Parker - Map addict: a tale of obsession, fudge & the Ordnance Survey

To Rachel.

At last.

Recently, some new neighbours moved in. Theyd trekked halfway across the country, from the fringes of Manchester to their new life in our small village in the mountains of mid Wales. One night, I was showing them a good local walk, using my well-worn Ordnance Survey Explorer Map (OL23 Cadair Idris & Llyn Tegid, for aficionados). Oh, yes, one of them mused. That reminds me, I must get a map of the area.

I swear the world stood still. What I wanted to say was, You mean, you moved here from over a hundred miles away without buying a map first? Without taking it out on a nightly basis, stroking its contours, gently murmuring the unfamiliar names, idly following with your finger footpaths and streams, back lanes and bridleways, feeling faintly, randomly intimidated by the angular blocks of plantation forestry and sumps of squelchy moorland, excited by the wide beaches, towering peaks, limpid lakes and nestled market towns, all spread beguilingly across the paper? Without enjoying the thrill of anticipation of your impending move to a whole new world? Without checking out that whole new world, as captured by the gods of the Ordnance Survey? Are you mad? What in bejesus name is the matter with you?

What I actually said was, Oh, right. They sell them in the bookshop in town.

If my cowardly internalised rant had you mentally nodding in agreement; if you like to check the map before a trip to B&Q; if you can sit and read a good map like others read Hello! or Heat, then this book is for you. You are a fellow-mappie, we are of one flesh. If, on the other hand, its got you thinking, What a ridiculous over-reaction: whats his problem, then? Id advise you to put the book down now and walk away from it before it begins seriously to annoy you.

Many children have imaginary friends to help offset a lonely world. I had imaginary towns instead, and they were all intricately mapped. Hours would dribble by as I sat, tongue slightly protruding, drawing detailed plans of these fictional fiefdoms, giggling quietly to myself as I named the streets, threw in a ring road or bypassthis was the 1970s, after alland methodically placing schools, stations and hospitals into the growing grid.

Any careers psychologist, observing this habit (especially the relish with which Id drive a new dual carriageway through anything), would have predicted with utmost confidence that I was destined to become a town planner. But it wasnt the towns or the buildings or the streets themselves that interested mejust the maps. It didnt matter that they were imaginary; any map, any reduction of a complex landscape into two clean, clear dimensions, somehow thrilled and comforted me. More than thirty years on, it still does.

While some people, to shut out the insistent thrum of life, slide into the well-worn addictions of drink, drugs, sex, shopping, tattoos, piercings, plastic surgery, food or slicing themselves, my route of escape has long been thrusting my head into a map and staying there until the deafening buzz recedes. When all else around you is going psychotic, you can still depend on a map, and some of us can waste happy hours lost in its calm infallibility. Even the crisp smell of an Ordnance Survey provides its own instant Rescue Remedy.

My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, its said. Im the one in the car with the map in his lap, following its route with rapt concentration and a slowly moving index fingeroften at the expense of seeing the actual landscape it depicts rolling past on the other side of the window. Im the one who, on buying my first house, moved my entire map collection into it and ensured that it was perfectly shelved in its new home before bringing in anything useful, such as a kettle, toaster or teabag. Im the one who will annoy anyone Im sharing a flight with by repeatedly jabbing at the window and telling them which town were flying over, just because I recognised its shape and road pattern from decades of idle map scrutiny (and by the same token, Im now the one losing whole days on Google Earth). Its me wholl spend longer planning a walk than actually doing it, who has to get the map out to go to the shops, who actually enjoys those interminable conversations about which route we all took to reach wherever we are, who can recognise the symbol for a bridle track or lighthouse (disused) at forty paces, whose favourite childhood show was The Wombles, simply because the little recycling furballs took their names from Great Uncle Bulgarias atlas. Actually, thats not quite true. My favourite childhood show was Ivor the Engine, which combined maps with its exotic setting in the top left-hand corner of Wales: two of my passions deliciously stirred by one antique animation.

At the age of six, I began my own map collection, kick-started by a joyous discovery. My first true love was found lurking in the cellar when we moved into a new house. Not only was it my first love, it was my first cellar, full of spiders and dusty promise. The previous owners had left various bits of tat below stairs which were a pure treasure trove to me. A peeling mural of the Sergeant Pepper album title, painted by their adolescent son, filled one wall. I had no idea what it was or what it meant, but it oozed cool and teenage pheromones. But the true object of my affections lay hidden, covered in cobwebs, in the back of a dusty alcove. A relief map of the West Midlands and Wales, a good three foot by two, carved out in brittle plastic, its moulded hills soaring. It was love at first sneeze.

There was the sinuous line of the River Severn winding its way up through the Worcestershire towns I knew so well. The Malvern Hills, punting proudly out of the flat plains, looked like the brassiere of some 50s Hollywood starlet, all swaggering panache and perky promise. Like a spreading ink stain, the big pink blotch of Birmingham and the Black Country seemed in danger of engulfing the little flecks of urban outposts surrounding it, my own home town included. And Wales looked so different, and so very foreign. Where the English side of the map was a mass of pink splotches and a tangle of roads ancient and modern on a landscape that barely rose to any noticeable toy height, Wales was dark, brooding and rippled with mountains that soared and plunged in mysterious plasticity. Tiny settlements, hardly any of which warranted any pink stippling, peeked out from valley floors and river confluences. The crags of Snowdonia, by far the largest and lairiest on the map, shot skywards and soon began to lose their markings, so often did I stroke their peaks in eager anticipation of the day when these little plastic bumps would become real to me.

Hours I spent in rapt contemplation of that map. I memorised the look and shape of the conurbations, of Bristol, Stoke, Chester, Coventry, Cardiff, Brum, Manchester and Liverpool, so that I could recognise them, like a psychiatrists inkblot test, in an instant. I ran my finger appreciatively along river courses, feeling the way the Mersey, Wye or Dee bubbled down from the hills, along ever-widening valleys before disgorging into the smooth blue expanses of estuary and sea. But nothing approached the tactility of the Welsh hills, whose come-hither bumps and lumps kept inviting me back for more.

Before long, Id started to save my pocket money in order to buy maps, the fuchsia pink Ordnance Survey 1:50 000 series in particular. My step-mum donated an old sewing box with a padded hinged lid for my burgeoning collection, and it followed me everywhere, even on daytrips to bemused relatives. But there were 204 of the bloody things to collect, and on a fairly meagre allowance, it was painfully obvious to me that it would take decades to finish the job, an unimaginable yawn of time to a youngster. As a result, maps even accounted for the modest zenith in my teenage shoplifting career. While my mates were nicking records, sweets or fags, I was making regular forays into the Midland Educational Bookshop in Worcester to fill my school bag with bright, gleaming Ordnance Survey maps.