The SAT NAV and how to use it!

First of all I suppose a sat nav is a satellite navigation tool and I don't know how to work it at all - so I got you here under false pretences.

Neither does my wife – in fact I don't even know if she has ever noticed them on the dashboard of the mini cabs we use. She can, however, do three crosswords a day, reads The Guardian, The Standard and The Metro from cover to cover, watches all the political programmes on television and knows more about antiques than the average Antiques Road Shows' experts both here and in America. - (notice I never say the States as I think it's one of the worst tags I know and only slightly bettered by SAT NAV ) and strangely enough she seems to win all the little games like Trivial Pursuits and the like we get to play every ten years or so – we don't play games.

There is the dreaded sat nav above and here are all bits you need to work it:

I don't know what all those things are for but I would bet that one of them is a battery or something you connect to a battery somewhere.

This is a fact: when you use a sat nav you are not using your brain at all. Also, a well known fact, is that drivers' of black cabs in London have bigger or larger, whichever adjective you want to use and is proper, hippocampuses than the average yogi.

The hippocampus is the organ in the brain that does all the work – how do I know this? Because my favourite programmes on TV are University Challenge and Mastermind – so why wouldn't I know.

You think I know bugger nothing don't you – I tell you I know bugger all!!

Anyway:

It does all the work because it is, in essence, the memory, the organ in charge of spatial matters and emotion. So when the mini cab driver asks you where you are going and then asks for your postcode you know they won't be using their hippocampus. 

He or she will have turned it off and they'll be relying on the sat nav and singing to themselves One Day, Two Day, Soon it will be Pay Day!

And other sensible rhymes and couplets.

When I was sixteen I was in the army cadets – as I've mentioned before the ACF not the CCF as that is for schools – and I rose to the dizzy height of sergeant and I used to teach map reading.

So I never used a sat nav as they hadn't been invented. I used a map, a prismatic compass and a protractor.

Here they are:

All you have to do is open the map; open the compass and place the map facing magnetic north, which you will see on the compass. Then look for two familiar or distinctive things – maybe two hills, if you are in town maybe a church and a bus station (but those would be easy so let's stick to the outback) – yes you wouldn't be able to use the sat nav miles from anywhere as your battery will run out.

So you see a hill – not very big, which means the contour lines on your map will be wide apart. Take a reading on that hill with the compass.

Then to the other way you see a steep hill and you find this on your map with the contour lines close together; take another reading.

So now you put your protractor on to the first reading and draw a line down the map at the reading on the protractor.

Then go to the second reading and do the same thing and where the two lines cross will be where you are standing. If you're in the Sahara Desert wait for the stars.

So when everything runs out, batteries, computers and people who know how to read maps all die, the world will be left with a load of robots.

And where does the word robot come from? How would I know – but it means slave and I think it comes from and yes I'm right:

Origin of robot

< Czech, coined by Karel Čapek in the play R.U.R. (1920) from the base robot-, as in robota compulsory labor, robotník peasant owing such labor.

I knew that as it was on a radio show recently.

I think you will know my point – every labour saving device can do nothing except help you to suffer from some kind of dementia.

killer instinct.

Two Boxers

'Hit him – hit him' said my dad 'hit him again.'

We were boxing – in our living room.

'Not so hard' he said as my brother caught me with a sharp one, under the ribs.

The chairs were around the side, with the tables and other pieces of furniture, etc shoved right in to the wall.

When it was over we both said 'who won?'

'It was a draw.' my dad said.

It was always a draw.

Sometimes I would have to stop when my shorts started to fall down.

“Ah nobody's looking' said my mother 'you haven't got anything I haven't seen before.'

My dad would shout for us to break and pull my pants up. 

It wasn't long since I had grown pubic hair and I didn't want my mother seeing that.

'He can't box with his shorts round his ankles' he said.

'Jasus, it's not been that long since I was cleaning the bits of shite from his nappy.'

