Jane

Driving has just become that little bit less stressful because we have a new toy for the car. It might just save our marriage too.

Let me explain. The Koinuchans generally get on very well with each other. We have fun and enjoy each other's company. As soon as we step into a car together everything changes. I'm usually the designated driver. Mrs K map reads. Little Miss K heckles from the back, demanding Josie Jump. I try to drive as carefully as I can. Mrs K frets that a) I am not driving carefully enough, b) there are too many dangerous drivers about and c) I am not listening closely enough to her directions. Little Miss K continues heckling.

Then we get lost. I'm stressed because I don't know where we're going. Mrs K is stressed because she doesn't know where we are mostly because I wasn't listening to her closely enough. Little Miss continues heckling. At this point I usually ask Mrs K if she would like to drive. She refuses, knowing that with my dreadful sense of direction we'd get even more lost and we'd stay that way. She knows that with my map directions the burnt wreckage of our car would be discovered six months later in some obscure corner of the Hampshire countryside. So we continue bickering until the road sign for the B36713 looms over the horizon and we realise that we were twenty miles off course. ...And at that precise moment, Little Miss decides to fill her nappy.

This, simply, Would Not Do.

Our saviour arrived after a particularly miserable journey when Mrs K got lost on the way back from a play date. I was at work, but by the sound of things my wife had made a couple of unexpected detours down untarmacked bridleways. At this point, we decided that enough was enough and we bought a TomTom GPS.

Car journeys have never been the same since. At the start of the journey we enter the postcode of our destination, press the 'Done' button and we simply follow the instructions. No stress. No bickering. No interruptions to Josie Jump. I've almost come to regard Jane, the Tom Tom's female voice, as a close personal friend. When Jane's in charge nothing can go wrong.

Last weekend, the three of us plus Nonna and Yaya went out to have a pub lunch. I pulled out of our drive. Jane told me to 'Turn Right'. Little Miss then told me to 'Turn Right' with precisely the same intonation. Jane then told me to 'Turn Left'. Little Miss concurred. Jane then told me to take the first exit on the roundabout. Little Miss started yelling 'TURN LEFT! TURN LEFT!' as if her life depended on it. And she was right. So I turned left.

An idea popped into my head. You can customise the sound samples on the Tom Tom to your own - or anyone else's - voice. Wouldn't it be fun to get Little Miss K to give directions? Just imagine, you're driving along then a little squeaky voice announces 'Laa Laa, Po, painting bwed stick' and you'd know that up ahead is roundabout and you need to take the third exit.

Other images materialised in my deluded brain. Me and Mrs K arguing whether than 'bwed stick' meant the second or third exit. Little Miss K heckling her own voice and giving us misleading directions. The nightmare of taking colleagues to an important customer meeting, being forced to rely on the TomTom, and then being two hours late and having to explain why. The TomTom having an 'unfortunate accident' and trying to use our rudimentary map reading skills again.

Jane, we love you. Please, never leave us!