Humiliation

Offered a confident lift to a friend, then quailed and decided to try out Maps. Yes, I know everyone else has been satnavving for years, but I haven't. I got it to decide what way to go, and, after considerable effort, persuaded it to talk to me. Then I set off. Then I landed right beside a tractor accident - harmless but disruption of one's journey - and arrived huffing and puffing very late to collect my friend. She was standing out on her lane, and clearly had been, and I think she must be the kindest and most patient person in the world. She could after all have driven herself without the worries about late arrival which I had now generated. We talked over the Maps person, interrupting them, but knew our way to Belfast. Then we got to the bit where the Maps person was supposed to solve all our problems. With David and Goliath towering above us and W5 clearly very near, into a wee housing development we plunged, and when Mersey street cropped up in the instructions for the third time, I jumped out and ran into a shop to ask directions; straight over a bridge and through a roundabout and we were in the vicinity. Oceans of car park opened up before us, and as the start time of our event was approaching and shame threatening to overwhelm me, I flagged down a passer-by. She was clearly on her phone, and I was ironically shameless by that time in interrupting her. She reassured us that the car park across the entrance to which I had now managed to wedge the car sideways was indeed the one we should be in. An horrific U-turn in front of a double decker, and we were in. We trotted across the great big carriageway, into an enormous building, aimlessly, but concealing panic in my case, headed up some stairs, spotted the sign for W5 downstairs and retreated. We arrived. Everyone was just getting stuck into tea and traybake. My friend insisted that we hadn't been late, and there was no harm done. I am consumed with humiliation, and feel forever barred from SatNav.