Well I may be exaggerating slightly when I say the TomTom SatNav saved my marriage but I certainly believe it stopped a LOT of arguments!
When the kids were young we used to go camping quite a lot which meant hubby driving to campsites around the UK. As I can’t drive I was in charge of map reading (I’m getting agitated just thinking about it). I don’t know whether it was because I was no good at map reading or because hubby didn’t listen to me … I’m going to say it was the latter … but we always ended up arguing. We’d come to a sign on the motorway and he’d ask “is it this turn off we need?”, and I’d be frantically trying to read the map and usually by the time I found where we were we’d passed the turn off. I’m sure it took us at least an hour longer than it should to reach our destination.
The one occasion that really sticks in my mind was on our first camping trip to France. The campsite was supposed to be a 20 minute drive from the ferry port. We drove off the ferry at about 9pm and by 11.30pm we were still driving around looking for it. Things had become very tense in the car … I’ve never known our kids be as quiet as they were on that drive. Looking back we actually laugh about it. Hubby would ask me what the sign up ahead said and I’d reply in my best French accent what it said … he didn’t think that was helpful (if I had emoticons in my blog there would be a rolling on the floor laughing face here). He also spotted a police car while we were driving and thought it might be a good idea for me to ask for directions. I declined as I don’t speak French. We did eventually find the campsite at around midnight. We had to drive to the second campsite on our French trip two days after that and hubby was really anxious about getting back behind the wheel. I’m sure we drove around every roundabout at least twice for the rest of the holiday. It was easier to just keep going round until we knew for sure what exit to take, and actually a lot of the French roundabouts were very decorative (one of them even had this very impressive obelisk on it).
The Christmas after that I presented hubby with the best present I’ve ever bought him … a TomTom SatNav. We were all much happier on our camping trips from then on. I know lots of people use the satnav on their mobile phones these days but it’s not the same as the TomTom which is so much more reliable.
Of course we still have some tense moments when we’re out in the car together. It just doesn’t help when hubby decides he knows better than the SatNav and goes his own way! Maybe it’s time I learned how to drive.