No problem, ma'am, just carry on heading 080...
Sound like he was sending you on a direct track for England!
I found the lights at one airfield very hard to see. Why don't they use them laser pointers that everyone gets so excited about?
I had the opposite problem to the original poster when I was learning to fly. I had been gliding for some years and was very happy talking rubbish on the radio about lift and sink and tottie at the launch point but I shat myself every time I talked to any kind of controller. I doubt I would have noticed a radio failure for the first few years of my flying!