ChatterBank1 min ago
How Do You "Do" Directions??
I've got an interview at a new school tomorrow and I had no idea where it was. After asking a few people and getting a list of turn left here, turn right here, take the third exit at this roundabout, blah, blah, blah... I decided to go on google maps and go along the streetview. My directions now consist of turn left at the big conifers, turn right at the house with the red garage door etc etc... I need visual clues as to where I am or else i'm completely stumped! Anyone else like this?? I can't be the only one surely! Haha :)
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Conifers? Are those the big Leylandii which the new house owner has cut down? Red garage doors? Don't they have paint brushes in your area then?
I can normally just look at a map, think through the directions in my head (e.g. "left at the roundabout, third right, second left, straight on for half a mile, 4th exit at the next roundabout, etc" and then 'internalise' them. So that, even if there are 30 or 40 steps in the journey I can simply drive straight to my destination without even consciously thinking about how many junctions I've passed or how far I've driven between junctions.
I can normally just look at a map, think through the directions in my head (e.g. "left at the roundabout, third right, second left, straight on for half a mile, 4th exit at the next roundabout, etc" and then 'internalise' them. So that, even if there are 30 or 40 steps in the journey I can simply drive straight to my destination without even consciously thinking about how many junctions I've passed or how far I've driven between junctions.
When I was working I used to go on courses in London and the tube was a nightmare for me. If I have to go anywhere new these days (just in town, usually something to do with the children) I have to ask a friend where it is (directions involve well known shops and pubs (not that I go to pubs these days)) and then I do a reccee a couple of days before - have to time it and work out where I am going to park my stupid car.
I think that I inherited my sense of direction from my father. In 1990 we were driving into a town in Lincolnshire when I told my Dad that I's stop the car for a moment, so that I'd look at a map to find out where a particular pub was. My father told me not to both as all I had to do was to turn right at the next crossroads, take the second left, fork right and then the 4th turning on the right. I asked him how he knew. He told me that he'd passed the pub on his only previous visit to the town in 1940.
When I was delivering car parts I worked as a relief driver, so I had to cover over a dozen drivers different routes. One afternoon I had to deliver to a small garage, with an incomplete address on the docket, so I asked if any of the other drivers knew where it was. Several of them told me, in chorus, that all I had to do was to look for the big red gates. Some of the drivers had been delivering there for over a quarter of a century, and the gates had always been bright red. So I set off to look for those big red gates. Can you guess which morning that garage had had their gates painted grey?
