Lost in the hills

I have an excellent sense of direction.  When I was eight Mum and I went on a picnic with some people from Port Augusta.  We stopped in the hills and had fresh cheese sandwiches and cups of tea.  Us kids had the best fun running up and down the hills whooping and roaring playing cowboys and indians.

When it was time to go Mum was not to be found.  As I have said I have a wondrous sense of direction but the parent could get lost walking around the block.  Everyone started fluttering around but I knew just where to find her.  I remember them calling out to me about getting lost.  Hah!  There was no chance of that.  Mum was just over a couple of  hills and wandering aimlessly around.  One hill to her looked just like any other.

I don't think I got a very good reception.  I seem to remember that they were cross because they thought I would get lost as well.  Mum was embarrassed and not very grateful either.  I should have been given a medal. Come to think of it with how badly I got on with my mother over the years it would never have occurred to me not to find her.  When we lived in Woodville she never knew the way to go to Auntie Dossie's.  I was only four and always directed her round the corners and over the railway line.  Let us say that she did not have the same internal compass that I do.

A friend of mine also has the same sense of direction as Mum.  She is a walker and goes off in a group once a week.  They take the train to one of the beaches and then walk along and back to the railway station.  If the ladies decide to go to the toilet one of them has to wait for May because as sure as anything she would walk off in entirely the wrong direction.  One time she took the dog to the vet and when she went to pick the dear old thing up she turned right instead of left and ended up at the town centre.  All she had to do was to turn left and then take about twenty steps, turn left again and she could practically fall over her front gate.  Her hubby being used to her as he was drove along Main North Road and found her at the lights waiting patiently for them to change so she could take the dog to the Town Centre.  At least this is what I imagine she was trying to do.  The poor old dog was on its last legs and this little trip probably hastened its end.

It is an amazing thing to have a compass embedded in your head.  I can always depend on it except when I am thinking about something else.  I do tend to start driving somewhere and end up somewhere else that I usually go.  That of course is not the compass being broken it is the sign of the pre-senile mind going into automatic.  Concentration is the key to that I think.