I'm driving through North London and I'm lost. I could be in Azerbaijan as nothing looks familiar. I printed out instructions from the AA website on how to get from A to B but when I was half-way between the two points I realised that I didn't have my reading glasses so the three sheets of instructions were pretty useless. Nevertheless I know I'm going to Archway and that it's up there somewhere between Camden Town and Crouch End, how hard can it be? I look at the signs on the A40 which you'll be reassured to know I can just about decipher even if the windscreen wipers aren't working and there's a smear right in my line of vision meaning that I'm croached over the wheel like Mr Bean. I readL Tufnell Park, Holloway, Islington... but, darn it, no ruddy Archway. I keep driving and panic into turning left at King's Cross thinking that if I just go North I'm bound to find something, and I do - eventually.
After some time I find I'm on Caledonian Road. I've never been here in my life before and I have no idea whether I'm even driving North or South. It's at times like these that I really miss my ex-husband who was equally clueless, couldn't read a map while the car was moving, but nevertheless was handy for yelling at. We used to leave dinner parties early just so as to factor in the half hour for the fight on the way home when we invariably got lost. I could stop and look at the A-Z but if I can't read the instructions from the AA there's no chance I'll be able to read the ants crawling across the pages of the 8 point, 25 year old A-Z that is, in any case missing most of pages 65 through 80.
I know, duh, I'll stop and ask someone, I think as the roads get darker and darker and less and less populated by anything other than youths in hoodies. I see one standing outside an Asian shop just after I've passed Caledonian Road tube station and I slow the engine only to speed it up when I see he has a can of Special Brew in his hand. Somehow the idea of stopping in my party frock and high heels, putting a piece of paper under his nose and saying: Can you just tell me what this says? or, even better: Where am I? suddenly doesn't seem terribly well advised. And then I see another sign for Holloway.
Okay, I'll go to Holloway then. There's bound to be a sign for Archway from Holloway.
Yep, you'd think, but as I eventually, thank the lord, find myself on a road I recognise as the way to Crouch End (why on earth did you move from there Julia?) there's only a sign for Camden Town. Nothing for it. I look at my watch and discover that I've been driving for 40 minutes and in five minutes I'm going to be late, but tough times call for tough measures, I'll just go to Camden, up to Kentish Town and find my way from there.
Good Idea. So why did I take a left turn - why oh bloody why did I take a left turn then right turn and then get lost all over again in the back streets of a rat run that another fifteen minutes of backtracking and reversing down roads did come out on another recognisable street with Archway glowing in neon on a lovely sign. Ten minutes, one illegal U turn, three minutes trying to cross a stream of traffic and I arrived outside Julia's house, late but intact.
And then I couldn't remember which house she lived in.
She does have, however, very nice neighbours.
I rang several bells till I got the right one and was soon sitting down with my one permitted glass of wine when the doorbell rang again heralding the arrival of another friend, a fellow author, and in one of those lovely triangular relationships that make people outside London think that publishing is just one big club, about to be discovered y Pedantic Press, as is our hostess whose book is out at the same time as mine. The author, bow askew and hair slightly awry, though I think this was fashion and not dazed exasperation, walked into the room piping in her helium voice that she had got hopelessly lost and had been driving around Holloway for half an hour. Better than me, she had at least found Holloway.
'Sat Nav,' offered another guest, one half of a female couple. 'We used to have terrible arguments about navigation until we bought it, it was the best hundred odd quid we ever spent.'
I think she's right, though I still kind of hanker after a real life human being to shout at when I get lost. The last time I had Sat Nav was on a hire car in Italy which, mystifyingly, had German Sat Nav which issued all the instructions as orders: Achtung, Achtung (or maybe that was just because, as with my ex-husband, I tended to ignore it).
Thirteen of us crowded around the table for dinner. Only three of them men. Welcome to the future, Marion, this is your life. Julia said she had called round earlier in the day to try and beef up the blokes ('What do you mean you're in Stockholm, jump on a plane, darling') but to no avail. I could have brought any number of hooded males from Caledonian Road but as it was the men sat at one end of the table like they were at an Australian barbecue according to lovely blonde woman (Australian) though I would have said an Arab wedding (formerly married to gentleman of Middle East persuasion), wrongly though, because at an Arab wedding they are not even in the same ruddy room.
I sat next to the woman driver who had invested in Sat Nav who turned out to once have worked for Waddling Duck and had helped launch Pedantic Press, while her partner, who I spoke to later had also done some financial planning for the company. Another Waddling Duck sat on the other side of the table next to both our authors. Meanwhile I did actually get to have a real live conversation with one of the men who ran a whole raft of business magazines.
And people say that publishing is an incestuous business.
Shame on them.
And though I took the correct route home south directly to the Westway, I still managed to find myself driving round the one way system on Camden High Street, on the way home.
