Yellow Box

There is a car park outside of my office window.  It serves a small shopping centre.  (Careful, Ken… they’ll find you…)

As you might imagine, there are lots of places to park in this car park and, similarly, there are lots of places to not park – the footpath, the middle of the road, up the lamppost.

And then there is one place that you really shouldn’t ever park at all, ever, ever. ever.


This place, immediately to the front of the shopping centre exit, is designated by a yellow box painted on the ground with yellow criss-cross lines inside.  You know the sort of thing.

As I sit at my desk, I look out and down on this yellow box.  When I stop to think and gaze out, it’s this yellow box then I end up gazing at.

And it annoys me profoundly.  You know the reason why, don’t you?

Yes, you do.

It's because there’s nearly always somebody parked in the yellow box.

There is no ambiguity about this box.  It is evidently a clear way, a safety exit, a place which should never be blocked

Parking or, as is more often the case, stopping-and-sitting in the yellow box causes difficulty to everybody else in any number of ways.  It reduces the passing traffic to single lane so that cars coming either direction have to give way to each other while the twerp in the box sits back and enjoys the show.  It blocks the trolleys of the people coming out of the shops.  It clogs up the whole little eco-system of the car park – all for the benefit of the one loon who does it.  Did I mention that the box only has room for one?

This lack of thoughtfulness beneath my window has grown in my head to become an analogy for Man’s overall Inhumanity to Man.  I look at the various types of people who do this thing – for they are indeed legion – and I see some of the worst qualities of the Human Race reflected in their obtrusive wing mirrors.

The most common type is the ‘Bully’.  Elbow out of window, belly out of shirt, his risible taste in cassette-delivered music imposed on the people he inconveniences.  His whole demeanour tells the world, “I know what I’m doing, come and tell me about it and see what happens to you then… wimp.”

Then there is the ‘Naive Fool’.  He doesn’t know he is doing anything wrong.  He is baffled as to why the traffic is backing up all sides of him or why the old-dear just collapsed with exhaustion trying to manoeuvre her trolley around the back of his Fiat.

And, of course, the ‘Professional’.  Very busy, only there for a moment, doing everyone a favour by getting his important stuff done so quickly.  One of the worst, that.

I see all these types and many more and I know that, if they would only wake up and see the trouble they are causing for their own small comfort, and if they could only then persuade the rest of the world to wake up and do the same…, well, then things might be all right, I guess.

So there it is; ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’, all packaged up and delivered to my doorstep, wrapped up in my local car park’s yellow box.

Have I succeeded in pinpointing the key problem with society today?  Have I opened up a possible avenue of hope and reconciliation?

… or do I just always need to have something stupid to be annoyed about?

Yeah, I know…

The Blog As Pensieve

I’ve been doing this blogging thing for a while now and, from time to time, the question arises, “Why do you blog?” My answer has changed several times in the time that I have being doing it.

At first, it was intended to promote my writing and to show the manner in which I do it. From there, the whole blogging escapade grew into an online social phenomenon wherein fellow bloggers were followed avidly, interacted with in forums, and greatly enjoyed.



Friendships were built which are still strong to this day and much was learned about the curious process of blogging itself.

It may well be true that it was Twitter that took the heat out of this high-intensity interaction, for me at least.

Twitter arose and provided more immediate and more intense interaction between bloggers and non-bloggers alike. It suited me and it drew me in. Something had to give and that something was the level of blogging interaction I previously maintained. What used to be a blog which was posted to thrice-weekly is now a weekly event and, although I regularly visit and read all of my friends blogs, I don’t comment as much as I used to. I sometimes feel at a loss for something to say even though I may have enjoyed their post very well.

But, despite this change, my blog is still a living thing and a very important part of my life. Ask me today why I blog and the reason is markedly different to the one I might have given a year – or two years ago – perhaps next year, it will be something different again.

For now though, I see the blog as a sort of jigsaw puzzle. A box where each post is a small odd shaped piece that goes to make up a picture of me.

For want of a better image, I see it as a sort of ‘Pensieve’ which, in case you don’t know, is the font/receptacle which Dumbledore had in Harry Potter to store his memories in. Whenever he wanted, he could draw one out – rather like a mucousy snot string (sorry) – and review it. But, more relevant to my point, when he himself was gone, Harry could dip into it too and learn some things about Dumbledore that he hadn’t known before. In the case of my own little pensieve, these are not necessarily huge revelations or truths. In fact, they are often just shitty little things such as my feelings on music and driving or why I think I’m a dog. Each post trivial and passing for sure but each post also with some germ of truth or personality in it to help build up a jigsaw puzzle picture, just like the one on the box.

Our parents are often largely a mystery to us. Sometimes all we know of them are the people they have become after we came along. Before that, what have we got? A photo from Butlins? A letter or two scribbled in haste.

This technology here will be dusty and defunct by the time our kids might start to seriously wonder about us, what we were really like? But there’ll probably be some way of reading it still. Some gizmo in the attic that will prise open the files that used to make up that internet thing from way back when.

Maybe, someday, someone will leaf through this stuff and know me a little better for it.

Who knows, we may be the first generation to leave a fairly solid picture of who we were by the medium of our personal blogs, our online jigsaws, our pensieves…

Next time, I shall be ranting about why gobshites drive into those yellow boxes when they can’t get out the other side.

That should help build a picture, shouldn’t it?

Old Joke - A Bit Rude

A local radio interviewer was sent out to the island to interview octogenerian Pat about his long life there.

The interviewer set his tape machine running.

"Pat," he said, "tell me, if you will, about your happiest memory of the Island."

Pat replied, "That would be the time that Carmel the Sheep went missing... all the men of the island gathered by torchlight and scoured the length and breadth of the island.  They found her stuck in a hedge and they brought her back here where they all had a few drinks and they all had sex with her."

"Interesting," said the interviewer, a tad uncomfortably, "would you also share with us your second happiest memory?"

Pat replied, "That would be the time that Margaret my wife went missing... all the men of the island gathered by torchlight and scoured the length and breadth of the island.  They found her stuck in a hedge and they brought her back here where they all had a few drinks and they all had sex with her."

"Finally Pat, would you recall your worst memory of the island."

Pat reflected for a time...

"That," he said, "would have to be the night that I went missing..."