On our last (my first ever) visit to the UK and Europe, we purchased a Tom Tom style SatNav  or GPS in Brussels to use on our travels. We had the option of selecting a male or female voice, and for some (strange?!) reason my husband chose a female voice, because, he said, they are usually the back seat drivers! Hmmm, I wasn’t sure about this comment but decided to go with the flow (see Paul, I sometimes give in to my dear husband), as he was driving on what was for us the wrong side of the road, and felt he needed the comfort of things being as normal as possible. It wasn’t long and we became very good friends with the Sat Nav, to the point we named her Jayne, the name of one of my wonderful helpers and friends at university. Jayne saved our bacon many times as she calmly spoke to us, so often simply saying turn around if possible, and then if we ignored this command, she would wait a moment, and then proceed with re-directing now. No fuss, no terse words or tone, Jayne remained calm and positively instructive. Occasionally we felt the need to yell at her, or tell her to shut up, and once or twice, simply turned her off, actions that don’t go down so well between couples on the road! Now, there are not many material things we love other than books, but we came to love Jayne the SatNav, and suspect she may have saved our holiday relationship as only once in over four weeks did we have cross words and that was when Jayne had forgotten to factor in some road works! I know, there will be some of you who will be saying about now, how tragic (or pathetic), but before you are too harsh or judgemental, Jayne does have a human voice and really does sound human, she speaks often, and in response to real situations, especially our stuff ups. She sounds calm, kindly and knowledgeable, and I even have her when I’m at home walking for when I get lost. This trip, we faithfully packed Jayne in our bags, and first time round, even chose a car without a built-in Sat Nav. Dear Jayne, we said when we had plugged her in and she was finding our way on our travels once more.

Hiring a car a second time this trip, we couldn’t get the same car we had previously, and the one available had a built-in Sat Nav. The hire car salesman said, oh, you’ll love this one; it’s the latest and has a touch screen, so much better than any others. He gave my dear husband some quick instructions on how to use it, and we were on our own, luggage in the boot, instructions for the route in progress, buckled in confidently and ready for takeoff. A wrong turn, and almost lost in the first 90 seconds!! Was it us, OR WAS IT THE NEW SAT NAV? We hadn’t even named her yet, but we pushed and prodded buttons and dials, with no idea of what we doing, and no instruction booklet in the glove compartment, one of the new ways of companies doing business, assuming we ALL use our phones to access this type of information. I’m sure they’ll get old one day too. So, the heavy London traffic was whizzing by, we were making wrong turns, and the new Sat Nav seemed to have no idea where we wanted to go. We pulled over, tried again, and seemed to be getting on at last, until an hour or so later, we made a few more wrong turns. Of course, it couldn’t possibly be user error, it had to be the new Sat Nav, who we had named Deborah by then, but we were very untrusting of her abilities, my dear husband even going as far as to say, we loaded the latest maps on Jayne just before we left home, so Deborah must be wrong (this car had less than 6000 kms on the clock). Next thing you know, we have pulled over again, dear husband is in the boot to get out Jayne, plug her in and replan the rest of our trip… I sat for the next 2 hours holding Jayne, who talked over Deborah with virtually the same route instructions, but in a more familiar voice. By the time we arrived at our destination, we felt some faith in Deborah and even thought we might try her on her own for the next car trip!! By the time we left the shopping centre at Kettering the next day, Deborah had become Deb, and Jayne mysteriously had taken the job at the self checkout lane in the supermarket, her job with us complete!