London, sprawling and huge, confounded my mother in its enormity when she first came here as a new immigrant. Here is my father’s map; we all need maps.
How do you manage when you arrive somewhere new?
Zeb Bakes
Bread, the Garden, Walks in Green Places
Zeb Bakes 
I think I love your dad, Jo. I especially love the “Dragons here” annotation. God bless him, I hope one day they really do ring him and tell him they need him to run the country. I’m sure he’d do a mighty fine job. :)
I think he’s too busy to take on another job right now, but I’ll tell him ;)
That map looks pretty good. I have been lost in Rome, Florence and Lucca lots of times in the past, but I am OK now. I no longer need maps to find my way around these places – I love it!
I got very lost on the Palatine once, and almost forgotten and abandoned in Pompeii…
Where did your mother come from?
My mother was a Dane, but raised mostly in Sweden.
My word, what a map! I can only imagine how grateful your mother was to have such a detailed piece of imagery to show her the way. If that map were in our house it would be mounted and framed! Love that quote too :)
Someplace new? Internet, of course. But nothing beats those rambling yet accurate directions extracted from locals.. :)
My sat nav is out of date, so I spend a lot of time driving through thin air, or so it tells me and I never trust directions given by locals, they are usually on their way back from the pub ;)
Beautiful!
And your father’s map is as much a map to all those memories of London as it is a picture of a physical landscape.
Thanks Doc! You’re right about the memories as I don’t live there any more.
My husband has what we call a homing pigeon brain. No matter how aimlessly we wander, when we are somewhere new, he never gets lost and can always find his way back to the car, station or coach.
Suelle, I think it is essential (touch of the Jane Austen’s here) for a woman in posession of no sense of direction to hang out with someone who has. :)
‘ Afternoon everyone!
I must admit I was curious to see what would be made of this offering. That is my Dad’s writing there – he is a bit of a wordsmith and that is just a snippet of the text that accompanied this map he drew for my directionally challenged Scandinavian mother which I found amongst her photos after her death in 2004. He, like Suelle’s husband, has magnetic north, tucked in there behind his brow. I, on the other hand, take after my mother in this regard; in fact I have negative directional sense, being one of the few people I know who, on leaving the loos in a service station on the motorway, heads unerringly into the cleaner’s cupboard – Don’t ask how I ever find my car again…. ;)
I am perennially lost. In fact, my sister used to ask me which way to turn so that she could turn the opposite way.
My children come to the gate to pick me up when I fly into ANY big city where they are living. ( So far – Chicago, London, and NYC) Because I will soon be lost.
My ideal place is a small island on the eastern shore of Virginia. You can’t get lost there. You just keep going in circles!
Love your father’s map. Love your mother for treasuring and keeping it.
I love maps- just can’t figure out how they keep you from getting lost!
I love maps too Heidi! I can read them fine, what I can’t do is figure out where I am when I am lost so that I can become unlost by reading the map…. ;)
I love your father’s map. It is a thing of beauty. It tells a big story.
I like the little illustrations for ‘hospital’ ‘castle’ – I’m pretty good at reading maps but if I’m asked for directions and need to do a map I’ll always ‘draw the way’ and tend to litter the map with ‘landmarks’ ,drawn in haste,to show the way.
I am sure that you must treasure your map, and the beautiful writing that accompanies it.
Hiya MagicGarden! Me too! I like the little drawings of the landmarks – the rowers at Putney Bridge, his version of the Palace of Westminster, Battersea Power Station looks good and Tower Bridge too! He is very passionate about the Thames!
I would love to see one of your maps one day, hint, hint ;)
I love what your dad wrote to accompany the map. Lovely words…
I had a good chuckle about you walking in to the cleaners cupboard. I can identify with that one. Once when I was backpacking in Europe I was so tired off getting lost I decided I would only walk straight for the day. I would end up somewhere eventually and need never turn :-)
We are a select group, those who enter the cleaner’s cupboard in search of the exit from the Ladies. Oh the humiliaton! I think your straight ahead technique sounds fabulous, might work in a city laid out by the Romans….
I think I might have a go at drawing a map, every time I come back to see the comments I look at that one and think it was a heroic effort on MGB’s part to do it. One can make a map of anything after all, the woods where you walk, the town where you live, the friends you have, somewhere you lived in the past. Anyone else want to make a map? If you do and post it on your blog, do send me a link and let me know. If you don’t have a blog, and you want to share, then send me an image and I will post it on a page here.
I love maps even in these days with TomToms and any other navigation systems.
Wonderful map – clever man. It’s all so easy now, going somewhere new, I look it up on the internet and print a map out if necessary. When I was young, I just took off and found my way around by exploration – more fun really.
@ Ulrike – maps are more than tools for navigation though aren’t they – I think that is why people love them. I can’t imagine loving my sat nav, she can be very unreasonable sometimes, all that ‘make a U-turn’ stuff she does.
Hi Choclette, sounds like you have one of those secret inner compasses – I’m jealous !