Andrew's birthday present

Last summer Andrew went on a charity car rally, driving from London to Mongolia for Save the Children. He was gone for 6 weeks in total and came back hairy and smelly but full of exciting stories about exotic places I'll probably never have the chance to visit. Since then he's been obsessed with the idea of getting a large world map, sticking it to a wooden backing board and putting map pins in it, to show the route they took. His idea was that we would both add to it with our future travels and holidays and he's been searching Gumtree pretty much every day since he came back for the perfect map.

But I got there first

I found a guy living in a newly built estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh (so newly built that the TomTom and street map combined couldn't get me there and I had to ring the poor guy every 10 minutes to work out where I was going) selling a large world map for £15. "Bargain!" I thought, completely discounting the measurements and frequent use of the word 'large'.

When I turned up with my little Corsa, it swiftly became obvious that this monster of a map wasn't going in the car in any great hurry. 5 feet long by 3 feet wide, the only way I could get it in was by bringing both front seats as far forward as they could go and taking the head rests off. The back seats were then folded down and the map slid in at a diagonal until it was resting on the top of the front seats. I drove all the way home with my knees up by my ears (almost) and the map floating precariously about half an inch above my head.

It was all worth it in the end though. I collaged some photos and ephemera around the edge and presented it to Andrew on his birthday last week. He was delighted and is already planning on spending next Saturday carefully plotting their route in map pins. Small things eh?







Oh, I almost forgot to say. The hat in the last photo is one that I knitted him as part of his going-away pack. It came out the weirdest shape but he took it all the way there and all the way back. It's an exceedingly well traveled hat, even if you can't see the weird pointy end that I cunningly tucked behind itself. F7 F7 was their team name by the way and Dyce is obviously Andrew's surname.