Technology refresh time.

Out goes the Becker Highspeed satnav thingy.

In comes the Vermin (Garmin, I think…) Nüvi 1390.

All very flash and even does the text-to-voice trick and tells you the name of the next road.

Which is all very fine if it’s “Main Street” or “Hauptstrasse”, but if you happen to be in Alto Adige (South Tirol/v. Northern Italy to you), you’ll encounter road names such as

Strada Statale Del Tonale e Della Mendola

Now apart from the fact that flossy’s Italian pronunciation is crap leaves a lot to be desired, by the time she’s spat it all out, you’ve overshot the turning by a good 500 metres.

Upon which she suggests that you do a U-turn and try again from the opposite direction.

And by the time she’s spat it all out again (and you can’t read the name of the road on the display because it’s writ very small to fit it into the space where you’ve normally got “Main Street”), you’ve overshot again.

Repeat ad nauseum