Like all sane people, I have occasionally had quite in depth conversations with my sat nav. When she throws her hands in the air, from her austere, square dashboard-universe, and commands her last resort (‘When possible, make a U-turn’) in her cut-glass, authoritative melody, she is giving up, or at least making a medium-sized sulky (not-angry-just-disappointed) show of it.

But this splendid brilliance called life would be deeply dull if we weren’t allowed to change our minds. How liberating it might be, I sometimes imagine in my most indecisive moments, to have to stick to your historical choices (even those you don’t particularly realise you once made), never to doubt yourself, never to wonder about the alternative possibilities you’ve shunned (or repressed or not had the guts to explore) along the way, knowing you need only power on through your once-made decisions to linear infinity, arriving, at the end, and with confidence, at some pre-determined place where outcomes are predictable, productive and planned.

But that’s a lot of P.

Continue reading →