The Strange Tyranny of Maps

Maps are one of the better inventions of humankind. Where we can see the problems that develop from nuclear weapons (there goes a city), labour-saving machines (there go our jobs) and even books on the Internet (there go our musty old libraries and old women telling us to shut up and stop enjoying ourselves), maps really get off extremely lightly. It is probably fair to say that now, in the days where one is unlikely to find the inscription, "Here be dragons", maps in general are pleasingly but boringly accurate. Things develop, streets appear, one-way systems are created, whole cities move three metres west (well, sometimes) but nothing much changes. There is no need to get lost with a map, even if we do all too regularly as a result of our own ineptitude (always ending up on an industrial estate - or is that just in England?). Instead, the world is - as they tell us so inexplicably - our oyster. Is that not a problem though? Is it not an annoyance to rate at least alongside the problem of where to put a sticky ice-lolly wrapper when driving? I believe it is.

What, you may quite validly ask, brings me to such a conclusion? I have, I will admit it, no real wish to roam. Rambling will not be the death of me. Anywhere I lay my hat is not my home; it is where I ponder how I came into possession of a hat at all. I did not, like so many of my contemporaries, take a 'gap year' to roam foreign mountains armed only with a rucksack, some cream crackers, a global positioning device and a Visa card. In fact, to find me somewhere else but sitting on my couch with a book and a cup of tea is akin to finding a high street without an expensive but "stylish" coffee chain on it. However, I have made a discovery. It is perhaps more of a convenient little excuse than a significant breakthrough for mankind, but it matters to me nonetheless. I have realised that it is maps themselves that stop me going anywhere but back home. I know exactly where the road that leads off left from my road goes, not to mention right, and I can make a pretty safe guess where I would be if I jumped clean over the house opposite us. Even if it didn't, I could look on a map: convenient, useful, timesaving, but horribly predictable. There is nothing new to discover - anywhere. What is the point of going anywhere when there is nothing to find that someone hasn't seen and noted down before. I am no Francis Drake, Christopher Columbus, or Marco Polo, but I am a descendent of the great if disappointingly little-known explorer Mungo Park (no, I really am) and by God I should be exploring something! And maps are getting in my way.

The Scottish adventurer Mungo Park left for Africa in 1795 and, for reasons best known to himself, travelled two hundred miles up the Gambia, got caught by a native chief, escaped, and then made it eighty miles down the Niger to Ségou before running out of food and other supplies (see his snappily-titled 1799 volume Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa). Actually, he returned in 1805 and set off again, this time from Ségou in a canoe before drowning after being attacked at Bussa. The point is that Park failed completely to live up to his name. He did not park himself anywhere until there was nothing he could do but go back, and even then he was just waiting for the opportunity to start again in an even smaller boat. With his blood in my veins, there had to be hope for me. And still there are too many maps and "Lonely Planet" guides. Everywhere is safely checked out for me in advance and rated for price, cosiness and cockroach quotient. Frankly, you can up and take your life to anywhere on earth within certain (usually icy or sandy) limits and live it there in similar and often cheaper style. With McBurgers. How disappointed would old Mungo have been at Bussa if he had noticed that there was an outlet of his favourite liquor bar stationed at his furthest point on the Niger?

This all-travelled earth leaves the modern explorer with certain difficulties. One of the larger problems for the suburban adventurer is that there really is little choice but to get up and go to work the next day. The alternative (being sacked) involves more of the sofa, books, and tea than is strictly what most he or she desires. Of course if you are Jack Kerouac all you need to do is wander off down the tracks to the next job (inevitably involving wretchedly hard labour and sore hands). That hobo lifestyle, while it is all too appealing at a safe distance, isn't really me. I listened to a tape version of Kerouac's Beat classic On the Road in a car driving across England. I knew exactly where I was going and even though it was late at night I kept the windows down and let the night air mix queasily with the smoke from my cigarette. I got pretty bored of Kerouac's adventures before long. They were so random, and they never seemed to end. That in itself was off-putting. Tellingly, I'm pretty sure I gave the tapes back to the library before I got to the end. My version of On the Road has to have a clearly defined end-point. I must