Another fine day in Albany, with the usual even mixture of minor frustrations and satisfactions. For some reason the local hole-in-the-wall won't give me any money, which severely limited my grocery budget this morning. On the other hand we spent a happy forty minutes in a secondhand bookshop called Tea and Tattered Pages. It not only had a good range of titles, but also two white kittens. The children can't wait to visit again and torment the kittens some more.
After lunch we managed a first step towards local integration by acquiring library tickets. I asked the librarian how many books we could take out at a time and she look surprised and said 'As many as you like.' Wow! The potential for losing any number of books under beds and sofas and having to pay a fortune in fines is now infinite!
I wouldn't be able to get to any of these places - shops, libraries etc - without the help of my new best friend, the SatNav. Maybe you already have one of these, but I'd not experienced one before, and given my navigational ineptitude (I once took 2 hours to drive from Watford to Muswell Hill in clear traffic, a journey which should take 20 minutes) I can see that it was definitely invented with people like me in mind. Key in your destination and away you go, guided by mysterious satellite technology and a synthesized female voice. Nine out of ten times you'll get there without a hitch.
The problem is, our SatNav gal is a bit flakey and sometimes gets in a muddle. She has real trouble with crossroads, and will send you off on complete wild goose chases, immediately insinuating that it was all your fault (and I swear it's not just me, she does it to the Man as well). There's a particular bend in a road when she consistently instructs you to turn right into a church compound instead of going straight on (maybe she has an agenda?). And in Downtown Albany she is so flumoxed by all the one-way streets that she ends up throwing her non-existent hands in the air and huffing synthetically 'Don't ask me! How should I know!? Hang on, I'll just turn the map round...'
Not really. But she might as well.
She did her best to get us lost on the way to a welcome picnic this evening at the children's new school. We did get there eventually, enjoyed a fabulous bring-and-share supper (the best food I've had since being here), met the teachers and left feeling very excited about the start of term next Thursday.
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