"Effing hillbillies," sneered the Middlesbrough driver who had just reversed into the precarious car park to pick up his group of schoolchildren. "Look at them just standing there," he pointed at the organisers who were huddled in a group. "They might have helped and guided me back." He was an angry bus driver.
According to the map I had been given, the bus driver who brought up the school party I was about to collect was just as angry. The map which the office always print out for their drivers was covered in letters, dates, road numbers, crosses, arrows and various comments. Written in large letters, at an angle across most of the map was: TOTALLY WRONG PLACE!. There was an accompanying sheet of handwritten paper with angrily scrawled alternative set of directions and comments, rendering all the paperwork useless.
I gave up and looked at my good old fashioned road map (2008 Edition).
Sat navs and these computerised maps have their limitations. People forget that the computer's job is to take you the shortest way, regardless whether that is a farm track over a mountain. Around the next corner I met more anger in the shape of a Lithuanian truck stuck under a disused railway bridge. His sat nav had failed him and he was taking out his frustrations on his wife or girlfriend who was trying to help him reverse into the narrowest of gateways.
As I drove slowly past, I watched the girl shrug her shoulders in a subservient manner to the red faced truck driver who was leaning out the cab window and giving instructions. His words were muffled as they struggled to make it past his walrus moustache.
I won't be asking Father Christmas for a sat nav.
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