North & The South

Yesterday evening, a young woman stopped me not far from my house to ask directions.  Normally, I would have given directions referencing cardinal points.  "Go to the coffee shop and turn South", I might have said.  That's largely because I've never properly taken to the concepts of Right and Left.  Forget about all that "writing hand is right" stuff; such aids usually begin with the question, "Are you right-handed?".  How would I know?

It was easy, knowing North from South.  Living in Florida, working my way across the Caribbean, the sun always rose in the East, set in the West, and was overhead -- neither North or South -- at all other times.  Here in England, it's more difficult.  The sun rises in the South.  It sets in the South.  And, its southerly all day-time long.  ... When it can be seen through cloud-cover, that is.

It was easy too, if more conceptual, to fix cardinal points whilst living in the American North.  In Cincinnati, Gainesville, Lexington, Washington, and in New York City — even when I worked in Gaborone (Botswana),  water was always fixed in the South.  Of course, directionality was aided by the position of my bed, which — while not deliberate — always gave me a southern footing.  It was grand, laying in bed at night, watching lightning storms tearing up the Ohio River valley.  Here in Cambridge, the River Cam bends like a lower-case 'n', arching north westward, around the city centre.  And, inside, at home, there's nothing to tell what direction my bed is oriented.  

More confounding, the arching shape of the River Cam lends the impression — to someone used to walking, anyway —  that the city bends over on itself as if on a Möbius strip.  Like the highways in Cleveland (Ohio), if you want to go south out of downtown, you head north.  "Its counter-intuitive," the taxi driver tells you, "but it's one in the same."  Of course, in Cambridge, the fact that major streets change names virtually every block or so doesn't help in the giving of directions either.  You imagine that people, here, used to live and work so close to home that they needn't ask directions, and, never need know, "Dem Bones" style, that Hills Road becomes Regent, becomes Saint Andrew's, becomes Sidney, then Bridge, and Magdalene, Castle, and Huntington all within one linear mile.

At the short of this story is one question: How do you give directions when cardinal points and left/right have not meaning?  Street-view.  Not the Google Maps product by that name, but the view that pops into your brain like maps used to.

"Go to the coffee shop that you can see in the distance", you say.  You might qualify the distance in meters, "12 metres or so".  "There you'll see a big 'S' laid into the pavement."  This is one of four cardinal points, laid in as decoration, public art, rather than direction.  "Follow in that direction.  Turn at the next intersection."  It a T intersection — most intersections here are —  and there is only one way to turn.  You might add that a cycle shop stands at the intersection, possibly give the new street its name: "That's Paradise Street".  And, "You'll find Guthrie Court half-way up the street. It's the big building.  The one with marquee lights on over the large double doors."

Is it a wonder that in the former British colony of British Honduras, now Belize, you can still address an envelope to "My cousin, the barber, three doors down from the parrot (a reference to the sign that's faded on the wall where it was painted), 'round the corner from the old pink shower tree (a cassia tree that flowered only well into the dry season, but that is now little more than a rotting trunk), Centre, Belmopan, Belize".