Sat navs are fecking ace
// April 10th, 2008 // 10 Comments » // thingies
I was just about to leave a comment on Grandad’s post – but remembered I wanted to have a good old rant about my special relationship with sat navs and the bad press my little babies receive. I love Sat Navs – but to a lot of people they’re the “mobile phone” of the noughties. 
Remember when yuppies got mobile phones and you wouldn’t be seen dead with one? No way. I’m never ever getting a mobile phone. Yuppie twats. I haven’t seen a more reviled piece of technology since the glorious days of yuppie bashing. Every last one of us eventually gave in, and now as we slowly lifted our heads from the shame of mobile phonery, the first device to catch our spiteful eye is The Sat Nav – but lo, not only does it glisten, it speaks! Its fractured vocabulary commanding us to go forth and turn left. Surely the work of Beelzebub.
My introduction to Sat Navs was a few years ago in a taxi leaving Madrid airport. I remember it fondly. I sat in the back ignoring the sandy landscape for the whole journey, transfixed by the box of direction. Yet I considered it a luxury and placed it at the back of my mind, until riches came my way. Then one Christmas, I unravelled a shiny parcel from my generous sister-in-law and found probably the best present I’ve got since Big Trak introduced me to the concept of tears of joy.
You see not only is it a great gadget but I very much consider it a disability aid. I really have such an amazingly terrible sense of direction that I am literally lost without it. I can now go places I’ve never been before! I swear I have such a disabled sense of direction that I could turn a corner and completely lose track of what direction I’m facing. And spoken directions go in one ear and out the udder. I could easily set off for Belfast and end up admiring the Cliffs of Mohr. And that’s after spending 17 hours trying to get out of the one way system. And I am completely at a loss as to how people drive in alien countries without Sat Navs. Without my trusty companion, I definitely would have been ended up crawling around the Nevada dessert, licking vulture skulls.
Ok I can follow a map – but not while I’m driving. Neither can I turn a page of a map book while driving. And at its most basic, that’s all a Sat Nav is; a map with continually turning pages. A map that attaches to your window instead of flapping all over the place and falling from the passenger seat to the floor. Denying these small leaps of innovation is futile technophobia that also smacks of I’m alright Jack, while hundreds of us suffer the interminable agony of this crippling disability, ahem.
