Drive To Succeed

Despite my gender, I'm good at navigation. My father taught me to read and use maps when I was very young, and I soon became the family navigator. I don't think it ever occurred to him that I might not be able to navigate, so I guess he transmitted that confidence to me. Thanks, Dad!

Despite his gender, my Paramour is a bit rubbish at navigation. Not completely hopeless, but inclined to make mistakes, and his sense of direction isn't great. He had no ego problems about handing over the task to me, and early in our relationship he dubbed me his 'demon navigatrix'.

When sat navs became commonplace, neither of us was particularly bothered about getting one. My smug view was that they were for people who couldn't find their toilet without a 'sat lav', and his smug view was that he didn't need one because he'd got me. A little while ago, when I was stuck on the sofa for a few months with health problems, he kept getting lost and decided to order a sat nav - but the company he chose to order from couldn't find our house to deliver the sat nav (yes, really!) so he gave that up as a bad job.

A couple of months ago my Paramour decided he had to get a sat nav for work reasons (not to find his way to places - some techie thing to do with one of his clients and some software, and that's all I know). This coincided with our trip to France, so we decided to get one which included the French road system. I was very dubious about the idea of surrendering control to a machine, but the sat nav quickly proved useful in helping tired people negotiate French town centres at the end of a long day's driving.

We tried various voices and decided the Irish man had the most soothing tones. He's very deadpan and repeats himself a lot, so our sat nav is now called Dougal, after the character in Father Ted. My relationship with Dougal is developing differently from my Paramour's. I'm happy to let Dougal help, but I don't entirely trust him - quite often I know better than he does, like when I can see the roundabout in front of me that he doesn't think exists - and I won't use a route he suggests without cross-checking its sensibleness with a map, some real-time traffic information, and my own knowledge of road systems. So when Dougal suggested going from the Midlands to south-east London via Camden and the West End of London, he was immediately over-ruled, because I know from experience that the M25 and the Blackwall Tunnel is a much quicker route.

My Paramour, on the other hand, is happy to let Dougal decide his route. But I discovered yesterday that he has his own point of resistance. We were travelling together, chatting, with Dougal making pronouncements in the background. At one point Dougal said 'keep in the left-hand lane.' My Paramour was driving in the right-hand lane. I looked at the road sign we were passing, and saw that if he didn't change lanes we'd end up going the wrong way.

'Sweetheart,' I said, 'Dougal says you need to be in the left-hand lane.'

My Paramour continued to drive in the right-hand lane.

'He was very firm about it,' I said.

'That's the trouble,' my Paramour said. 'When Dougal gets firm about things, it makes me feel rebellious.'

On that basis, I don't think having a sat nav is going to help him much.