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left-right up-down
OK all my life I have been extraordinarily bad at sorting left from right, as regards the names of the directions -- if I develop a method, I can use it in local time for a while (for example the duration of a single drive) but then the dyad just gets irretrievably muddled in my head, and I have to drop it and start over.
As it happens, I'm a good solo map-reader -- probably because left on the map is the same as left in the world, and I don't have to name it to myself to know I'm complying.
The thing I sometimes get muddled about on maps is up and down: or more accurately north and south. I invariably look at a map of New York as if north is south, as if upstate would take you towards Washington. And I ghot utterly muddled in clermont ferrand on my trip there six weeks ago, for the same reason. I was apporoaching from the north, and consistently read the street-map I had as if its bottom edge was the edge I was arriving from. As if it read the same way I was travelling: in fact of course it was exactly the opposite.
I was tired at the time -- this probably didn't help. But it simply didn't occur to me why I was getting so lost: I was blaming it on the fact that CF is built on a volcano, and all the straight streets are kind of circles not lines (which is true but didn't explain why the sun was where it was; I'd been using the sun all day, to check I was more or less going south -- now suddenly in the city I was baffled that it was behind me when it should have been in front me, and so on).
As it happens, I'm a good solo map-reader -- probably because left on the map is the same as left in the world, and I don't have to name it to myself to know I'm complying.
The thing I sometimes get muddled about on maps is up and down: or more accurately north and south. I invariably look at a map of New York as if north is south, as if upstate would take you towards Washington. And I ghot utterly muddled in clermont ferrand on my trip there six weeks ago, for the same reason. I was apporoaching from the north, and consistently read the street-map I had as if its bottom edge was the edge I was arriving from. As if it read the same way I was travelling: in fact of course it was exactly the opposite.
I was tired at the time -- this probably didn't help. But it simply didn't occur to me why I was getting so lost: I was blaming it on the fact that CF is built on a volcano, and all the straight streets are kind of circles not lines (which is true but didn't explain why the sun was where it was; I'd been using the sun all day, to check I was more or less going south -- now suddenly in the city I was baffled that it was behind me when it should have been in front me, and so on).
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At school this had one advantage when I was excused from having to do the marching bit of army corps by the NCO since my inability to turn in the correct direction when ordered was making his squad look bad!
However I am a genius when it comes to reading maps and hardly ever get lost, even without one, so it is not linked to sense of direction.
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Anyway his works in foreign parts too and was apparently a godsend when navigating around small French towns.
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I am terrible at giving directions unless I have a map in front of me, and then I am awesome at it.
And I am not so hot at telling you which way is north or south, unless I'm in Manhattan (thank you, grid system.)
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