"Honest to God, I think you're geographically autistic," d laughed kindly.
This wasn't today, I should say. This was a while ago, when, I think, d finally got it.
Given a choice between two directions, I will get instinctively, inexorably pulled toward what will turn out to be the wrong one. Given a map and the real world to relate it to, I will end up walking down garden paths, because they were the 'next left', even though, to any ordinary human being, it would be patently obvious that that's not what the map meant. The thing is, I'm more than capable of getting on my moderately high horse in situations like these, feeling genuinely self-righteous and blaming the map for its 'inaccuracy' - even though I work with people who know maps inside out, and who have on more than one occasion pointed out to me that the point of maps is to give a representation that makes sense of ordinary people, and therefore, any deficiency is down to me being, when all is said and done, stupider than the map-makers thought was possible. As I've mentioned before, I've spent most of my life getting lost while being utterly convinced I was going in the right direction. I've turned up late to job interviews because of it (and got at least one because I 'carried on as normal' in spite of it - bless 'em, they thought that was a sign on unfazed applomb, rather than plain geographic stupidity and moving right along), stood up CEOs because I couldn't find their offices, even though I was just a street away, arrived in Brussels relatively recently and headed to the wrong end of a train station....you're getting the picture by now, I think.
Therefore, getting routes to do long-distance walking in the city is something of a 'striding into the jungle' affair for me. So far, I have only a handful, and most of them are long straight lines - from Statford to Aldgate station of a morning? One turn, at Stratford Broadway - and I only ever discovered this route by virtue of not being able to find Liverpool Street Station, despite having the fairly impressive landmark of London's Gherkin to aim at. Kensington to Hamersmith? One turn, just outside the doors of the office, and then straight on to Hammersmith. Kensington to Tottenham Court Road? One turn, at Lancaster Gate.
By far the most adventurous route I've developed so far was figured out by long hours of staring at walk-it.co.uk - Kensington to Westminster. That has four turns in it, and, I'll be honest with you, the first time I extended it from Victoria to Westminster, I went not one, not two, but three wrong directions before getting that fourth turn right, because according to the mental map I had developed, the right turn was the most illogical, most unlikely of all possible directions in which Westminster could possibly lay.
"Which direction were you facing?" said d when I told her this.
"North," I said, unhesitatingly.
She stared at me for a second.
"And which direction are you facing now?" she asked, guessing, as only she probably could, the depth and nature of my fuckwittery.
"Well, north," I said, as if she'd just asked me what sex I was.
She physically turned me ninety degrees.
"How about now?" she said.
"Yyyyeah, I can see where you're going with this," I admitted, "but what you don't understand is that the compass I'm using swivels with me...so as far as my brain is concerned, I'm still facing north."
She moved me round again.
"And?" she said.
"Look, I know that physics and geography and all that stuff doesn't agree, but I can't help what my brain is screaming at me," I almost whined. "The direction I'm facing is..." I shrugged. "North."
"What, you think you're that magnetic honey?" she asked, with skeptical eyes.
"No," I said, resisting the humour and beginning to saddle up my high horse once more. "It's just the signal that my brain is sending me.
"So if I told you to go south, what would you do?"
"Panic," I told her honestly. And I would - I'd arbitrarily designate the direction I was facing when I got the instruction as north, then turn 180 degrees and have to shut my brain up in its screaming that I was going wrong and clueless - even though, given the arbitrary nature of my initial decision-making, it would be right...just not for the right reasons.
"Honest to God, I think you're geographically autistic," d laughed kindly.
A couple of days ago, I did the Kensington-Westminster walk, and then decided "Nah, bugger it, I'm not tired yet, I'll try and push on to Tower Hill.
Tower Hill, since you're asking, is east of Westminster (unless I'm going there, obviously, in which case it's north).
I looked at a map at Westminster, and managed not to cross the river. I went north, by which I thought most normal people would mean east - and, as far as I could see, down the right named road to take me in the direction I wanted to go (I'm not actiely unintelligent about this stuff - I can read, and identify roads. The point at which things go horribly pear-shaped is that most roads extend in at least two directions from any point at which they are identifiable, dammit!).
It was when I arrived at Embankment tube station that the sickening feeling rolled over me. The sickening feeling of having gone wrong again. Embankment, since you're asking, is...sigh...west of Westminster, unless I'm going there etc etc...
So being 40 has changed a thing or two - I feel more certain of myself, my decisions, my path and my determination. But it appears to have done nothing for my navigation skills. Sigh...this'll be me then, going forward in straight lines. Heading north.
No comments:
Post a Comment