There are some people in this world who are natural navigators...to whom the prospect of 'finding your way' is simple in the extreme, it's as if they've got their own inbuilt compass and a flawless maplike memory or something...they can always seem to get their bearings with ease and efficiency, even if you've managed to get lost in the most twistingly confusing way they'll be able to guide you, unerringly, to safety.

I am most assuredly *not* one of these people...I have come to this conclusion through a thorough series of experiences, adventures and misadventures that can only point to the fact that once i'm lost...i'm *really* lost :). I'm fine if I know where i'm going of course, fine if I have accurate directions and a map to read too, where I come unstuck though is if i've been given incorrect or incomplete directions (yes multimap i'm talking about you!) that can get me in the general direction...then get me lost...and lost I stay! The other area of navigation where I suffer slightly is in the taking of 'a shortcut' which, invariably in my case, turns into 'a trek of epic proportions...cut'...it all starts sensibly enough, i'll get fed up sitting in traffic and think to myself "hhhmmmm...i'm sat here queueing *forever* to get to that road that's just over there...I wonder, if I turn into this country lane here ill surely be able to find my way onto that road" *sigh*...poor fool...so off I go, initially enjoying the adventure and savouring my smugness since the road does indeed seem to be going the right way...then it starts doing it's twisty turny thing and ends up pointing me out in *completely* the wrong direction and, what with it being a country road and all, i'm stuck on it...trapped...with no signposts of any description and increasingly "deliverance" like surroundings...it's usually at this point, especially if I have to be somewhere within a certain time, that I get flustered, perspicacity flits away, good humour swiftly joins it follwed by patience and, eventually, temper :)...oh i'll find my way eventually...but whenever I do i'm always reminded of the scene from an episode of 'The Simpsons' where Homer tries to take a shortcut and, after days of fear filled driving through inhospitable terrain they emerge from the undergrowth, battered, bruised, probably mentally scarred, the car a mere shadow of it's original self and Homer says..."we shall never speak of the shortcut again"...wise words Homer...wise words indeed :)