Life is ...a car parking space

Take a look at this picture of a car parking space. It could be anywhere in the world (well, not really anywhere - connoisseurs will instantly recognise the soft yellow lines, and the cracked, sun baked concrete bitmac mixture as Texas U.S.A. - probably south near the Gulf of Mexico).  You wouldn't take a second glance at it, unless you were in a car and looking for a somewhere to park. And there is my point. I would argue that the most common form of pleasure and relief we experience in our car based society today is the discovery of a free car parking space. Next time you pull onto your drive, into your garage, or finding some on street parking near your house - think of that pleasure. It means home, it means a safe haven - most memories will feature that space however unconsciously.

Next time you go shopping, go to work, or to a museum (as I do on a daily basis) just reflect on that small skip of the heartbeat when that magical space between two vehicles comes into view. On this crowded island of Britain that could be translated into unconfined joy and tears of relief (I particularly recall one such moving experience when Christmas shopping a few years ago).

Let me take that thought a step further and use this particular car parking space to illustrate the depth of importance of the car parking space in our lives.

The car parking space enables society to function, it enables life to happen - it is by proxy the arbiter of your mood, the barometer against which you measure whether you have had a good day, the enabler of activity (or frustrater). It is the lungs of enterprise, the heart of capitalism, the place of that first kiss, the conception of the first child (or fourth child in Ron Howard's case) and in the case above a crucial step in dental hygiene.

This picture was sent to me with this quote attached,

"This car parking space sits outside of my dentist's office. Without a car parking space, I wouldn't have been able to park my car. If I didn't park my car, then I wouldn't have gone into my dentist's office for my appointment. If I didn't go to my appointment, then I wouldn't have gotten my teeth cleaned. So ultimately... this car parking space is like my second dentist."

There you have it in a nutshell. Car parking space as tooth brush. Car parking space as health clinician.

Salvador Dali never said far better than I.

"Progressive art [and car parking spaces] can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation." (I added the bit in brackets - Dali would have said it but I feel he lacked the imagination).

Artists are always arguing that life is art (Tracey Emin's 'My Bed' in 1999 anyone?) then car parking spaces are art, maybe brutal, angular vorticist art - but art nonetheless.

There it is - the car parking space rules our lives, they ARE our lives and therefore let's celebrate them as ART, as DENTISTS, as MUSEUM pieces worthy of our respect. Next time you conveniently park - shed a small tear of sorrow at the neglect at these wondrous rectangular boxes.

Rules for success for museum professionals whilst in the pub

Let's begin with the idea that no-one gets what they want in life. Well boo-hoo! I don't have an Aston Martin car in my driveway (I don't even have a driveway). The closest most of you will ever get to a luxury car is in a museum. So if you can't get what you want then do the next best thing and have a career in museums. The logic is inescapable. Can't afford a big house? Volunteer for the National Trust etc. etc.

So the first and only definition of success is to work or volunteer at a museum or heritage site. This may not be what a successful businessman or entrepreneur defines as success and not everyone can volunteer (if not why not?).

So what else may help you? For the rest of this blog I am inspired by James Caan (he of Dragon's Den fame) and his, 'The Eight Rules of Success To Think About Every Morning'.  So what does James Caan think (link below).

1. Application
Work hard? I agree there is nothing wrong with hard work. The trick is to work effectively and strategically. The paying public can't help your career, so why bother working hard on customer service. Invite your trustees to the pub get them drunk and have them agree to a pay rise (have a pen and beer mat handy). That is working effectively. So if you are reading this in the pub, look at the people you are with. Can you exploit them? If not, at least get a drink out of them (and maybe a kebab later).

2. Believe in yourself
If you do not believe in yourself, who else will? Wise words. There are many brilliant people in the museum world, but they seem to believe that saving artefacts and buildings and (may the god's preserve us) interpreting it for the audience are more important. I realised many years ago that I am the most important person in the museum and the artefacts and resources of the museum are there for me and my use. Future generations will thank me for it. So if you are in the pub with your friends just tell them how good you are and how much better than them you are. They will instantly recognise your greatness and grant you personal space to realise your dreams by moving to a separate table on the other side of the pub (make sure you have got a drink out of them first as per #1).

