I’ve said it before. I always get lost when I try to drive through Neath on my own. Don’t know what it is. There’s nothing special about Neath. Just one of those towns you come across almost anywhere. Except, take one wrong turn and you’re off into an oddly unnerving Tardis-town on a road you can’t recall, driving to places you’ve never seen.
The only compensation is that, sooner or later, if you keep going in more or less a straight line, you’ll end up on the road to Carmarthen, or Pontardawe, or Swansea, and those are places from which I can happily navigate home.
Today it was Swansea.
Hey ho. I’d dropped Graham off at the train station–he’s off to Somerset for the weekend–and had intended to drop in at our local friendly supermarket for easy and healthy eatables to see me through the first couple of days going solo.
No problem. Swansea is fine, and the Sainsbury’s supermarket is world class. I had lunch, then plunged into the aisles to grab goodies. Home, sucking peppermints, and then it was:
“Hello, Dolly! Dja miss me?”
Nothing.
“I said Hello, Dolly. You could at least acknowledge my existence.”
Nothing.
“I shall have to come and prod you.”
Nothing.
So she got her prod, and rolled over to face me, all fluffy summer fur, spit, and multi-dimensionally clawed spite.
“That’s better. It’s nice to be noticed.”
We soon made up, though, and once I’d had a coffee to calm my road nerves, we snuggled up for a good long siesta.
I wonder what it really is about me and Neath?
John, I seen to remember you bought a GPS. Do you use this to try to navigate through Neath?
I’ve lived around here for over 30 years, and there are places on the outskirts of town where I always get lost. I wonder if the planners here came to the US from Neath.
I used to get lost in Waco, Texas. Now I avoid it like the plague. It’s a small but strangely twisted town.
Yes, there is one subway station, Nonhyon, in which I frequently get “turned around” and get on the wrong train. I think it’s because, after a series of 90 degree corridors and stairs, there are two 180 degree turns with escalators involved. I have to read the signs VERY carefully before taking the last escalator down to the platform.
Sounds familiar. Lived here for 10 years and still get lost on one road. I am supposed to go straight ahead on it and I always turn off of it and get LOST.
I never thought I’d finally get the hang of Greensboro, North Carolina. I was forever veering right or left and gettiing all lost. They seem to lvve streets and roads that diverge at angles, none of them right angles! One day, in exasperation, I shrieked, who on earth laid out these streets, the local cows? Turned out that was pretty close to the truth. I read that they HAD actually just used paths made by both humans and animals leading from a to b, and voila! Greensboro’s street system, about as far from a grid as one can get. Exaggerated a bit, but not too much!
I would be afraid to venture from the two roads I know back home.
DOLLY!
I can never figure out one of our towns here either. Every time Jim and I go there I have to keep asking him – “Is it this turn or the next”? “This street”? Aye Yi Yi! I’ve only been going there most of my life!
Can we have pictures of this surrealistic Neath one of these days?
I’m less troubled by the magic of Neath than I am by John having a coffee immediately before a nap! I’m sure I’d be having all manner of odd dreams if I did manage to doze off.