Plight of the navigator

Such a good title, I thought in bed last night when the idea for this entry occurred to me. Only our kids might get the reference to one of their favorite childhood movies, but why not? Then I remembered an article I had read in the paper the other day about stand-up comics who think they've invented a joke only to find it's been used before. And indeed, a quick google showed how common the substitution of "plight" for "flight" is.

Regardless. Today I'm not launching into an embarrassing description of my own failings in the navigation department, but celebrating a genuinely original phrase our good friend and former next-door neighbor in Evergreen, Colorado, came up with when he and his wife were visiting us in deepest darkest Dorset.

The shout-it-from-the-rooftops news arrived yesterday that Frank has come out of six-hour heart surgery with flying colors. Thinking fondly back on all the good times the Ws and Gs have shared, I smiled again as I remembered our excursion into the winding lanes between Nether Compton and the coast. I had happily relinquished the front seat, the map, and the stress to Frank so that I could chat with Marge in the back. But even savvy Mr G, confronted with matching the tortuous narrow white maplines to the local geography, finally shook his head and simply said, "We're in the spaghetti now."

My problem is that I'm in the spaghetti even when the roads I'm looking at on the map are thick red and green.

PS I've never forgotten as well, Frank, how over twenty years ago you rescued my enormous paella with your acetylene torch.