Sat-Navs and Kindles

I have always loved maps. I remember one of my first geography lessons in Primary School, when we had to draw a "map" of our desk, so that we grasped the idea of an overhead view. It was exciting, this idea of floating in the sky and looking directly down on the classroom, or the street and town - all long before Google Earth was even a concept.

That's when my love-affair with cartology all began. I collected  maps of all kind. I can loan you a street-plan of Bruges, a public transport map of Chicago or a pictorial map of the Wine Route in Cape Province, and I keep adding more.

I sought old old maps, too, and had some antique maps of Africa that missed or misplaced major key features. 

No sign of Lake Victoria, and Mount Kilimanjaro was clearly on the wrong side of the Equator. 

When, in my student years, I backpacked up the Nile from Alexandria to Uganda (and beyond) it was the usual publishers that provided the overview - and British War Office WW2 military maps from Stanfords map shop in Long Acre that filled in the detail.

My maps have followed me everywhere, and when I moved to Italy,  it was suggested that many were out of date. To me, this was heresy, because I knew for certain that not a single river, mountain or city had moved anywhere in all the time these maps had been in my possession.

And that is. essence, why I swore I would never use a Satellite navigation device. It's all very well when the coy actor, or - worse - the synthesised robotic voice tells you "...After 500 metres, take the exit..." but it doesn't tell you where you are, what to see, what places to visit or the name of that lake over there. 

The very phrase: "...you have reached your destination" has an ominous foreboding, especially when you look around the car-park in the back-street to which you have been directed. 

So, stubbornly, I shirked the idea of a bossy electronic device giving me orders until I came to drive to Italy, and was loaned a Tom-Tom Sat-Nav. When I motored across Switzerland, through a spaghetti of motorways, I discovered the benefit. All I had to do was change the voice setting from an aggressively feminist dictator to a friendly, knowledgeable bloke whom - had he been real - I would happily have invited for a drink at the end of the journey. I was converted to a new technology, just as this week, I acquired a Kindle.

I love books as much as I love maps. I did have a large collection of Africana, but many were sold; some went to raise capital for the restaurant in 1979, others inevitably went in the constant process of down-sizing over the past 20 years.

I entrusted some of my books and maps to my daughter and son-in-law, because I knew he would drool over them as I have done. I have an early edition of Stanley's "In Darkest Africa" and if I win a couple of lucrative contracts training or writing in the next couple of years, I intend to have them re-bound with leather spines and gold tooling. 

But now it is my Kindle that sits in a shiny leather cover, (though lacking the gold lettering.) 

This was another Italian lesson for me, from when I was hospitalised in Italy in November 2011 for a hip replacement, and borrowed a Kindle loaded with half a dozen books.

Then my trip to Mauritius made me realise how much more convenient it would be to have reading matter constantly to hand, and new material available at the click of a mouse. I can still be positively Luddite, bemoaning the lack of page numbers and getting cramp in my right hand while I still try to find the best way to hold the device, but the benefits are undeniable.

So which piece of technology should I adopt next? I already have an Android Smartphone, and when my contract option permits I shall upgrade to something a bit faster and more reliable.

I'm really not interested in being permanently wired in to music, which is why I never had an MP3 player, and have no interest in an iPod.

The iPad must be useful if you are permanently on the move, or want games and pictures to keep children amused, but I'd rather have my laptop and take along a full-size keyboard when I travel, so that I can write easily, without mis-typing all the time.

So, what is next? Can I see myself wearing my computer in the style of Google glasses? 

Who knows? I said I'd never use Sat-Nav and I swore nothing would persuade me to use electronic books.

Do you think they do them in bi-focals?