Rant. Satnav

The received wisdom for peaceful car journeys is that the driver never argues with the navigator. But as we know, all hell breaks loose when a third person enters any marriage: in this case, satnav.

My first experience of GPS, on a trip to the mountains in Switzerland, marked the beginning of the end of my own happy union. My husband, rightly suspicious of this new woman in our lives, instantly countermanded her instructions, leading us to miss the vital turning to the motorway and get lost in central Geneva for an hour or so without a map. As we bickered, and I unwisely tried U-turns in the face of an oncoming tram, satnav issued soothing instructions: ‘At the next junction turn LEFT…’ (clicking noises); ‘At the next junction turn RIGHT and RIGHT again.’

The emotional temperature dial rose like an overheating car radiator, from Irritated through Furious into the red zone of Murderous. In the rearview mirror, I spied our teenage sons sharing one set of headphones, as they pretended not to hear anything so long as Death in Vegas were playing full blast.

More recently, my heart sank when, embarked on a new romance with a man for whom independent thinking is like breathing, I discovered his craven obedience to GPS.

He insisted I take a country track in France rather than follow the enormous sign to Toulouse straight ahead, a route that saved us one minute to the airport.

While I admit that relying on my inner compass sometimes gets us lost (all right, often), wrong turns can lead to unsuspected architectural treasures and droll encounters with strangers. I actually notice the character of the surrounding landscape because I’ve abjured this robotic addiction to twodimensional travel.

So was I triumphant when my amour’s GPS floundered in the complex network of double roundabouts on the Colchester ring road? Satnav’s increasingly panicked left-rights sounded like a drill sergeant pursued by a swarm of bees. Just follow the signs, darling, I smirked. BELINDA BAMBER