MY GPS; TRUST BETRAYED

People who know me generally think that I am smart, witty, funny, wise- oh, who am I kidding, I have no idea what people who know me think of me. And being that I am anti-social, despite putting up a good effort at being warm and charming, if almost incapable of small talk, I don't have that many friends anyway.
BUT. People who think they know me are often surprised to learn that:
1) I usually cannot recognise anyone that I am talking to unless I have met them more than 6 times,  unless there is something very striking about them, and
2) I have absolutely no sense of direction.

I've talked a a bit about 1) before and what a huge hindrance it is, considering that I am often in social situations, as a corporate wife etc, where I have to attend dinners and tributes and cocktail parties and fund-raisers, and smile and chat with people who may or may not be complete strangers, so I'm too embarrassed to admit to not knowing who they are. If I do, I get looked at funny because I HAVE met that person before (but NOT 6 times, or I would know them. Or they are just so nondescript that they don't 'stick', which is also insulting). Once I actually recognise the person, the name usually pops into my head, so I guess it could always be worse, and I would not even remember names.

Let's talk about 2).
When I say 'no sense of direction', even my husband of nearly 34 years, thinks I mean that I don't know the way to Moonee Ponds (which might as well BE on the Moon as far as I am concerned) or I can't find my way around Sydney. No. I have lived in East St Kilda and North Caulfield my whole life, and I still get lost and can't find streets. I'm talking within a 2  sq km block. I have been known to resort to my GPS to find, say, Hume Rd. I have even driven past my own home, which is on a corner, and I have lived in the same place for 34 years. If it wasn't for the tall camphor laurel tree (a 'Significant Tree of Caulfield') and the distinctive fence, I'm sure I would do it very often.
In short, the GPS changed my life. I have had a couple of really bad ones when the technology was newer, one in particular I was convinced had it in for me and tried to kill me a few times with absurd directions; I was quite relieved when it was stolen. The one I have now is integrated into my Mazda 3 and it's usually pretty reliable. And I thought it had been updated, as per my request, at the last service. But I was wrong.

I'll tell you a story.

Two weeks ago, on a stinking hot summer day, my daughter flew in from Israel with her husband and 2 small children. For some insane reason, my family, and I believe, many Melburnians, feel the need to pick people up from the airport. And drop them off. I've always felt that it's unfair to the poor taxi drivers. Just let them make a living! (Apart from the sort of Lear-esque attitude of 'Which of my children will offer to take me/pick me up, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child' bullshit that can come with this simple transport issue, in certain -ahem- families.)
Anyway, since there was a whole family with a lot of luggage including baby stuff, my husband decided that it would need 2 cars, so he and I would pick them up from the airport. In separate cars.

When I heard this, I felt the familiar frisson of terror down my spine. The conversation went like this:
'I don't drive to the airport.'
'Nonsense, you've been there 1,000 times, you know the way.'
'Not as a driver! Being a passenger isn't the same thing!'
'Of course you can, you're a capable person!'
So, still twitching a bit with anxiety, I accepted the flattery (which is true, I am in fact a capable person. With a piece of my brain missing, causing problems 1 and 2, see above) and agreed to go.

A few days before, I asked my son for use of the toddler booster car seat for the 4 year-old, and reminded him to put it in my car the night before. Well, he forgot.
So on the morning, I left the house at 9.30 in order to be at the airport at 11am. This gives me what I call 'getting lost time', which usually comes in handy. But I had to do an extra stop to pick up the car seat from where my son was. Fortunately, this was on the way to the airport. Corner of St Kilda Rd (the largest thoroughfare in Melbourne) and Kingsway (very main road also). So I used my GPS to get there (YES, YES, Melburnians, I know that's ridiculous, are you paying attention? I HAVE A PROBLEM). I found it, and I waited, as instructed, for the seat to be brought out to me, because you can't really park there. And I waited. I texted, I phoned, I called my son, my husband, his office, all the while ramping up the anxiety, until 30 MINUTES later, the seat was brought out. By then, my Getting Lost Time was severely eroded and I was already flustered, so when I took off for the airport, even with the GPS guidance, I managed to miss the turnoff to the airport. How is that possible? I don't know, but I did it. And I knew that I did it, and I knew there would be no mercy from the god of freeways; there would be no exit marked, 'You schmuck, you missed the airport turnoff, but here you go, take this exit and you'll be fine'. No such thing exists. I got pretty upset, I'm not ashamed to admit.

