Firstly, according to the Urban Disruption and Traffic Knobbling Department of Canis Major Alpha, parking is supposed to be simple, convenient and fun.

Such lies do not go unpunished and, to a being, every employee of that now defunct organisation has been hunted down and forced to watch public information films until their heads exploded.

Parking, according to any student of the subject, is defined not by the final act of leaving your vehicle to go shopping, but by the activities that take up the majority of the time while you are looking for a space.

If you wish to visit a department store or other psychologically destabilising environment you will first have to pilot your vehicle into the desired urban centre and find the nearest tower of grey, brutalist architecture. This is a car park, a maze-like structure of split layers and erroneous signs that has been specifically designed to extract vast sums of money from those amongst the population who are unable to understand the geo-spatial and temporal complexities of bus timetables.

One you have located the car park the longest part of the process begins, the crawl. You will now pilot your vehicle at near stationary speeds around each section of each level before progressing up a ramp that is millimetres to narrow for any vehicle irrespective of its make or model.

As you "level up" the only discernable reward for engaging in this game is an increased level of adrenaline and a lack of temper.

At level two it is vitally important to let your partner out of the vehicle next to the sign that reads "Stairs and Elevators to Shops" with a heartfelt promise that you will call once you have found a space. This will avoid divorce and, in extreme cases, jail time.

The process of the crawl can now continue, with the added benefit of being able to vent your true feelings about the car in front, the marital status of the other driver's parents, the architectural choices of the designers and so on.

Eventually, after a period of some hours, you may now find yourself on the top level of the building. (If this level is in the open air it will have always just started to rain – a fact that has not escaped the notice of atmosphere engineers on some of the more severe desert worlds).

If you are lucky there will be a space, a brief description of which follows.

The space for your vehicle will be:

• Too narrow.
• Too short.
• Next to a large square pillar covered in paint scrapings.
• Full of leaked oil.
• The windiest place in the building and...
• Have a trolley in it padlocked to some mysterious pipework.

This is the point in the exercise where you, and experience driver, get to practise the one-thousand point turn. You have plenty of time. Don't worry about the queue of traffic that forms behind you as they wait for you to get out of the way of the exit, they will undoubtedly appreciate this display of skill and nerve as you edge your vehicle into a space that is obviously too small.

After you have extracted your fingernails from the steering wheel and engaged the handbrake you will now discover you are unable to open the door, thanks to the aforementioned trolley / pillar / mysterious pipework. Don't worry, just wind the window down and climb out, not forgetting to support your weight on your hands and you flop into the puddle of congealed motor oil.

Winding the window up again can be more of a challenge. The gap to get your arm into the car will be painfully narrow and the button in question will be a fraction too far away, unless you are prepared at his juncture to dislocate your shoulder for that extra centimetre of reach.

Having successfully closed and locked your vehicle it is important to look out over the wall and see the shop you didn't want to go to in the first place some distance below but only just across the street from where you are currently standing.

The topological nature of car parks are such that no matter which exit you choose you will always end up in a sub-basement on the other side of the building. This is why there is always a being in a yellow plastic booth you can ask for help / be laughed at by.

The booth-being will then direct you to an elevator that, although clearly marked as "To Shops" has been hidden behind improbable protuberances in the megacrete and cannot be seen from any angle or from any other location in the building unless you are standing directly in front of the doors.

With the shop clearly in sight you will now realise you have forgotten to buy a ticket, can't remember the level where your vehicle is and that you will have left all your spare change in your other trousers.

In other news, the Canis Major Alpha Department of Mental Health has just completed work on a new combination asylum and spa to deal with the fallout of car park architecture.

Entry Ends.

The Lost Transmissions Archive

Tim Stevenson

02.04.12 Front Page

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