I live in Cooks Hill. Nearly everyday, I need to carry my children, plus many many boxes ( I work as a mobile art teacher and have so much stuff) around the block because the people in front of my house are parking extremely unconsidered and happily double park resulting in daily frustration for most of my neighbours and myself. But what can you do? Writing little mean messages does not help. Therefore my friend Helen and me brainstormed, searching for a fun and sweet way to educate without patronising. As a result the Care Parking poem was born. It goes like this: Some people are big,
Some people are small,
Some people are wide,
Some people are tall.

Many beasts have two feet,
Some have four,
A few have six legs,
And a few possess more.

I’ve seen women on wheels,
Ladies with sticks,
Dashing men beside prams,
And joggers with kids.

We all take up space,
Some more, some less,
But in Newcastle City,
We park the best! At the moment I illustrate the poem as a booklet, one verse per spread and once finished we will have something sweet and powerful to give to the double parkers and everyone feeling annoyed by it. Interestingly, since talking with friends about our poem/booklet approach we realised that there are actually so many everyday annoyances that need some poems..... so we figured this could be the starting point a New(y) way of daily conflict-resolution......