give an alternative route from A to B. ‘Trust me’, it whispered, ‘choose my route...which is the only route you want to go’. At this stage of the game I still had some of my own rationality remaining and I chose to go my own route – mostly because I had a pretty good idea of where I ought to end up (I had already spent some time studying the map and writing out each journey step in black marker pen and bluetacked it to the dashboard. I left the sat nav on just for fun...to see how long it would take to re-adjust to my route. The soothing sat voice seemed to get more and more irritated with my navigational deviance until halfway down the M5 it announced in disgust ‘no route recognized for your chosen destination’ before turning itself off.

Bad hair day I figured. Anyway – without giving it much of a second thought I set off on journey number 2 without actually consulting the map at all (unless a brief look at google map to check journey estimated time counts) and I submitted my will entirely to that of my co-pilot, being slowly seduced, mesmerised by the soft audio instructions that apparently favoured the unconventional pathways of the 21st Century UK road network.

Thus I was driven through a convoluting succession of tiny hamlets, most of which seemed to have some form of ‘bottom’ in their name, down muddy tracks and across wild crags and hilltops. For a moment I was in love with the machine – this was surely a much more spiritually enriching way to travel. An hour later I still hadn’t hit the expected motorway and really had no idea how far north I had travelled, and my hands became a little clammy. An hour after that my throat seemed painfully dry. Upon reaching hamlet number 439 I pulled over and searched for it on the map, I searched ever page of the UK and Chanel Isles but I was clearly way off the map. I could only close my eyes and keep going, bound to a spell that must surely break sometime before the next day dawned. And so it did... just as I began to wonder whether I had sold my soul to the devil.

A lucky escape.

So why did I let the same trick be performed upon me again..?.. some days later. Why laugh at other’s mistakes and not learn from your own?
Perhaps like the say about childbirth you forget just how painful it all was ... sooner than you expect.