Maps

[tinyjo]

I heard on Friday that school children are being given a free map of their local area by the Ordnance Survey with the intention of getting them out and about a bit more. I don't know if there's any evidence to support this tactic but it seems unlikely to me in this "paedophiles around every corner" culture amongst parents that children will suddenly be allowed to go tramping the woods (<sidetrack>I think this every time I see one of those articles saying "Children doing less sport" or "Children getting fatter". Of course they are because their parents have been convinced that if they step outside alone for even 2 minutes they'll be snatched and murdered. While this does happen very occasionally, it's hardly the norm.</sidetrack>).

Anyway, I mention this not in order to be cynical about it (although that's all I've done so far) but because it reminded me that my continuing love affair with maps started at about that time. My father is a very keen birdwatcher/walker and hence has very fine detail OS maps of all of Norfolk and most of the surrounding counties. At first, I just wanted to see where my house was, in that egocentric way of the young but then I started to let my gaze wander. I discovered that the footpath which started across the road from the house lead all the way to near my school and even tried it out once but mostly they were just a tool for the imagination - what did Greater Snoresbury really look like? Norfolk maps are particularly good for this :) The other main driver for this interest was the geological map of Britain hanging up in our toilet. This had different soils etc coloured in different colours which meant that you could pick out shapes and things - Wales was a boars head and Cornwall looked like the head of an anteater desperately trying to reach the ant of the islands (Scilly Isles?) just below and the little bit of France with Bologne on sticking up from the top looked like a chicken. Honestly. Soon I had graduated to making my own maps of imaginary places but I retained my love for real maps. I now have loads - old ones are particularly beautiful - I particularly love old world maps and far away countries. One of my favourite gifts from Alex is an engraved copy of the Blaeu world map (I think the original is from 1665). I also love my map of the British Empire which has a bit in the corner boasting about how many more people there are in it than in France or Russia or etc and my real-space map of the London Tube (available from the London Transport Museum).

The other thing that it reminded me is that one day, when I have my own house, I'm going to wallpaper one wall of a room with OS maps of my local area all fitted together to make one big map. If it's a mansion, I'll do the complete map of Britain on the ballroom floor :)

Comments

[andypop.livejournal.com]

I loved maps as a child, too. I had a pair of shoes which came with a pretend army manual - the interesting part being the symbols you could leave for other people who had the same shoes (signs made from twigs, very similar to the famous Blair Witch Project symbol), and the fake map. My brother used to draw fake ancient maps, inspired by Tolkein's, and I always liked the maps in the old Conan comics.

In the store recently we were looking at some Landranger maps and marvelling at the place names. My colleague Mike says he wants to live in Lower Upperton, in Cornwall. Near Bolton there's Dimple, Turton Bottom, Chew Moor, Mankinholes, Little Lever, and Doffcocker; and back in Cornwall we have Cripplesease, Gweek, the succinctly-named Bottoms, and my favourite, Goonhusband.

[oxfordslacker.livejournal.com]

It's hard for me to imagine what life must have been back when if you wanted to contact people with the same shoes as you, you would use twigs rather than specialist web-sites...