HOLIDAY'S END

Well, I might not have been one hundred percent convinced by the restaurant at which we finished our holiday at the back end of July - Already it seems so long ago.... (Sigh!) - but I do have to admit that they laid an a pretty nifty sunset for us on that last evening.

This was the spectacular view across the sea out from Church Bay, Anglesey, on Saturday evening, July the 27th this year. We'd been chasing the sun all the way through dinner, to be honest, being very aware that unfamiliar, narrow and unlit country lanes are not the best of environments for me to try and navigate my way through, no matter how well signposted things might be, or, for that matter, no matter how well I really try my hardest to remember in inbound journey.

Somehow, I always miss a turn or two during the return visit...

I don't know if you remember those old thrillers where the hero or heroine would be blindfolded and taken to the villain's secret lair, but, perhaps we were expected to believe, because of the remaining senses being heightened, later they would be able to retrace the route by the memory of turns, bridges and the sound of the gravel on a driveway...?

Well, I'd be rubbish at that.

Even with five senses still working at a reasonable level, I can completely convince myself that I'm heading in the right direction because "something looks a bit familiar" even though I'm travelling at ninety degrees to the road that I want to be on and getting further away from where I'm supposed to be by the second.

This can be tricky in the States where the "grid iron" pattern of most towns can find you choosing the wrong road off the town square, and very quickly you can find yourself out of town again (or on the other side of the tracks) before you've had time to think. The last time I picked up a hire car at San Francisco airport, I boldly headed into the city convinced that I was on one road when I was actually on another, although the beauty of the grid is, once you have avoided the worst that the one way systems and road construction crews can offer you, most of them are running vaguely parallel to each other and, so long as you are careful, your ultimate destination can be reached.

Bloody great orange bridge... You really can't miss it...!

The interesting thing to me is that people who grow up in these towns have a very clear sense of their own geography. Their world is split up into numbers of blocks and they grow up with a very strong sense of North, South, East and West, which is something that I, coming from this bemused and befuddled island as I do, can still struggle with.

I shouldn't be all that surprised. Quite often I drive home with the sunset behind me only to find that, as I carry on through the winding lanes of Blogfordshire, that it can also be setting to the left of me and the right, and, bafflingly, even right in front of me, as if our local road planner had actually been M.C. Escher during a previous career...

I become more conscious of this lack of geographical awareness whenever I'm given directions over in America. "You go six blocks East..." immediately becomes the most bamboozling phrase in the English language to me and, perhaps because I'm already dealing with an alternative driving position, even the concepts of "left" and "right" seem to easily reverse themselves.

Ah well... America might be beyond our financial means for a while yet, but Anglesey served us just fine this year, and, as the sun finally sets upon another set of holiday tales, we move on into the darkness and cold once more, but at least we've got a happy memory or two to keep us going...