This way - yes, this way!

I got a call from someone who needed to know how to get to my house from Ayrshire. I dutifully provided the info needed: come off the M77 at Newton Mearns, follow the road down to Mearns Cross, keep going down past the next wee roundabout. At Eastwood Toll, take the Glasgow direction and turn immediately left. Up over the hill and then down the other side and you'll see the sign for my bit on your right. Fine.

Two minutes later, I heard a phone ring. Not mine. The phone of the person staying with me, who doesn't live in Glasgow and hasn't done for 40 years - and even then she lived in Cumbernauld! She gave a set of instructions on how to get here to the person I'd just spoken to. Wrong instructions. And while I was really tempted to say: well, hell whack it intae ye - follow those directions and see what happens, I knew what the result would be if I kept quiet.

Same as what happened the last time I was in this situation with people going from my house to the Jubilee. They decided to ignore my directions and went via the Kingston Bridge, arriving at the hospital with only 30 minutes left of visiting time, having wandered around most of Dumbarton and Clydebank.

When I was working, I spent many years driving around Argyll, clocking up miles that would amaze a city dweller. I once went to a meeting in Lochgilphead, only able to get there off a late ferry from Islay because Donald McCormick's draff lorry was going my way and he would give me a lift; ploughed through snow on the back road from Inverary so many times only to find that the meeting in Oban was cancelled because there was a millimetre of the white stuff and the wimps wouldn't go there.

In Ayrshire, I didn't do as many miles but I had similar adventures: sitting behind a herd of very bonny but very slow coos at Stair, looking at the clock and knowing I had 8 minutes till my meeting started in Mauchline; ploughing through pristine snow between Sorn and Galston and wondering just why I'd thought this was a short-cut; cursing the many accidents on the A77 that meant I had to go home via Stewarton over terrible roads, in the dark.

Even in suburban East Ren, I know rat runs you wouldn't believe that cut out traffic lights and avoid speed cameras. I am the master (or mistress) of the back road. So trust me. If I give you directions, follow them!