oh so lost!!

Yesterday, the girls and I went to visit someone on the other side of Leicester. It was meant to be a straightforward trip; it was somewhere that I had driven to many times before. However, as I came into the first bit of Leicester, I missed the next turn off. I actually couldn’t remember whether I should take the road to the left or carry straight on. I have done it loads of times before, so I started to worry that I have totally forgetful ‘baby brain’ (that’s what happens when you have kids, and stay at home with them – you forget how to function in real life situations!! – maybe I need to go back to work to stretch my brain cells a bit more??!) Anyway, I turned around and got on what I thought was the correct road, but I had got a bit confused about where I actually was and I soon realised that the road I was on was not looking at all familiar! (Again, I used to have quite a good sense of direction, but here I was frantically following signs for places I thought I recognised the names of- arrggghh!) Eventually I decided that I was definitely heading too far in the wrong direction, so I pulled over to program the postcode I needed into the Satellite Navigation system – then, shock, horror! – the Sat Nav is not working, it won’t even turn on. Okay, don’t panic, I have a map function on my phone with GPS, great, I put in the postcode only to find that I have no 3G connection and it can’t load the map. So I am feeling totally let down and abandoned by all the modern technology, and I am worrying that my constant reliance on all these gadgets has helped me to lose some of my ability to do this on my own!! I drive yet further in the wrong direction, I keep telling myself that at the next junction I am sure to see a sign I recognise! A few stressful minutes later I pull over again and I riffle in the boot and fortunately locate a MAP – yes, that’s right, a paper map, it doesn’t have batteries or plug in, it doesn’t have GPS, just an old-fashioned paper book containing pictures of all the roads!! Now to discover if I still know how to use this thing! Luckily, even with my ‘baby-brain’ I still know how to read a map and very soon I am back heading in the right direction (although I do pass a sign saying that I’m 13 miles (13 miles??!!) from Leicester – how did I get so far in the wrong direction??!! I think next time I should pull over to check the map a lot SOONER!!) So eventually, we pull up at our destination, half an hour late and quite annoyed at myself for being so stupid!!