I love women. I love their different shapes, their different sizes, their smells, their looks, their reasoning, and their generally lower levels of aggression. I agree with the sentiment that if they held more power in governments across the world then there would be fewer wars and less violence. In every sense I believe women are more or less equal to men. Intellectually they are the same if not more talented than men. Physically they may be restricted in terms of brute strength in such sports as football (women’s football is skill and guile based as opposed to pace and brute strength) or rugby, but in other sports such as golf I see no reason why women should not be able to compete equally. I rejoice that in the UK at least they earn what I do for doing the same job, even if the reality is that this wage parity is more theoretical than actual. Their beauty can illuminate a room, and there is no doubt that today’s woman is far more powerful and emancipated than ever before. But in at least one area they cannot compete with men. I know I will undoubtedly incur the wrath of many women who read this site, those I know and those I don’t. But it has to be said.
They cannot read maps. They have no sense of spatial or directional awareness. Never let a woman plan a journey. It will only ever lead to tears and shouting.
Tears from her, shouting from you.
For years GMD has lauded me with proud tales of how as a child she would read the maps for The Grand Master when they went on holidays or trips. I was chuffed at this. How handy would this be? A partner who can navigate whilst you concentrate on being Captain Grocerjack, proudly driving your passengers to their holiday destination. Delivering them safely and more or less on time, with stunning entertainment from my home made compilation CD’s, or the alternative of in-drive MP3 players or portable DVD player. Someone to forewarn you of imminent junctions, road changes, road works and diversions in advance.
What I never asked was whether she ever guided The Grand master successfully. A cursory check, but an important one that I missed. The Grand Master doesn’t like to drive long distances to places he doesn’t know, and detests driving abroad. I now know why. He’s scared of where he’ll end up.
Every year I trust her, and every year we have at least one row caused by a mis-reading of the map, or the mis-reading of signposts. This year it took until the 3 days before the end of the holiday, but as sure as eggs is eggs it happened. We had decided to drive to another camp-site in order to view their selection of mobile homes (they’re not Caravans right!). This site was about 75 miles away along the A9 towards, but NOT IN Montpellier. GMD had a local map leading to the site and the larger map of France. The night before I suggested we plan the route…not necessary said she, she’d sort it out in the car. I believed her.
As we enter the city of Montpellier having endured an hours delay on the A9 due to what appeared to be French tree trimmers blocking two lanes I started to wonder. My bafflement was complete when GMD commented “I can’t find the N312 or the D137 on the big map” ….”come to think of it…why haven’t we even seen a sign?” . I pulled over and examined the map. GMD pointed out where she was looking on the big map. “it doesn’t seem to correlate” she said. 10 seconds was all it took for me to determine the issue. She was correlating the local map to a point on the big map that was two inches further east than the place we wanted to be. That’s about 50 miles in real money on the real map that is the French countryside. Move two inches west on the Map back to Beziers and….wait what’s this….fuck me it’s the destination we require! I said this in the most diplomatic and loving husband way I could think of which means it probably came out as “ You stupid fucking cow, we’re meant to be here, not here” accompanied by jabbing fingers into the maps. I turned the car round and we headed back. Tension was now steadily mounting and I exaggerated every gear change whilst apologising to Captain Grocerjacks passengers, the kids. I figured about an hour back to where we should be but hen for some bizarre reason I accepted GMD’s recommendation that we bypass the A9 and use the N112m (their equivalent to an A road), despite knowing the A9 would be clear going back west.
We hit traffic at Frontignan, and then sat for an hour in Sete, and a further 30 minutes to drive along Marseillan Plage ( about 8 miles of endless sandy beach, no shops, no promenade and hundreds of Dutch and French camper vans parked next to it, with awnings out and full table chair sets set out for lunch). Yes, we had left at 7:45 and it was now midday and France was having its lunch. Another wrong turn took us up the N312 in the opposite direction to Vias, where the camp-site holiday parc is located. Finally, after another huffed and puffed gear change, followed by some unnecessary anger motivated acceleration inclusive of passenger apology, she broke. She flung the map down, tears streamed out, and a volley of stuff like “I don’t know where we are, you fucking find the way……etc etc”. An aggressive u-turn and associated hand signals to other drivers followed. I shouted back, more tears.
And then finally, the admission. The moment she then said she knew she’d cocked up. She’d known back at Montpellier. Then silence as we slowly but surely negotiated the local instructions to arrive at the camp-site holiday parc at 12:30. 4 hours, 45 minutes to do 75 miles. Put this into context. The journey back took 1 hour and 15 minutes exactly.
How the hell we were ever in the mood to then actually commit to buying a caravan holiday home I will never know. From now on all journey planning is down to me, and she will do any tactical stuff en route if diversions are in place.
Please, for your own sake, and your sanity, don’t let your wife/girlfriend/daughter read your map. It’ll just end in tears.
Later, Captain GrocerJack
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