So if you miss the turnoff to Tullamarine airport, you don't end up on that huge 275 degree round turn that takes you onto the Bolte Bridge, with the ginormous yellow artistically stylised boomgate looking thing, and the E-pass toll thingies going beep, and the reassuring pictograms of the aeroplane on the green highway signs, beckoning you to the airport which is less than 30 minutes away in clear traffic. No. You end up on the Western Ring Road which goes and goes and goes FOREVER. You drive and drive and drive and eventually there is a little pictogram of an aeroplane; but by now, I hardly knew what airport I was going to. Yeah, the GPS was still on, but I didn't trust that bitch anymore. Yet, having no choice, I continued to follow her instructions. (By the way, I hope no readers suggest that I look at a map. I don't own a Melways anymore; I threw it away when I got the GPS because I CAN'T READ MAPS and anyway, now the print is too small and I can't even see them. But I digress.)

Of course, I'm getting texts and missed phone calls because PUNKT I had a new phone which I hadn't yet paired to my Bluetooth so I couldn't talk and NO WAY could I stop anywhere to check my messages. Eventually I think I stopped in an emergency lane and pulled myself together enough to let my husband know that I was in fact on the way but I had taken 'the scenic route' (a term I reserve for one of my getting lost escapades, as if the euphemism will blot out the memory of the distress). Then I kept driving. I knew I was getting closer and closer but the GPS was telling me to do stupid things, like U-turns where none were remotely possible, and so, sweating and swearing and shaking, I pulled off into a servo and there was the phone again, so I picked it up and basically screamed at my husband for making me go to the airport because I can't do it, don't ask me to do it ever again, etc etc. And he said, in a slightly jovial tone of voice which made me realise that a) he had my son-in-law with him b) on speakerphone, something like, 'Well, ho ho, I'll remember this next time you ask me to do something I think I can't do', as if I ever, so I thanked him emphatically for his empathetic helpful response and hung up on him. Then I composed myself and went to the guy in the service area and said that I know I sound like I'm mental, but I'm trying to find the airport, I know it's close, but I can't work out how to get there, and he said, 'No worries luv, that's Mickleham Rd, turn right on to it, then turn right at the next corner and you'll see the sign for the airport.' Just like that. And so it was.

By the time I got to the airport, everyone was there and had been waiting for a while but even so, do you think I could see them? No. Anyway, eventually it all worked out and I had my daughter and the 2 kids in the car, with carseats, and, leaving the airport, of course I was in the wrong lane and thought, bugger, I'll have to do a circuit thought the airport precinct, when my daughter, freshly arrived from Israel and therefore fearless in traffic, just waved at the driver in the adjacent lane to stop and then ordered me to push through to the correct lane, and we were on our way.
Amazingly, I didn't get lost going home, even though my daughter, who hasn't lived here for some years, tried to tell me how to get on to Kingsway, but if I would have listened to her we would have been in the Docklands, which she didn't know about. Hah. I was right, and the signage was actually readable and helpful. Not always a given.

Later that day, I had to drive out by myself to the beach house in Shoreham, an hour's drive, with the GPS trying to make amends for all the crap she had fed me, all nice and polite. But the ignorant cow didn't know anything about the M11 freeway and kept trying to tell me to turn off into embankments and things. I laughed at her. I had survived the airport. I could survive this.

MY BRAIN HURTS (again)

I've so many things that are on my mind
I thought I'd set it all to rhyme.
Smoky haze is in the air
From bush fires which are everywhere.
The winter Olympics started but
All I know is of culling mutts.
Torah Bright, despite her name,
Has come 7th, so- no fame.
Australia likes to score, you know,
Despite Oz not being known for snow.
What else? Oh, Catherine Ashton is a cow,
But that is really nothing new.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day
She gave a speech, omitting to say
Or mention the words 'Jewish' or 'Jew'.
I'd have thought that would be hard to do.
Then there's Scarlett and the Soda Stream;
Now, I don't want to sound too mean,
But she ain't no lover of Israel, no Ma'am,
Cos she got kicked out by Oxfam
For whom she'd worked for years and years.
But she didn't really shed any tears.
Let's face it, who's paying her more dough?
Soda Stream or an NGO?
John Kerry's running to and fro
Tween Israelis and their implacable foe,
And wants Israel to freeze and give
Up land; who cares if there's nowhere for Jews to live?
But he gives no assurances, only threats
Of more intifadas and BDS.
Meanwhile the mullahs in Iran
Are following their nuclear plan,
And Egypt is a total mess
And Syria- well, Allah bless,
How many thousands have now died
While Assad tries to save his hide?
So there's turmoil in the Middle East,
But the worstest place, the biggest beast,
Is Israel, where a Jew who wants to build a villa
Is more maligned than the worst of killers.
Nothing new here, boring, yawn, ho-hum.
Let's talk about that odious bum,
Dieudonne with his new fascist salute
That anti-Semites think is rather cute.
Ironic really, to have Hitler's back,
When he himself is- well- pretty Black.
Adolf was no fan of Colour,
Study history, Mr M'bala M'bala.
So on that note, I take a break
Because all this crap makes my head ache.