3. Be creative
Stand out from the crowd. Creativity is one of the most valuable qualities any person can have. I cannot agree more, the annual accounts are a magnificent work of fiction.

4. Be there first
This applies in all forms of life, from the avoiding queues to the gents at a football match by limping to the disabled toilet, to elbowing the octogenarian volunteer out of the way at the Friends of Unreason annual party buffet to get the last cucumber sandwich.

5. Build a Brand
No-one who has ever been to the Museum of Unreason (for directions see my What's in a name blog Feb 2013) will ever forget it. Think creative interpretation and labelling - but most of all make sure that when the public leave they know who is responsible for it. I have a life-size cutout welcoming them OUT of the door telling them to spend more money next time they visit or not bother to come back. It's safe to say our visitors do at least one of these.

6. Seek advice
Speak to people who have years of experience. What? And make the same old mistakes. We want museums for the 21st Century not 19th Century. Unless of course they are influential people (see #1) in which case hang on their every word, agree with everything they say - then do the opposite but reference them in your literature.

7. Get organised
In particular I like Caan's, 'make sure you are not wasting precious time on tasks that can always be delegated to someone else'. Do this and that is why you are in the pub and the staff are still in the office.

8. Don't run before you can walk
Don't take on too much and only do work with a decent profit. More wise words. Then spend it in the pub so that by the end of the day you can't even walk never mind run.

Here is the link: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130813104917-32175171-the-eight-rules-of-success-to-think-about-every-morning?trk=mp-details-rc

Car Parks - the workhouses of our time?

I am aware that I am ahead of my time in my appreciation of car parks and the thousands of beautiful spaces they contain. I have been mocked in the street for it; told to move along by uniformed personnel when admiring well crafted spaces in multi-storey parks. Yet I will live to see the first car parking space museum. I will tell you why.

A beautiful space with multi-coloured
block paving
(Photo courtesy of the
Museum of Car Parking Spaces)

Bill Bryson, the well meaning but easily pleased American, wrote a book in 1995 called Notes from a Small Island. It was an amusing journey around this country that was on the whole positive. He ends on a strangely untypical effusive note,

"I realised what it was I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it...What a wondrous place this was - crazy as f!@k, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree...this is still the best place in the world...."

He lies of course. In fact he condemns himself from his own mouth (or pen) on p.64 (Black Swan 1997 paperback edition). I have edited down the two page rant.

"Just consider the average multi-storey car park. You drive around for ages, and the spend a small eternity shunting into a space that is exactly two inches wider than the average car [3 inches too wide in my opinion]. Then, because you are parked next to a pillar, you have to climb over the seats and end up squeezing butt-first out of the passenger door....you have to find your way out of this dank hellhole via an unmarked door leading to a curious chamber that seems to be a composite of a dungeon and a urinal...all of this is designed to make this the most dispiriting experience of your adult life."

Yet he moans (p.103).

"..the British have more heritage than is good for them."

Wrong! We have too much PRETTY heritage, do we need 12,000 medieval churches? How about 11,999 medieval churches and 1 multi-storey car park?

Let's compare car parks with workhouses. It was a phenomenon that spread across the country after the 1601 Poor Law Act; had it's architectural heyday in the Nineteenth Century, before being abolished in 1930.

Here's an extract from George Eliot's, Scenes of Clerical Life (1854),

"...the workhouse, euphemistically called the 'College'. The 'College' was a huge square stone building, standing on the best apology for an elevation of ground....depressing enough to look at even on the brightest days."

She wasn't alone, Charles Dickens was no big fan (Oliver Twist cannot be described as a comedy). The word 'squalid' turns up frequently in his writing. In his 'A Walk in a Workhouse' (1850) he compares the workhouse unfavourably to prison.

"We have come to this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and accommodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the honest pauper."

So why compare the multi-storey car park to the workhouse? Both are/were full of squalor and misery. BUT one is now 'heritage' and the other is an eyesore of no value beyond mere utility.

Today you can go to the National Trust owned Southwell Workhouse museum for a 'family fun day out'. It was built in 1824 and opened less than 100 years later as a heritage site. The first multi-storey car park was built in Chicago U.S.A. in 1918. Wouldn't it be great to celebrate its 100th anniversary with a car park museum (preferably built over a medieval building).

Time is running out - get behind my campaign now.