Number puzzle

Northings and eastings.   That was what they looked like.  

Dad had told him about those last summer, on holiday in Suffolk, when they were looking at one of those pink Ordnance Survey maps, number 156 for Saxmundham.  

That summer they’d spent a lot of time doing a sort of I-spy with the symbols in the key – ticking off the different sort of woods, coniferous and mixed, the bridges and embankments along railways, quarries and pylons, and all the stuff on the little picture with all the water features.   Dad had made time to find as many as possible.   Mum had kept asking about the churches – why did they not have those any more, they used to have steeples, and towers and things she said.

But this board couldn’t be a grid reference, the numbers were useless without a two-letter grid square reference.   Looked more like telephone numbers or something.   Pretty badly written though,   pretty inconvenient too, just painted, and with a bit of a scraggy brush, onto a piece of old ply.   Couldn’t sensibly go carrying a piece of ply around, not when it was ten times the size of a mobile.   And why the stripes?   They had to’ve been painted in first.

Dad would have been able to tell him, he was sure.   Mum wouldn’t know, and wouldn’t care, would ask why he was wasting his time asking questions without answers.  If he knew the answer he wouldn't ask the question would he? She was doing that all the time now Dad had gone.   And Scotland was too far to see Dad every week like he’d promised. He’d also promised Disneyland if he wanted next holiday, but really he just wanted to go back to Saxmundham.   Back to last year. 

[This was inspired by this week's Thinking Ten ' Canvas prompt]