I write from a family holiday in France. Most of my travel is for work and alone, and even then I can’t help thinking if it would be nice to live in whichever country I’m visiting. We’re all happy with our Irish lives. We have good friends, good neighbours, good schools and jobs, which is what matters most.
Compared to most of the world, Ireland’s a very safe place to be starting 2025. But still, as surely most Irish people do when abroad, I pause in front of estate agents’ windows: would it be worth another move to have a much bigger house? Would it be worth another move to have fruit that hasn’t got tired crossing seas? To have more and better public transport? How quickly would we learn or perfect another language, and how hard would it be to make friends?
There’s a family joke that’s not quite a joke: when a tap needs a new washer or the curtain rail in the bedroom comes down again, we say, ‘oh, let’s just emigrate; it’ll be easier in the long run’. Travelling with my family, renting an apartment where a family apparently much like ours usually lives – a wall of books, a cupboard of spices, bike pumps and spare lights in the hall – speculation is irresistible. If we lived here – No. Stop it.
I try to run off my restlessness. Especially on holiday, I run very early, not to shape everyone’s day around my habit (okay, around my compulsion, but if you’re going to be compulsive about something it could be much worse than running).
I navigate new places without the internet because I believe in getting lost
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I take my phone for podcasts but it’s 10 years old and the navigation software failed years ago. I always kept all the location stuff switched off anyway; there are different kinds of privacy and while I am willing to walk the boundaries of what I choose to share in writing, I am not willing to be under the surveillance of private enterprises. Total evasion would come at a very high price, including participation in public life and any kind of writing career. I reluctantly accept that I’m visible in ways I don’t control, but I can and do live without using social media and tracking devices.
So I navigate in pre-internet ways. It’s become harder as train stations have stopped offering or selling paper maps, but I persist. I’m sure some of my insistence is just middle-aged grumpiness, but also I am convinced that way-finding without a phone schools us to pay attention in a way that we lose when we merge with a blue dot on a screen. There’s a big difference between embodied and digital ways of knowing and learning places, and I cling to the embodied ways, to the need to remember.
This morning I noted the shape made by the bollards and the iron fence opposite the door of our apartment, the colour of the paintwork on the house where I turned right, the name of the cafe at which I crossed the road, the mesh of the basketball courts by the river against the still-dark sky. After that I just followed the river for 40 minutes, knowing that by reversing my route I’d be back in time for my family to start the day. If I’d missed one of my cues, I’d have stayed between the river and the clock tower, north of bridge, and run the streets until I saw a mnemonic.
[ How your smartphone makes it easier to track your movementsOpens in new window ]
When I’m travelling alone, lateness matters less and I chance more complicated routes, noting way points but mostly triangulating: if I line up that church tower with the southern end of that hill I’ll get back to the park with the dolphin fountain where I need to turn left for the blue mural. It’s simpler outside cities but also easy to make bigger mistakes: coming down the wrong side of a valley can require a whole lot of running.
I know that if I replaced the elderly phone I could probably have a voice in my ear directing my feet without involving my brain much at all, and I know that would often be convenient, but I find myself deeply resistant. I believe in getting lost, learning to get lost and to find ourselves, over and again, as often as it takes; I believe in mapping with our feet.