I woke up at 6am, my mind still reeling from the mystery of the evaporating sat nav. I couldn't get back to sleep so decided to go down to see if I could solve the conundrum. Surely too many hours had past and any lead would have gone cold, but it was daylight now and maybe the missing device had been lying somewhere in the darkness, undiscovered. This might be my last chance to solve the case.
Working from the presumption that I had indeed felt the weight of the sat nav in my pocket just a few feet away from the car, I decided there were only a few possibilities. It might have fallen into the foliage by one of the trees, it might have fallen under the car, I might have put it on top of the car or it had somehow fallen into the car before I had got into the car. Or it had been beamed up to the mothership, giving the aliens enough details about my various car journeys that they would be able to take me out first when the invasion began - I am all that stands between them and conquering the world. I don't know what power I possess, but clearly, if they've gone to all this trouble, then I am some kind of secret, anti-alien weapon. You may think that's unlikely, but then it was the alcoholic Randy Quaid who proved to be their undoing last time they tried and they're not going to get caught out twice.
I looked under the car, I investigated the bushes, I even walked up to the road to see if the infernal GPS system had fallen from my car and I felt under the front seat of the car and moved it forward as far as it would go. Still no sign of anything. I had to accept defeat. If it wasn't in any of these places then either it had taken a trip further afield on the top of my car, someone had picked it up from the driveway or there was a more sinister and unexplained reason. Leastways I knew that unless it was somewhere in the car that I hadn't spotted my sat nav was most definitely gone. I was planning on putting up a notice on the door of the flats asking if anyone had found it and offering a reward, but I didn't hold out much hope. I thought I'd take one more look in the car as like Obi Wan, it was my only hope. I opened the door, looked in the exact spot that I had checked just minutes earlier. And there it was. Just sitting there, looking up at me, saying, "Where have you been? I've been here all along? Didn't you want me to help you find the Tricycle Theatre?"
As happy as I was to have been reunited with this electronic dwelling place of demons, this possessed navigator, this elusive piece of shit, I was none the wiser about how the fuck it had got there or why it hadn't been there all the other times I'd looked for it. It had made me feel like an idiot. I had made a big fuss about this on Twitter and now it turns up it was under the seat, like most people had guessed, even though I'd looked there and even though I hadn't been in the car when I noticed it was missing.
Nothing was explained. If anything it was even more of a mystery than before. It can't be that I am getting old and forgetful and distracted. It must be some kind of infernal magic.
I have the sat nav back. But do I really want it. Surely it's just biding its time.
I was worried where I might end up when I used it tonight and was fairly confident that my trip into town would go down in history as a new Marie Celeste - that my car would be found in the middle of nowhere, the engine still running, the radio still playing, a half-eaten sandwich on the passenger seat, a still warm coffee in the cup holder, but no sign of me. And my sat nav still on the window, blinking away, saying, "You have reached your destination" over and over again. With a slight hint of a chuckle in its voice.
But I got to Islington and back without so much as an unscheduled drive across a dark field or an axe murderer popping up out of my boot. The sat nav is not stupid. It's biding its time. But if I disappear then please arrest Tom and Tom, the two headed alien who is surely behind this dastardly plot.
