Conversations With Lily: maps
Monday 7th December 2015
I have to tell you about this convo while it is fresh in my mind. It is shocking! Did you realise that (and maybe I am guilty, if anyone is, not Lily) that apparently, some *young people* never look at maps? I was brought up and learned to drive in the pre-GPS/sat nav era, but even so, I loved maps as a child, and I still do. I also always secretly wanted to home-educate the girls and I had an imaginary curriculum in which there was regular map reading with practical skills added on in the form of walks. The home ed thing never happened. Mark wouldn’t let me. He was probably right.
On car trips to Manchester with my father to see my Grandma, I would study the car-map for hours. Well, there was only Radio 2 or reading when dad and I weren’t chatting. Reading a book sometimes made me feel sick, but studying the map didn’t. I pored over the huge atlas – do you remember them? Maybe your car still has one, in the pocket behind your seat, or in the boot? First I’d trace our journey that day and dad, though he knew the way intimately and needed no navigator, would ask me to check which roads we needed – their number, where we would join them, an estimate of the number of miles outside, say, Chapel-en-le-Frith, we would be at when we reached that tricky junction.
Once I was satisfied that he would not get lost for a while, I’d explore the whole atlas. Fascination with our UK geography gripped me. The expanses of our country that were brown and green and had moors and mountains with close-drawn lines to denote their elevation were exciting. These areas often had intricate folded drawings indicating the actual terrain. The torrid clutter of the south east or the west midlands with roads too numerous to count and no open spaces as far as the car atlas was concerned were exotic and alarming. I loved them all – the key to symbols, the letters, and especially the trick to get from your current page to the place where your road went next – not always the next page! The maps however, gave you clues with a grid-reference system in the back.
I have almost no natural sense of direction. My instinct to turn the wrong way is legendary, especially in towns. Or caves. I once had to ring a friend, in London, from Trafalgar Square, to ask her where my office was. That memory still makes me feel a sense of mild panic. But I can, if I have a set starting point to get in the right direction from the beginning, read a map. It has left me with a pretty intimate knowledge of the UK’s ‘face’. I know, for example, exactly where Carlisle is, even though I have never been there.
So today, Lily was asking me about The North. This region may as well be somewhere you’d find in Game of Thrones as far as Lily is concerned. The North is an amorphous mass of cities and mountains to her. To me, it is the place of my birth, and a significant part of my early life. It is not a single place. I have visited and lived and worked in many parts of The North. But the news today reported on the awful weather and floods in the north west in particular and then:
Lily: Carlisle? But that’s in France.
Me: (slowly appreciating that it is not a joke)
Lily: isn’t it?
Me: no. It is in England.
Me: why did you think Carlisle was in France?
Lily: well, it sounds French, doesn’t it?
Me: not really. Maybe you are getting mixed up with Calais?
Lily: no mum. God.
Me: Carlisle is in the far north of England. Now, can you tell me – or show me with your hands if this (showing her with mine) is Taunton – where Norwich is?
Lily: (gesturing to where the the Shetlands would be) it’s here, innit?
Me: no. It’s here (showing her), it’s in the east of England. Where is Hull?
Lily: (indicating Oxford) here?
Me: so, if I asked you to drive to Birmingham now, what would you do?
Lily: GPS it. But I wouldn’t drive to Birmingham in the Punto, it’d be vile.
(The Punto is my ugly but faithful orange-coloured car. It is driven by everyone, including Lily, Florence and even Will. Yes, it is old, a bit shabby, the locks are dodgy and it needs a mucking-out. But it is my car and they all ought to be far more grateful than they are that I let it be the family communal car).
Me: (sighing) OK imagine you are driving a nice car. And there is no GPS.
Lily: um – I dunno!
Me: what about reading a map?
Lily: no mum, see that’s really
really dangerous, reading while driving.
Geez.
Me: you don’t read and drive. You consult the map before you start and if you need to, you stop and read it again, then drive on.
Lily: (incredulous) wow. What a pain! Stopping and starting. (Shakes head in disbelief and pity).
Me: could you read a map?
Lily: the words?
Me:
Lily: cos yeah, the words.
Me: yes, the words, but really I meant the roads. Could you find yourself, here, now and follow the roads to Birmingham? With your finger?
Lily: (incensed by the inference that she might be too stupid to do this) Mum! I am not thick, do you think I’d be drawing my finger along a river or summat? Mouth-breathing and squinting? Of course I could do it – but why would I, when we have a sat nav?
Me: but the point is, aren’t you curious about our country and how it’s laid out? Don’t you ever look at maps and think: I want to go there?
Lily: Nope.
Me: I do! I read maps all the time when I was little, and atlases of the world! I looked at the country I lived in and imagined travelling to all these…
Lily: (cuts me off with a pitying look) yes but mum, you’re a sad little thing aren’t you?
I discovered my daughter’s navigational skills were lacking last year (Alice is the same age as Lily and I also have your affection for maps). Sadly I only discovered this gap in her education having gone an extra hour north on the motorway than we needed to whilst driving to Boston with Alice navigating (this is despite having gone over the route the day before and having used highlighter pen to mark the route).
Oh Sam! It may be a lost art, but like knitting did over 10 years ago, have a resurgence? There will be map-clubs. There will be map-alongs, and map ‘n’ natter afternoons; we will have map-stashes and partly-read maps! 🙂 xx
That was me! I still laugh about that. At the time the rest of the people in the open plan office found it funny too!
I love conversations with Lily – the real life ones and the virtual ones.
Xx
I thought you might remember that Emma! that was very embarrassing, I could hear them! Still, once you located the river I was OK 🙂 I remember you saying: face the river (the Thames). And I was wailing: I can’t SEE the river from Trafalgar Square! So you resorted to navigating me via the famous buildings. Oh dear.