a few blocks away/past a few blocks

[diamondcutter]

Michael led us a few blocks away to the next house on his map.

Source: Mrs. Patty Is Batty, a children’s novel by Dan Gutman

Does the sentence above mean this?

Michael led us past a few blocks to the next house on his map.

 

[GoesStation]

No. You can go past a few blocks of apartment buildings, for example, but you can't go past a few blocks.

Previous context established where the characters started before they moved a few blocks. The new location was a few blocks away from the first one.

 

[diamondcutter]

Thanks, GoesStation.

What about these two versions?

1. Michael led us to walk a few blocks to the next house on his map.

2. Michael led us to the next house which was a few blocks away on his map.

 

[Tarheel]

Thanks, GoesStation.

What about these two versions?

1. Michael led us to walk a few blocks to the next house on his map.

2. Michael led us to the next house, which was a few blocks away on his map.

The second one is not terrible. (The next house was several blocks away?)

 

[emsr2d2]

"Michael led us to walk a few blocks" is not natural.

 

[GoesStation]

(The next house was several blocks away?)

That would be the next house of interest to the characters.

 

[Tarheel]

Try:

Michael led us to the next house, which was several blocks away.

I assume context tells the reader what is meant by "next house".

If you insist on using "map" in your sentence, you could say:

The next house was several blocks away according to the map.

 

[GoesStation]

Michael led us to the next house on the map, which was a few blocks away.

 

[diamondcutter]

Thank you all for your replies.

Let me say a few more words about the context.

Several children were trick-or-treating in their neighborhood. Michael made a map which showed a careful route so they could go to all the houses that had good candy and not waste any time at the houses where people turned off their lights and pretended they were not home.
That is to say, they didn’t trick-or-treat the houses one by one. They had their choices. So one house they trick-or-treated might be a few blocks away from the previous one.

 

[GoesStation]

Michael led us to the next house on the map, which was a few blocks away.

You may have noticed that I changed "his" to "the". I assumed we already knew whose map it was. In that context, "the" is more natural.

 

[Tarheel]

The little beggars had a map showing where there were houses with treats waiting for them, did they?

 

[diamondcutter]

Yes, they did. :-D

 

[emsr2d2]

The little beggars had a map showing where there were houses with treats waiting for them, did they?

Yes, they did. :-D

Apparently, that's the new "safe" way of doing trick or treat. In 2019, I remember hearing that if you had treats for kids, you should put a carved pumpkin (jack o'lantern) on your front path or in your window and the kids were meant to knock only on doors with those on display. Even more boringly, in 2020, adults went round local houses that had a pumpkin on display and explicitly asked the owners if it was OK for their kids to knock on the door on Hallowe'en. Apparently, maps were made of lots of areas, showing exactly which houses it was OK to visit. I'm really not sure where the "trick" part of the whole thing went. People who said yes generally had treats for the kids so there no longer seems to be any opportunity to play a trick on householders who don't answer the door or who answer it and don't give you anything.
Honestly they're sucking all the fun out of life!! :lol:

 

[GoesStation]

The rule in my little town is that people offering treats leave their porch lights on. It's been the same since the first time I went trick-or-treating around 1960.

We used to soap windows (make designs on them with a bar of soap). Doing this with a candle was not encouraged. Bolder boys would stick horns — get a stick that would reach from the seatback to the horn rim, find an unlocked car (pretty easy as nobody locked their cars routinely and a lot of people forgot to do it on Halloween), and wedge the stick in so it held the horn down.

Stuck horns were usually unstuck within a minute. Every now and then you'd hear one blaring until the car's battery ran down. The owners must have gone out.

 

[jutfrank]

there no longer seems to be any opportunity to play a trick on householders who don't answer the door or who answer it and don't give you anything.
Honestly they're sucking all the fun out of life!! :lol:

I couldn't agree more. When I was a kid, trick-or-treating in a fairly rough part of London meant we were often genuinely afraid for our lives. Nowadays, the complacency of knowing that you are not going to end up in the hands of a South London child sex-trafficking ring has certainly taken the edge off things. :-D