Admittedly I am constantly thinking about car parking spaces, but in a campaigning sense. I will not rest until the first real museum of car parking spaces is created. But in a world that lacks car parking space museums car parking is in need of cloudy thinking.
Christmas shopping is a time of good will towards all men, except in the shopping centre car parks when some sort of atavistic free for all exists. This is not because we become bad people but because car parking spaces do not reflect the different needs and character of the human Christmas shopping population.
Planners acknowledge people with disabilities and parents with young children by giving them their own spaces but what about everybody else? The vast majority of us. It would be too painful to deliberately disable ourselves and too criminal to kidnap young children. So what do we do? Here is my suggestion for car park planners across the globe.
- Keep disabled spaces
- Keep parent and child spaces
- Add parent with parent spaces - for those of us taking aged mother out for her annual shop who then makes you carry around 12 months worth of shopping for the next 4 hours.
- Add aged parent spaces - for the fiercely independent octogenarian, extra wide spaces with large numbering on posts as far away from everyone else as possible
- Add 'I've forgotten something and just need to pop back for 10 minutes and don't want to spend half an hour finding a space' space. Each with its own warden equipped with a stopwatch.
- Add slimmer expert parking spaces nearer the shops for regular users and wider novice parking spaces near the aged parent spaces to prevent delays waiting for slow parkers
- Flashing spaces for people who can never find their car
- Males left in car listening to the football spaces - two lots colour coded spaces on opposite sides of the car park to keep fans apart with adjoining pie refreshment cabins
- Childless couple spaces - areas of calm away from crying children where couples can bicker in peace
- Singleton spaces - a chance to meet your future partner in mistletoe shaped spaces
- Reserved spaces that you earn by collecting frequent parker tokens
The result - car parking harmony full of yuletide spirit
Merry Christmas everyone
