Travel Games

1. M1ldred

Mr TLC is a bit of a classic car fan. Our car does not resemble a classic, but we like spotting more venerable vehicles as we trundle around. We used to mark sightings with a shout of “Classic car!” but at some point that changed to a hearty cry of “M1ldred!”. All old vehicles score, but actual M1ldreds are obviously worth extra points (not that we keep count).

2. Say it with Sandra

Sandra’s dulcet tones have prevented many rows in the TLC-mobile. Since we purchased our first Sandra-SatNav, irritable exchanges between driver and navigator have become a distant memory. Our current Sandra is a pretty good navigator, but she does have a few linguistic quirks, which have resulted in us engaging in a strange call and response activity every time we use her.

We generally respond to Sandra’s odd pronunciations by repeating them back to her in an enthusiastic manner, but we do make an exception for Bakewell, or as Sandra prefers to say Bake Well, which elicits a chorus of “for 40 minutes”.

Sometimes Sandra wins the game by leaving us so totally baffled that we fail to repeat what she has said. She did very well in Normandy last Autumn, making a decent attempt at saying the name of every place that we visited, until we headed back to Cherbourg. It took us a little while to equate that with the town of Sherry Boo that Sandra wanted us to head for. Sounded like a dodgy 1970s cocktail to me.

A trip to Wales resulted in something too bizarre to describe adequately. As we crossed the border, Sandra switched to saying the place names in Welsh. At least, I assume she was trying to speak Welsh. I can’t even begin to offer a phonetic representation of what she was saying. It bore no resemblance to any Welsh place names and it was certainly beyond us to repeat her efforts. Still, she got us to our destination, which is the reason we have her in the car.

3. Dickens or Disney

Some places have brilliant names. After years of seeing signposts for for the excellently named Hadfield Padfield, I was a little disappointed to find out that Hadfield and Padfield are actually two separate places. By that time we had also spotted the sign to Shirley Longford (alas, also two separate places) and invented the game of Dickens or Disney.

I always imagined Hadfield Padfield as being a Dickensian gentleman, whereas Shirley Longford is definitely a character from a cheerful Disney movie. Dry Drayton? Has to be Dickens. Cherry Hinton? Disney.

 

Of course, sometimes we just admire the views as we travel from place to place. Are we nearly there yet?

7 comments to Travel Games

  • South Wark and Chiz Wick are two frequent ones in my sat nav pronunciations. The other car has Stephen Fry as the speaker, so we wouldn’t dare correct it.

    • Lois Lindemann

      🙂 I don’t think I would dare to correct Mr Fry either. We did some old school navigation this week, with a map and no Sandra SatNav. I found myself giving instructions in Sandra’s voice. Worrying. Mr TLC was more creative and gave directions in the vice of the Thermians from Galaxy Quest. Onward!

  • 🙂

    We play a variation – when old cars appear on TV, we either shout, “Mi1dred!” (A7) Mi1dred’s cousin!” (any other pre-WW2-war vehicle) or “Mi1dred’s big sister!” (A10, A12, or similar).

    Glad someone is keeping blogworld posted!

    • Lois Lindemann

      Sorry for the slowness in replying (to you & to rashbre), we have been in The Land of Virtually No Internet – also known as a very nice cottage in Scotland.

      We are forming a theory that Mi1dred’s cousins are very shy. We have found one at the Scarborough Fair Collection and another at the Lakeland Car Museum, but both were hiding in shadowy garage settings. We still said “Mi1dred!” when we found them, even though neither of them was in fact Mi1dred. We got strange looks from one of Mi1dred’s cousin’s owners when we did that at a classic car event recently though. Wonder if they know the actual Mildred?

  • Hello,

    Just found your blog via the delightful Z.

    I am assuming that the Hadfield/Padfield of which you speak is in the Glossop area. The late Chairman and myself were/are of the opinion that his father’s family were originally from that village,although there seem to have been Hadfields-a-plenty in Cheshire.

    I was wondering if under the circumstances I should call myself Hadfield-foward-slash-Padfield from now on. Any advice on this conundrum? It is at least different from Hadfield-hyphen-Padfield.

    Other similarities must be that we were formerly owned by a three-legged cat.

    • Lois Lindemann

      Hello ChairwomanRos and welcome! Yes, Hadfield Padfield is/are near Glossop. I only discovered they were separate when a collague told me her son had moved to Padfield, previously I had assumed that the names referred to one place.

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