61. Pride comes before a fall

When I didn't get lost, but then I did.

Dear Reader,

With his hospital appointment for some scheduled treatment in the offing, I was due to drive Jim to Brighton.

Although I’ve been driving for over thirty years, in recent times I have found my confidence in the craft diminishing. I drive myself around plenty, but stick mostly to local routes. For trips à deux further afield, I am driven, not driving.

This is despite a long history of extended solo journeys: up and down the A1M to and from university at the beginning and end of every term; getting lost in the back streets of Cologne in my battered – later scrapped – matte red VW Golf on an alarmingly regular basis between my flat and the office; even across central London in my 1963 Morris 1000 decades before the congestion charge was even on the radar.

Given that I would need to find my way to the hospital alone in order to collect Jim after his treatment, we planned weeks in advance to do a recce. We discussed it at length: it would be on a weekday, not the weekend, after the morning rush-hour but before the evening one. We’d do it before the start of the school Easter holidays. We’d check the diary so as not to be on the wrong side of any major events such football at the Amex stadium or a horseracing meet at Brighton racecourse, and my driving practice would ensure that we’d get to the hospital safe and relaxed on the day, having not got lost. More importantly, I’d find my way back later – alone – to collect the patient.

Life got in the way. Our schedule became crazy: spring was springing up around us and suddenly every client needed the attention of Jim and his camera lens.

It was the first Sunday morning of the school Easter holidays. ‘Shoot! We haven’t done our recce to the hospital!’ said Jim through a mouthful of porridge.

I rolled my eyes. He went on:

‘How about this morning, on our way to visit Mum? We’ll be quite quick.’

We set off for the 40-minute journey. At first it was very familiar: I drove us to the town I went to school in, then through the tunnel onto the A27, then turned off just before the football stadium and drove up, up, up, passing downland farmland left and right. Right turn at the lights, then left across the racecourse and down towards the city.

There was a tonne of traffic even before we’d got anywhere near the sea. An hour – and several decisions – too late a rash of yellow and black ‘ROAD CLOSED’ signs was catching our attention at every turn.

Seriously, every turn.

Photo by Nico Smit on Unsplash

Having previously been a staff photographer for the regional daily paper for over two decades, Jim knows Brighton like the back of his hand. At every ‘ROAD CLOSED’ sign he gave me a new instruction, his local expertise telling him exactly how to find his way around on the smaller roads and rat runs. As today’s timid designated driver, none of this helped my scrambled brain in its quest to get my little green car to the hospital.

This ‘quick’ trip to Brighton was no sprint, it was a marathon.

Literally a marathon. The closer to the hospital we got, the more obvious this became. Barriers, flags and tangled knots of tiny beaming cheerleaders bearing banners with such legends as ‘GO, DADDY, GO!’ and ‘MUM, YOU CAN DO IT!’ mixed together in a chaotic jumble. The cars had to do the best they could with the help of diversion signs.

There was the hospital. We’d made it, but not with any confidence in the route I’d be taking on Wednesday.

On our weary onward journey to visit his mum – ages after we’d planned – Jim turned to look out of the rear window at a sign we’d overlooked on our way into Brighton.

SUNDAY APRIL 2: BRIGHTON MARATHON
ROAD CLOSURES IN FORCE: 06.30 – 18.30
PLAN YOUR JOURNEY

‘Plan your journey’. Ouch.

It was action stations: today Jim needed delivering to the hospital, and I was driving. Of course, I wasn’t alone, but held my own as driver/navigator at least to start with. I remembered the journey up until the left turn that took me across the racecourse, and after that I concentrated hard both on my surroundings and Jim’s instructions. I’d programmed my SatNav, but that was just belt-and-braces back-up.

And there was the hospital! With my co-pilot helping with some of the navigational shots I’d got us there with no issues at all.

Given that I was going to be driving straight home, I didn’t need to turn into the car park. With no obvious drop-off point in evidence I stopped just beyond the ‘NO STOPPING’ red route and flung my patient-to-be passenger out of the car, rudely disturbing a group of vapers and smokers in scrubs as I did so.

Given that this didn’t seem to be a designated stopping point I didn’t stick around long enough to reprogram my SatNav. I wound the nearside window down as I pulled away. ‘Good luck!’

‘Left then left, then retrace your steps!’ Jim yelled through the open window, surrounded by a cloud of smelly vapour.

This was it: I was on my own.

Left then left. Then left at the lights – I recognised the shop opposite from when I’d turned right at that junction on the way there. Right at the roundabout. Left at the lights, up the hill, across the racecourse, then right at the lights.

Photo by Eliobed Suarez on Unsplash

Hey, I was nearly at the A27! Across the bridge at the roundabout – the bridge I hadn’t come across on the outbound journey but which I needed to take here so as to access the other carriageway… and then filter onto the bypass.

There was the tunnel, and then the route along which I used to be driven home from school. Calm, confident and immensely proud of myself, I parked up outside my house forty minutes after I’d left the hospital.

Reader, I’d nailed it.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER

Hoping to make it back to the hospital before rush hour but at a fitting time to collect the patient, I set off in good time. The route was still programmed into the SatNav for reassuring back-up, but Reader, I could do this. I’d just retrace my steps from this morning, and this time head for the hospital car park. And yes – although to my immense surprise – my journey turned out as simple as I’ve just described it.

Now, I get lost in car parks: I have history. Well, either I get lost, or my car does. In one car park in Düsseldorf I’d sought out a security guard on one of my panic-stricken ever-decreasing circuits around the car park in my search on foot to find my car.

‘Mein Auto ist GESTOHLEN worden!’ I announced, pink, cross and breathless.

The security guard regarded me with little more than distant interest. ‘Madam’, he replied (albeit in German), ‘I suggest you continue to look for your car, and if you are still unable to find it, we can talk again.’

I couldn’t believe this guy. I sloped off, offended. He was still looking at me, though, so I decided to do my sulking in private, one floor up.
(Which is exactly where I found my car.)

Bearing this in mind when I was parking at the hospital, I made this quick note:

Floor 7a, space number 32. Don’t tell me I don’t learn from my mistakes!

Jim took ages to be discharged thanks to his stubbornly lousy efforts to maintain his blood pressure at a high-enough level for him to remain upright, but as the evening darkened we were at last on our way. The same way as earlier: the way home that by now I felt I knew. I did know it. I do know it.

Reader, I had nixed my navigational nemesis, and by now I was confident to the point of irritation at any tiny instruction coming my way from my woozy, iodine-stained passenger.

‘It’s right at these lights.’

‘I know’, I hissed replied with due compassion. 🙄

THURSDAY

With the hospital pharmacy having been unable to fulfil Jim’s new prescription, I headed alone to our nearest dispensing chemist in the morning. I’ve been a million times before. I know exactly where it is and how to get there.

But I wasn’t concentrating. With the tail-end of the Radio 2 breakfast show blaring out Keane’s ‘Somewhere Only We Know’¹, I whizzed straight past my destination as I sang along with gusto.

TWICE. Once in each direction.

With my arrival home now set to be rather later than planned, I gave my impatient patient a heads-up while I waited for his tablets to be dispensed:

Reader, allow me to indulge in these three concluding clichés:

• A little confidence goes a long way.

• Getting to grips with anything important is a marathon, not a sprint.

• Pride comes absolutely before a fall.

Jim is fully recovered. I’m not sure that I am!

Love,

Rebecca

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1. I am not even making this up. 🤣