I had that satnav in the back of my cab once

While in a taxi today going from a meeting back to the office, I noticed that the taxi driver had a satnav on his dashboard. I'm a big fan of satnavs - we've had one for just over a year and it's been absolutely invaluable since moving out from central London to more rural retreats. Husbandio's cousin is more dismissive of these devices than I am, and has christened them Twatnav! However, it seems much safer than looking down at a map propped on the passenger seat, and I find it takes a lot of the stress out of travelling to new places - just sit back, turn it on, and do as you're told. For this reason I think Husbandio is slightly less keen than I am - he can see the value, but hates being told what to do, and often tries to pick a fight with the machine, or deliberately goes the wrong way.

I was really surprised however to see a London black cab driver using a satnav device. Taxi drivers in London are famous for having done a very difficult test called The Knowledge, which requires between two and four years of study, memorising the location of each of 250,000 London streets, and then being tested on ideal routes to get from one destination to another. Indeed, research has proven that taxi drivers are more efficient than a satnav, and that certain areas of their brains have become enlarged as a result of all of this study. Seeing a satnav in the taxi made me rather disappointed in a way - usually I like to see new technologies being applied, but this could be the beginning of the end of the Knowledge, a nice little British eccentricity which I've always rather admired. And besides, it's just cheating isn't it?