Trust my mam; making a holy show of me.

We had boxing in the gym at school in those days, during the PE lesson and also, in those days, I think we still called it PT. But there we go when has there ever been a time when things don't get called something else for the sake of it.

I must have been the shortest kid in the class so who would they put me in the ring with?

Johnny, one of the big kids. He was a pal of mine; we used to go to each other's homes and listen to our parents' records.

Out he lumbered, Big John – just like in the song.

I liked the way he sparred but he must have been posing as he danced around. We threw a few jabs, ducked a few times and then, coming out of a clinch, he stuck his chin out; I didn't hit it. This happened quite a few times and when we finished the teacher patted me on the head; I'd won. Well I reckoned I had.

When we were in the playground, later, I was asked how I got on and I said I'd won. 'no you didn't' said Johnny.

'I did' I said 'the teacher patted me on the head.'

'He patted me too,' said Johnny, but I knew hadn't.

'No he didn't' I said.

'Do you want to make something of it?'

I looked around. My pal – Johnny – looked at me with a certain amount of hate; there were others looking at me too to see what I was going to do.

'What do you mean?' I said. I knew what he meant then the kids started to chant: 'chicken! Chicken! CHICKEN!'

'I don't mind' I said.

'Unless you're chicken' said Johnny, who was fast becoming plain John in my mind.

'Okay' I said 'where shall we go?'

The kids started to form a circle outside the boys' lavatories in the corner of the playground and in no time we were dancing around. We threw a few punches, got in to a clinch and as we came out of the clinch he stuck his chin out and bang! I hit him a wallop and down he went.

I didn't, to this day, think the punch was very hard and that he was acting, the same way as he was posing when we got inside the ropes in class. But there he was on the ground.

Up he got – there was no counting as there was no referee.

We started dancing again and once again he stuck his chin out and down he went.

He wasn't badly hurt but playtime was over and we'd finished playing.

The little boxing lessons from my dad taught me how to throw a punch and defend myself even though my brother would never go down but I was never worried about getting hurt at home, it was when I feared getting hurt that the survival and killer instinct kicked in.

The reason I got in to a few fights at school was that being so short I looked easy for a bully who wanted to beat somebody up and I didn't always win but school was and is still rough.

It's no good telling tales to your parents or the teacher. To do that you have to be beaten up first and I didn't want that.

One kid in class, when we were at the senior school, was picking on me, poking me and being nasty, saying he was going to wait for me outside and beat me up and that all his mates were going to come and see me get a blathering.

I told him a few times that we didn't have to but he mistook that for me being scared and, to be honest, I wasn't that sure if I could handle him.

But the time came for us to go home and I was ready to go; I went down to the playground at the same time as the bully, but ahead of his mates and when we got to the corner of the playground he said 'come on' and started squaring up so I gave him a huge punch to the eye.

'Oh!' he said, grabbing his eye, then I put my arm around his neck and we both fell to the ground with him in a clinch.

'had enough?' I said.

He nodded his head.

'Are you sure?' I was used to kids playing possum.

'Yes I've had enough' he said 'let go.'

So we got up.

'How's my eye?' he said.

I looked; it was bloodshot.

'Sorry' he said.

Then his mates came to watch the scrap.

'What happened' they said.

'It's all over' and I sat on the floor next to me new pal.

I used to like boxing but didn't bother again with it much as I had high cheek bones which would bruise easily and my nose would bleed even easier.

But I was never scared of anybody after that even though I never looked for trouble but I have heard of people wanting to fight all the time and look for fights in pubs or whatever.

When I lived in a village in Northamptonshire I heard that the vicar's son went in to the pub, one day, and sucker punched someone as the fella was drinking his beer. He saw the jaw and hit it. The poor fella suffered a broken jaw and the bully got away with it.

I'm not sure if I would ever dive in if it was nothing to do with me but – you know we never know what we would do in a crisis.