Barefoot In The Kitchen

Dear Fellow Shoppers at our Local Friendly Small Supermarket,

Let’s talk about car-park ettiquette. That parent and child space? It’s for a parent, and their child. Not for your flashy big BMW with stupid England flags attached, or your massive rustbucket white van, or your Audi A6 filled with ski equipment and a dog- it’s quite plain that none of the cars have so much as seen a car seat.

My son is eighteen months old. He isn’t capable of walking safely across a busy car park, he’s simply too little to understand that he needs to hold my hand until we’ve crossed the road, and not flop down in the middle of the car park because he has to hold my hand, and to not have a screaming fit because he has to walk where I want him to. Most eighteen-month-olds are, well, pretty much exactly the same. I imagine that’s why the car park designer put the spaces where they did, not because parents are too lazy to walk an extra couple of yards like you appear to be.

When my son is asleep, or in such a foul mood that I won’t consider letting him walk, I need to put him in the sling, or the pushchair. For this, I need somewhere safe to stand, like, you know, additional space around the car? Or a safe footpath nearby? Know of any spaces like that? Oh yes, your twatmobile is parked in it.

And when I ask, politely, if you realised whether was a parent and child space (when you clearly did), please don’t deny that it is, and you’ve parked like a complete dick. A simple “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll move the car” will suffice. But only if it’s followed by you actually moving the car.

So, if you don’t move, and I happen to drop by the customer service desk on the way in, I can’t promise that someone won’t come and clamp your lovely, shiny motor. I can’t promise I won’t happen to take a photo of your car parked in the parent and child space, and name and shame you on the Internet (well, I’m a photographer. Breaking rules is an interesting topic for me.). And I can’t promise, especially if I’ve had to squeeze into the standard space beside you, that my car-loving son won’t come and leave enthusiastic grubby fingerprints all over your paintwork. And I can’t promise that if he does, I’m going to be particularly keen to stop him.

Are we pretty much clear?

Ta.

David climbed into his car seat in the front of my car today and tried to do his straps up.

“Go, go, GO!  Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, GO!”

“You want to go for a drive?”

“Des.  Vroom!”

I turned the key in the ignition.

“Hooray!  Go, go, GO!  Vroom!”

…and off we went.

I adore having a toddler.  Expecially one who loves driving as much as I do.

Here’s my entry for Tara’s fiendishly tricky Gallery this week.  Why not head over there and have a look at some of the other entries?

A motorway?  Who says that ugly things can’t be beautiful?

I love taking photos of the motorway.  I love capturing the movement of the other cars, the texture of the road surface, the patterns of the clouds.  I love the challenge of keeping the camera still for longer exposures, and the thrill of getting the settings exactly right and producing the elusive perfect photo.  I love the editing process afterwards.

I defy you to deny that the motorway can’t be beautiful.

(Yes, I’ll admit that I took the lazy option and took pictures instead of writing, but if you had this amount of work, you would too… and if a picture paints a thousand words, I’ve technically written 3146 of them. Ha.)