Six weeks ago I crossed Brussels to collect my new car from the garage. I had bought it two months earlier, but red tape here is long and tangly, and it took a while for the right authority to send me the required number-plate. It was a stressful journey: I got off the train at the wrong stop, took forever to find a connecting bus, and when an hour and a half after leaving home I reached my destination, I realized I’d left the number-plate in my hallway. I was debating whether to start a new three-hour round trip or take an expensive taxi when the sales lady, seeing my sorry state, took pity on me.

‘We’ll make you a temporary false one,’ she said. ‘Just change it once you get home.’

Great, but where was home?

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Apart from the number plate, I’d also forgotten my wonderful De Rouck map… I knew I was north and needed to go south, but not surprisingly, the sun wasn’t shining, so I didn’t know where south was.

Then I made a lucky discovery. In the car accessories shop, I met a lovely lady called Elizabeth who spoke perfect English and offered to guide me home. We became good friends. And since then, I have made three more new friends. All four seem to be willing to accompany me on my travels, despite my complete lack of spatial orientation, or perhaps because of it.

Francine's a hoot. She’s from Quebec and has me in fits of giggles every time she says ‘gauche’ for ‘left’ or ‘rondpoint’ for ‘roundabout’ in her French Canadian accent. I find it amazing how she knows Brussels so well, being thousands of miles from home.

Carmen has a deep voice. She speaks proper Spanish from Spain with all the ‘th’s in the right places – quite different from the Spanish I learnt in Uruguay. She’s always a bit miserable. I think the Belgian weather depresses her but I take her along when I want to dream of Spanish sunshine.

Marieke speaks Flemish. She comes when I’m driving to a Flemish commune, because with all the linguistic problems we have in Belgium, I figure she is the most likely to get me to my destination. People in Flemish communes prefer visitors to speak their language rather than French or English, so I can practice my rusty Flemish with her: I studied the language for four years over twenty years ago but never really used it. The problem with Marieke is that I don’t always understand her.

Elizabeth is the one I like best: she’s there in the little box on my windscreen the most often and is amazingly calm and clear.

One quality my four friends have in common is infinite patience. If I take a wrong turning, which happens frequently, they remain unfazed and are amazing quick to reroute me. ‘Make a U-turn as soon as you can,’ Elizabeth will say calmly.

But there is one thing that annoys me about all of them. I have told them repeatedly that I don’t like Boulevard Général Jacques, a busy, scary, huge axis filled with crazy trams that cuts across the south side of the city. I’m sure there are simpler ways of getting from my home to the north of Brussels, but they all insist on going via Boulevard Général Jacques. Who was Général Jacques anyway? The other day I had to tell Francine that I was going to take Carmen instead if she couldn’t come up with a better route. But even Francine, with her Canadian vowels, had me battling against the tramlines.

But I’d be literally lost without them.

They all have the same favourite word.

‘Recalculating,’ Elizabeth says serenely, when I take a wrong turn.

‘Recalculant.' Is Francine a trifle teasing?

‘Recalculando.’ Carmen clearly sounds bored.

‘Herberekening.’ That’s Marieke, teaching me a new word in Flemish.

Thank goodness for my G.P.S. Where would I be without it?