Thursday 7 February 2008

Maybe it's just symptomatic of shopping fatigue, or maybe I was in a particularly silly mood - I don't know. Either way, as I pulled into the car park at the supermarket, something struck me as particularly amusing about the sign. There it was, up there with the directions to the disabled spaces and the drop-off point - yellow sign saying "Parent and child parking". All of a sudden I had a vivid mental picture of rows of parents and children parked outside the shop, like dogs waiting to be fetched by their owners. In that split second I could see their poor little faces, patiently staring after each set of receding feet, hoping that they might be next in line to be fetched.

Of course some more exclusive dress shops have taken this to the next level, with the provision of a "man crèche" for those husbands or partners who don't enjoy the shopping process and tend only to get in the way. In their allocated corner they can read magazines, watch television, or swap shopping horror stories with their fellow sufferers. It keeps them out of the way, and maybe even keeps them happy.

But what if it doesn't? Being kept out of the way is one thing, but being "parked" like a spare part is quite another. Sometimes we do it with friendships. As long as it suits us we keep the friendship going. Letters. E-mails, texts - you name it, nothing is too much trouble. But then somehow time and circumstance take their toll, and before we know where we are these once precious friendships are "parked".

In his timeless description of love as "patient, kind and forbearing" the writer of bits of the Bible, Saint Paul, also goes on to say that love "never gives up". True love never abandons a loved one, and sometimes friendship can be the truest love of all. Have you left anyone in the "friends' parking" space recently?