Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than other workers to die from Alzheimer’s disease, according to a harvard study published in the British Medical Journal.
On the one hand, it makes total sense, since navigation and spatial memory belong to the hippocampus, which is the first region of the brain that the disease atrophies. On the other hand, life expectancy is significantly lower than the average in both jobs (68 and 64 years respectively) and Alzheimer’s usually affects people over 65 years of age.
However, there is a good argument for getting rid of GPS simply because memory, particularly spatial memory, is “use it or lose it,” as a study in Scientific Reports demonstrated in 2020. We have become increasingly reliant on Google Maps, even using it for trips we know well.
So could you survive 24 hours without GPS? That means no Google Maps, no Apple Maps, no Citymapper. And, as I discovered after just one expedition, that means leaving your phone at home. The temptation to use it when you are lost is too strong.
Tuesday night I was headed to karaoke, to a bar I’d never been to, on a street I know like the back of my hand. It’s opposite my children’s school, it has a giant Sainsbury’s; Honestly, I could close my eyes and see this bare road.
Yes, there was a problem. I hadn’t even written down the bar’s street number, and the path is about as long as the path to enlightenment. After about 15 minutes, knowing that somewhere nearby (or possibly far away) my compadres were singing a Hamilton duet and that I wouldn’t be there to help them, I started making bad decisions: trying to read store signs from too early. far; rushing, changing my mind, backing away. I had a flashback to the time my grandfather called me and my sister to his deathbed, and we hadn’t written down the number, so all we had was “Edgware Road.” That was a long night.
There are a lot of things millennials aren’t allowed to do. One is to ask directions. It’s so incomprehensible to them why anyone would need to do it, that they assume you’re in on the scam. So I ended up back at Sainsbury’s to regroup and maybe get something to eat, and the bar was right next door.
Hubris, that was my problem. I’m 51, born in London and a lifelong cyclist, so sometimes I just assume I have the Knowledge by osmosis. But I had a life before a smartphone – a good life – and I remember exactly how this is done: you need an AZ. I got another powerful wave of nostalgia in Brixton, all those times you forgot your AZ but don’t want to buy one so you have to sneak up to a WH Smith, check the map, memorize it and then buy gum. the exit. That’s why peppermint has the taste of being lost.
Breaking news, GPS-refuseniks: The AZ are no longer the same. You can get a tiny one, which will tell you the whereabouts of Hyde Park; and a giant Ordnance Survey map with no road names which, oh final irony, comes with a QR code where you can download them in an app. This map is something quite beautiful, but much worse than useless, like being able to smell food through an open window. Cycling to Blackheath in south-east London, along familiar roads, I ended up trying to get my bearings by the way you know you’re near a hospital: all those spooky dead ends.
I returned to the main street of Camberwell, and from there there should be a straight path to my stepmother’s house, with a rolling stretch at the end that I could walk in my sleep. Dogs get a lot of credit for the way they can always find their way home, no matter how lost they are. I am as good as a dog, without its sense of smell, that is, much better than a dog.
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You’d think central London would be easier, and yes, it has more landmarks, but it also has more oddities introduced by developers: vast areas of streets that no longer have names, have been subsumed with marble and strength. of will by the headquarters they flank, around which there are a lot of restaurants that should have addresses but no one ever uses them. They use the blue dot on their phone.
It took me forever to find my office party, but at least I was able to walk in satisfied that I, so help me, will be the last one of us with marbles in our hands.