Most people lose their car in the Tesco’s car park. I don’t—I solved the problem once and never had to think about it again. This post starts with frozen peas and ends with spirals.
Have you ever come out of Tesco’s and forgotten where you parked?
I’ve never done that.
I don’t have a great memory—but I don’t need one.
I always park in the same area.
That way, I don’t have to remember anything.
Most people think in straight lines—park, shop, leave.
But I like to think more elliptically.
When you go shopping you:
- Park.
- Walk to get a trolley.
- Then to the entrance.
- Buy 40 bags of frozen peas—panic-bought because they were on special.
- Walk from the exit to your car.
- Unload.
- Put the trolley in a bay.
- Walk back to your car.
This is your basic travelling salesman problem—except the car isn’t moving.
You always have to return the trolley.
If you park next to a bay, that part’s basically a no-op.
The key is finding an area that always has space.
If it’s not consistent, the whole plan falls apart.
But here’s the trick:
People are rarely looking for parking on the way out of a car park.
So near the exit? It’s often quiet. Empty.
A secret island of calm.
At my local Tesco’s, I park on the way out. Near a trolley bay.
Always a space.
Always easy to find the car.
No stress.
And I go shopping just before 9pm.
It’s quieter. I can do scan-as-you-shop and race around like I’m on Supermarket Sweep.
Precision. Efficiency. Elegance.
And it’s not just Tesco’s.
At IKEA in Milton Keynes, everyone queues outside, fighting for puddle-strewn spaces under a flickering lamp post.
Meanwhile, I drive around them and park under the store—dry, shaded, close to the entrance, always empty.
It’s like discovering a secret level in a game no one else knows exists.
I was telling long-suffering Robin—my developer friend and frequent victim of my latest 3D printing brainwaves—about my Tesco’s parking strategy.
When I finished, I thought he’d tell me his strategy so we could compare notes.
He didn’t.
I figured he was just playing it close to his chest.
If you give away your best secrets everyone will park under IKEA.
Honestly, he looked a bit stunned—I figured he just needed another shot of cold brew.
I recently realised not everyone does this.
Nobody told me.
I don’t just do it with parking spaces. I do it all the time. About everything.
Like how the tiniest act of kindness can ripple outwards for years.
For me, almost everything is connected—
the same patterns happening again and again, but slightly twisted each time.
Like a spiral staircase—always circling the same ideas, but seeing them from a different angle.
I’m not sure if there’s a proper name for this, so I’m making one up:
Lateral Insight (n.)
The mildly baffling ability to connect two unrelated things—like flying the space shuttle and choosing a spatula—and somehow make it make sense.
Usually starts with “Wait, hear me out,” and ends with “…and that’s how they learnt to fly the space shuttle.”
Example usage: “I loved that lateral insight when you developed a whole philosophy around a children’s TV programme about a dog.”
Side effects may include: raised eyebrows, deep nods, and people quietly rethinking their lives.
Motto: Ex spatula, ad astra (From spatula, to the stars.)
You might think I’m weird for putting that much lateral insight into where I park.
But I only had to think about it once.
Now it’s automatic. No stress. No forgetting. No wandering around the car park in the rain, pushing a trolley full of soggy mushy peas.
I don’t do it to be clever. I do it to make life simpler.
You need to figure it out every time. You lose your car. And you think I’m the weird one?
The world is full of straight lines,
But I’ve always loved spirals.
Interesting. Unexpected. Beautiful.
Sometimes the shortest path is a spiral.
Davide la Locomotive 
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