REVELATIONS AND REVELRY

Picture the scene: it’s a glorious, sunny afternoon with balmy temperatures of about 6 degrees, which feels like the heat of Spain in the summer after last week’s snow-calypse. You’re driving off through the beautiful New Forest to watch your daughter playing enthusiastically for the U11 netball B team (an opportunity which must be seized) at a lovely, country Prep school. It’s a scene to warm the cockles of the maternal heart, isn’t it? Said child is going there on the team bus so it’s a peaceful journey and I have a brownie as a snack for her in the car for the way home, which is always lovely as she chatters excitedly about the match. New Forest ponies are roaming contentedly, there are some donkeys wandering across the road; it’s idyllic, yes? Well let me tell you that this rural idyll swiftly began to sidle across to being something decidedly less palatable. And why was this? I’m looking at YOU, iPhone map app.

I’ve been to this Prep school before. About 5 times. I know where it is and I know what the entrance looks like and I know that, bizarrely, you come upon the exit before you reach the entrance. I was confident that with trusty my iPhone map app I would glide sweetly on my relaxed, merry way through the New Forest and arrive in plenty of time for a 2:15pm start. *Dark chuckle*.

The map app seemed confident to me. It was definitely pointing me in the right direction for the school and with my only-slightly-rusty memory of the route, I wasn’t worried. Until I came upon the school. Oh, no, sorry, I don’t mean school – I mean where the map app tells me where the school is. This is disconcerting because all around me is flat farmland and there’s not even a hint of a school. But no matter, I think, I have plenty of time and I’m in the right general area. And then I start driving around in circles, down teeny tiny little roads, barely big enough for a pushchair to fit through, with high sided hedges and any amount of muddy puddles. I reach School Lane, where the app insists the address is. There is no school. But then, happy days, I spy a ‘School’ road sign. Bingo! I think. What more confirmation could I need? Quite a lot as it turns out because it’s the wrong bloody school.

By this point my blood pressure is rising. I am wasting valuable minutes driving round in aimless circles, seemingly traversing the same roads again and again with absolutely no indication of how far away I am from the school. It does advertise itself as ‘Buried within the picturesque New Forest’, and I’m beginning to believe it. Pompeii, eat your heart out.

Up and down the roads I go, feeling like I’m in some sort of time slip, and around and around in circles with the app proudly announcing every so often that “You have arrived at your destination”. No, iPhone map app, I have not. Losing all hope I pull over and call the school; they must be familiar with this rabbit warren of roads. Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring ring – you get the idea – and then “Sorry, we can’t come to the phone right now, please leave us a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can”. Best not to leave my message, I think savagely.

As I drive down a teeny tiny road for the fiftieth time, a little old lady and her dog appear. I brake sharply and open the passenger window, “Excuse me,” I say, “sorry to bother you, but you wouldn’t happen to know where X school is, would you?” It’s charmingly retro.

“Oh yes,” she says. “I do. Now what you want to do is follow this road until you see a red post box. Turn left there and carry on straight until you get to the Fox and Hound, there you need to turn left again, then right, carry straight on until you reach the Post Office and Keith the butcher, and then you’ll see the school on a far distant hill.” OK, she didn’t really say the last bit, but she may as well have done.

“Thank you,” I say weakly and drive on. By now I am twenty minutes late for a 40 minute match. But I promised her that I would be there and be there I will. Somehow, following that muddle of instructions, I do come across the school. Hurrah! I’ve made it! It’ll be easy from now on, I think confidently. I quickly find somewhere to park and look for the netball courts. No sign of them, which is strange because everything else in the school is signposted, down to the last cupboard. But, luckily I’ve perfected my retro approach out on the road so, vaguely aware of my wild woman of Borneo look, I flag down an unsuspecting passing parent. “Do you know where the netball courts are?”

“Yes,” she tells me. Go down that path and they’re just there on the right. Indoor and outdoor ones.” I thank her and hurry down the path. Ahead of me I can see the right sports colours for our school and I breathe a sigh of relief. And then I quickly breathe it back in again when it dawns on me that these girls are TOO TALL for an U11 match. In fact, they look distinctly Year 8-sized. I check the indoor courts, nada. There is one our teams waiting to play there but these ones look TOO SMALL. I go back to the outdoor one, perhaps I was mistaken. No, I definitely wasn’t. This is going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I think to myself, blood pressure rising quickly. Where on earth could they possibly be? I approach another parent and ask “Pray, where might the U11 match be?” There are muttered directions to the places I’ve already come from. “I’ve checked there,” I say, “they’re not there.” Easy? I think to myself. Oh, you fool, not easy at all.

“Oh. Well perhaps they’re down on the other netball court.” The OTHER netball court? The one nobody mentioned? The one I didn’t know existed? THAT netball court? “And how can I get to that?”

“Go down that path, don’t go left, follow it round and there’s a sort of bend, just keep going straight until you reach a tree, then you sort of turn 180 degrees, go through that gate – it shouldn’t be locked – and then you’ll be sort of near it.” I look at her.

Deciding that I was done with my own navigation, I latch onto the parent as they head towards the court and stick to them like glue. You know when two people go through a ticket barrier, practically attached, at the same time? That was me as we wended our way towards the match. I was not letting her out of my sight. Which was just as well because the route we took to reach this netball court involved gates and playgrounds and steps and twists and turns that I would have got hopelessly sort of lost in.

An hour and a half since I left home, I got to watch the remainder of the match, which was no more than about 25 minutes. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and looked forward to dissecting it on the way home with my child. Out of nowhere she appears in front of me and shoves her tracksuit into my hands, “Hello darling! Well played. Are you ready to go now or are you staying for tea?”

“Oh,” she says casually. “I’ve decided to go back on the team bus now. Can you pick me up from school?” I stare at her. An hour and a half of driving time. Within which, twenty minutes were spent frantically searching for the wretched place in some kind of Bermuda triangle, seeking out a hidden playing court within the maze of 50 acres of school, my blood pressure had soared to stratospheric levels and all this in order to spend just 20 minutes watching her play. And now she decides that she doesn’t want to come home with me after all. I grit my teeth and try to smile nicely, “Yes, that’s fine darling. You do what you want.”

“Thanks, Mama!” And off she skips.

I stalk back to my car and eat the chocolate brownie. Then I begin to head home. But do I use the iPhone map app? I most certainly do not. It’s clear that the iPhone app hasn’t had a very good education. Perhaps because it could never find its school. I choose Google maps, the dear old reliable Google map app, who was always top of its class. But I had chosen to turn my back on this elegant, streamlined map system and give the iPhone-underdog-map app a chance. Never again, I swore, underdog is now synonymous in my mind with under-hinged. Not quite un-hinged, but definitely on the way there. Or maybe not. It all depends on which map app you take directions from.