‘Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities’ – Lewis Mumford
Call me lazy (many have) but i’m going to re-post something i wrote about 18 months ago but something I still feel quite strongly about:
One of my favourite jokes my dad used to tell me was this:
Q: What do you do if you see a spaceman?
A: Park in it, man
If only it was really that easy. How many times have you driven round and round a supermarket car park for hours looking for a decent space because it’s pissing it down with rain and all you want is a packet of ibuprofen for your hangover and one of those take away currys in a bag for a fiver? You give up, plumping for the arse end of the car park, and walk in looking like an Alice Cooper impersonating drowned rat, past all those god forsaken parent and child spaces.
I HATE parent and child spaces. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with those little things in life that are there to make your life easier, and I certainly don’t have any beef with disabled spaces whatsoever. Parent and child spaces are a relatively new thing, they weren’t around when I was little, we walked to the shop from the arse end of the car park to get my parents ibuprofen like everyone else. What really gets my goat these days is that the attitude of most parents these days is that somehow because they have made the (in most cases) conscious decision to have children so yet somehow they are entitled to park closer to the door. What about those of us who haven’t or can’t have children? Where’s our convenience? Where’s those little handy things that make our lives a little bit better? Where’s my ‘i’m only popping in for 2 things and i’ll only be 2 minutes’ parking spaces or my ‘i’m a woman parking the car at night on my own and i don’t want to walk through a dark car park on my own’ parking spaces.
There’s real discrimination against people who don’t or can’t have children. Many a time I have been expected at various jobs to stay behind late because I haven’t got children or work all the shitty days over Christmas because I don’t have kids. As if my time with my family is somehow less precious. Why should i be guilt tripped because I want to spend the holidays with my family after an emotionally tough year?
I love children, I really do, and to me, the gift of having children at all is so precious that anything else, like a sodding parking space is just a bonus, not a right.
