It Happened to Me…
No direction home
What contributes to a sense of place? For months after I passed my driving test I could not travel anywhere in my home city without first motoring to a branch of Tesco that was some miles from my home. I could not orientate myself, could not begin to work out how to get from my house to where I needed to go, without first placing myself at this supermarket. I could ‘see’ where I wanted to be in my mind’s eye, could visualise key features of my destination, yet could not work out the route straight from my home, however simple it was.
In the 20 years since then, little has changed. Routes to new places need to be travelled over and over again before I can navigate them without getting completely disorientated. This applies also to journeys on foot and to very short trips within a confined area. I have worked in a small building of three floors for five years and still find myself stumbling around in a search for the loo if I approach it from a less familiar starting point, or if my mind is elsewhere when I begin the short walk. After moving to a
