I HAD an interview in the country last week, afterwards I gave the farmer I interviewed, a lift back to town so he could pick up his car from the mechanic.
“You’re going to need to give me directions,” I told him, because despite having driven from there, I had no clue how to get back.
“Go east,” he said as we left his property.
“East? I’m not a sailor,” I quipped, he laughed and from that point on directed me using hand signals and the much more helpful “go thatta way”.
I’ve lived in the region for just more than a year now and with no coastline to guide me, have become hopelessly lost on multiple occasions.
My husband thinks it’s hilarious but for me it’s confusing.
For at least eight months, I thought the local tip he took our rubbish to was behind the town’s centre.
He’d pass me binoculars and say ‘that’s where I go, we can see it from our house’.
Every time I drove out of town I’d wonder where this tip was?
Town was in the direction our back porch faced.
No, it isn’t.
When I learned all this new information it was like my brain exploded.
I found a piece of paper and drew a rough graphic of where the town was and the road I drove to go home.
Husband was right. He can’t understand my complete lack of direction.
To be honest, neither can I.
You’d think my car’s GPS would be helpful. Think again.
Last year I had an appointment at another town, we’ll call it for want of a better name, West of East.
I plugged in the address and my car’s inbuilt Navman took me out along the flat and up a long hill.
I kept on driving and driving, fields passed me by and cows meandered across dirt roads.
On and on I went, over cattle grids until I reached a dead end.
I was parked on top of this big hill that overlooked a valley.
Understanding this was not the road to West of East, I struggled to make sense of how I’d arrived there.
The town was on the other side of the valley but there was no road to take me there.
And to think the appointment was about that community’s fight to have a road that links the two towns.
Irony.
Had my sense of direction been better, I’d have twigged it wasn’t the right route the moment I was directed to drive up that long hill.
Against all good reasoning I listened to my car’s GPS when driving to my interview last week.
I was travelling from a job not far from it.
Once again my car decided I was to drive a route that eventually resulted in a dead end.
To be fair, it was a beautifully scenic drive, but not one you’d want to take when time is short and deadlines are looming.
‘Go East’ yeah, yeah … that’s about as useful as telling me how far from here to there by saying ‘oh about 10km, as the crow flies’.
