After a long haul across town from South to North, last thing at night, it's a pleasant treat to pop across the road at East Finchley tube station and offer up £5.70 for a posh minicab to take you the last couple of miles to Muswell Hill. This is what we did this evening. After a 10 minute wait in a makeshift metal shelter, a car rolled up, a window rolled down, and a voice said “Jenny?”

I looked at Jenny. She was Jenny. “Yes, i'm Jenny.” Good. The cab was ours. We got in, sat on the back seat, and admired the new satellite navigation equipment that had been installed on the dashboard. “Wow,” I said. “Nice, er, nice bit of kit.” “Thank you”, said the driver. “Where are you going?” “Oh, Pages Hill”, replied Jenny. “Er, can you direct me?” asked the driver. “Sure. Take a right here, then right again at the lights.”

The SATNAV kicked into action. It was sluggish. Transfixed by the screen, I noticed that we had emerged from the cab rank and immediately ploughed into the McDonalds office headquarters opposite, before swinging round 270º and mowing down racks of vegetables outside a local convenience store. As Jenny's directions to the driver helped to guide us safely home, I gazed in horror at the SATNAV. Our car, represented as a blue arrow, continued its erratic journey across the back gardens of terraced houses of East Finchley, making occasional wild forays across local cul-de-sacs before darting back to the relative safety of suburban living rooms.

Our SATNAV journey, which appeared to be set to a “crow flies drunkenly” programme, started to bear less and less resemblance to our surroundings. Roads faded away, and we ploughed across rugged brownfield terrain as Jenny complimented the driver on his tenacity in keeping to major routes of North London in the face of conflicting information from SATNAV. “Yes, it helps me when I don't really know where I'm going, but I haven't set it up for this journey, because you know the way.” Mm. “Still,” I countered, “it's an amazing bit of kit.” We drove headlong through a local church and primary school, before coming to rest in a local chocolatier (only open on Saturdays.)

Eventually we pulled up at Pages Hill, represented on the SATNAV by an expanse of featureless beige screen. The blue arrow flashed disconsolately, turning randomly, as if seeking its true destiny. “Yes, that's £5.70,” replied the driver. We generously handed over £6, leaving the driver 30p towards upgrading his SATNAV technology. “Safe journey home,” I said, unconvincingly, before slamming the car door shut.