Postcode hopscotch

A Saturday in light rain, and he was lost. He showed me the map on the screen of his phone, but those streets were not near that which we were in. Perhaps he'd emerged from the Underground and the GPS, or the mast triangulation, or whatever it is that allows spatial location of a device, had not caught up from his last detected location.

He was showing me Notting Hill Gate and we were just off the Farringdon Road. What was he at?

I reckon it's a psychogeographer's delusion, that navigating through one place using the charts for another - countermapping - can be rewarding. I've tried it: for me it just obscured the pleasure of being lost. Moreover, psychogeography is largely an older man's game, and this fellow was a lot younger. Additionally, he exhibited convincing symptoms of one who wants to find a place, with some urgency, having for some time been in search of it.

He could swipe his screen about as far as Marylebone, then it would flick back west to the foot of Pembridge Gardens. He said, he didn't know the name of the place he was seeking, but he would recognise it if he saw it.

He looked stressed; that he needed to be in that place by now.

He looked like he needed a hug.