No one needs a post-graduate course in semiotics to understand that huge cars are all about over-compensation for under-endowment in other areas, but it has been mooted that perhaps the current three-tiered parking bay system at UCT should be replaced by one based on size - or, like the airlines have taken to doing, if you spill over beyond your allocated space, you pay for two. Whether your SUV creates overhang on both sides of your alloted bay, or your Lexus protrudes six metres behind... that's two bays. It's obstructing even a micro-mini or a halfo from parking alongside - unless they pass on the favour and, in turn, straddle the white line, cramping things for the next car... until finally six cars are comfortably accommodated in an area designed for sixteen. And somewhere, someone's bloodpressure is not taking that news too well.
But it wasn't only size that was occupying the minds of the Cow and the Nostril Photographer. They mused about the global picture, about the movement away from semiotic giveaways, and the movement towards More Sensible Options like diesel instead of petrol, or electrical, or even hybrid, cars.
They speculated in that warm, fuzzy way that people can when they realise that their workday is over, about the possibility of park 'n ride sites which would allow staff and students to plug in their electric cars for a recharge while they clambered aboard the safe, shiny Jammie Shuttle to head up to Campus, ridding the historic precinct of its traffic congestion, the staff member of their frustration at finding someone's semiotic giveaway spilling over the only remaining P-bays, and the Universe of unnecessary pollution. In time, we'd have a familiar, predictable climate once more, like the world being righted when The Selfish Giant saw the error of his ways.
Carniovorous Cow clumped back to her office, bade Gramsci goodnight, and headed for home. Realising that she had only enough petrol to get to the petrol station... Which would have been fine had there been petrol, which there wasn't. The pumps were dry. As unbidden thoughts of Zimbabwefication tapped on her shoulder, she thought back on her conversation with the Nostril Photographer, about the kinder, fuzzier world they'd dreamed up, and started humming "imagine".... before realising with a shock that today, 8 December, was the 25th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon.
RIP, softer, kinder, gentler world....