1: People Reversing Into Parking Spaces

We live in a culture where people are desperate to save time. My generation is responsible for the rise in convenience food, with entire dinners distilled into plastic-bound microwave form. Our days are filled with labour saving machinery - my kitchen has the aforementioned microwave (that to be honest, I don't really trust - but that's because it has a mean face), a dishwasher, a washing machine and an iron that virtually irons clothes itself. By virtually, I mean that's what I dream of at night - that I wake up and somehow live in a Disney film. And if that ever happens, I'd like a wisecracking animal sidekick. Possibly an Otter. Called Simeon.

Not "Simon". That's important.

I won't lie to you. The time-saving elements of my kitchen are redundant as I can't cook, as I result I rarely eat off proper china (and by that I mean cheap Ikea plates, the idea of me having Royal Doulton or Spode crockery is as hilarious as it is unlikely) and I tend to do the washing when I run out of clothes and it's either put the machine on or turn up to gigs wearing tracksuit bottoms and the 1997 Leicester City shirt (with Izzet 8 on the back). And that's not the look I'm going for.

But for most people these time-saving measures are a boon. It gives them more time to work themselves into the ground at their stressful jobs, to write oddly obsessive blogs about things that irk them, to concoct complicated plans on how best to form your own army of bejeweled scooter-riding super-pandas. Essentially there are so many time and labour saving devices in our lives that we should not need to rush around anywhere. We shouldn't need to take yet further steps to speed up our day. We should be able to spend an extra five minutes a day on, lets say, our daily commute, doing whatever we like because dammit, we earned that extra time. Let us stop and pick up litter from a lay-by. Help a stranded motorist change a tyre. Park outside a nunnery playing "Regulate" by Warren G and Nate Dogg. That's all healthy and fun.

Don't use that extra time you've made to reverse into a parking space. Because as a rule, if you choose to park in this way it WILL take you all of that time to do this one simple exercise. And for what? So you can merely drive away at the end of your working day or shopping trip? You can start up your engine and drive away, giving us poor normal-parking folk a regal wave from your fucking Mini Cooper whilst we suffer the mind numbing tedium of - holy crap - reversing just the once and driving away?

I used to work in an office with its own multi storey car park. I could guarantee that every single day the person in front of me in the car park - usually a woman in their mid twenties, trying to prove their fashionista status by carrying a Bloomingdales Brown Bag and of course, driving a fucking Mini Cooper - would reverse into their space, as if to look at me and taunt me about my life. They need to get away as quick as possible at the end of the day and that additional 30 seconds they may have to spend reversing at the end of said day (as opposed to the five minutes they wasted at the beginning of their day trying to jab their fuckwitted car repeatedly into a space like a teenage virgin with a nerve-induced semi trying to coax himself into the correct hole) would merely get in the way of their important plans. The gym, coffee with friends, dinner with one of their many suitors at their perfect flat overlooking the river. Five minutes of my day may be wasted but I'm a mere regular parker, with my life limited to eating cold beans from a tin and driving a diesel Focus.

If I ever build a car park - and let's be honest, that's the dream - then I'm equipping each space with those spikes that burst your tires of you drive over them a certain way. That'll teach them.