Have you heard?

I grew up in a household where to stick any notice in the window was socially unacceptable. People might see it. You will draw attention to the house and people will take the opportunity to look. That is wrong! Your house is personal, not public! And the window is that fine glassy divide between private and social. Don't mess with it.

And my mother was right! Not only do I see this notice in a resident's window, I cross the road to look at it. Recently I started to photograph every one I passed.

Fortunately, in most cases, the residents have positioned these notices in windows with blinds or net curtains screening their house interior. Thank goodness! If I looked like I was photographing the private space beyond the sign - someone's front room - I might get a punch on the nose. Photographing the sign is (just) okay, but not the room. That would breach cultural etiquette!

Thank goodness for those nets, screens, blinds. But I do notice more of these signs appear in houses without front gardens: the front windows directly face the street with no physical buffer - the passer-by can't help but walk past in easy reading proximity. Instead of trying to keep my gaze at a distance, the residents are recognising my proximity and taking advantage of my footfall.

So here is the typical sign: positioned at this transparent junction between passer-by and resident; the junction of private and shared space; the place where personal interest meets social discourse.

These residents might just get away with breaking my mother's rule, because these signs appear to be in the interests of sharing a neighbour's news, interests, and 'lifestyle businesses' with the wider community. These notices invite me to support Church open days, raise money in charity book sales, cheer along local hospital, hospice or school events, relax in yoga groups, share my new parent status in baby and toddler clubs, and give me an offer of respite with child minding. Aren't they just like short narratives into someone's life?

And it's all so very local. None of the events I've seen on my walk today are advertising large-scale or national business (unless you count the Church) and neither do they advertise anything remotely like a special deal in car shops or burger bars.

I see these signs not emphasising commercial transactions (the book sale might be an exception) but posted primarily on behalf of individuals offering services, referencing events run by support groups, and highlighting or expressing interests the resident would like to share.

Of course I hear a counter explanation. Others need to flesh out the argument properly, but it goes something like, 'All households have to become individual profit centres with at least two adults bringing in income, thus accounting for the proliferation of what is basically shop-window advertisements'.

To me, this seems an unnecessarily heavy-weight economic explanation for the proliferation of posters for the Tuesday Toddler Group. ( I also wonder if it's the type of argument that emerges from someone who's never looked after toddlers 24/7 and can't understand how valuable Tuesdays can become.)

I wonder if the signs are mostly put up mainly by women. And I wonder if the majority of these signs are indeed aimed at women with their tendency to offer support with children, toddlers and provide stress reducing yoga.

Perhaps they are also aimed at those who walk routinely back and forward to shops and local services. I have the impression that more of these signs appear on streets radiating from the main town square than elsewhere, taking advantage of the streams of parents (mothers) walking these routes to drop off and pick up children at a nearby primary school.

Similarly, I wonder whether I would need the car to access any event listed, or whether all the events advertised in the windows are in walking distance. If I scrutinised these notices carefully, I might expect them all to reference events in walking distance.

Finally, I also wonder about control over the signage. I noticed, as I returned to photograph a notice I'd seen earlier, that it was already taken down. The event had passed. Elsewhere in this blog I've surveyed Town Notice Boards, and I note their potential issues with access, maintenance, and vandalism. Putting up a notice in your own front window for the date of a book sale is totally under the control of the resident.

But I feel rather happy to see all these notices. They make me feel I am living in a town where people become involved with different social groups. Whether their motives are economic or social, putting up window signage is a way by which people can take control over an agenda and express their personal identities and interests.

I reflect too, that my mother probably had a different way of communicating information with the neighbours.

Today, it can be as speedy as printing off the email attachment and sticking up a notice. I'm looking at the equivalent of leaning over the garden fence to share important tid-bits and find out what's happening, when are things starting, where is it going off, who's involved, and will you come along too?

Achtung

Here's a sign on a back gate to a garden (owned by Number 11). The gates face into back alleyways and are used by pedestrians, dog walkers, kids, and for access to garages.

Why do people sign their house in this way?* Do you put up signs against the place you live?

But of the sign above? I don't believe it's so we passers-by can think the residents are German. Or that the family at Number 11 would like to use this covert method to slyly tell us they've visited Germany and brought back a souvenir. Or that they would like to be judged as socially superior to the residents at Number 9 who don't have a sign.

If they are saying anything, then it might be, 'Look at us! We are mad, aren't we, putting up signage that's alien to our context, that mashes together different worlds ... we're unpredictable, huh?!'

Maybe, if they're post-modern fine art students, they might add, 'out of this clash of World War 2 battlefield signage and domestic back garden we hope there's something that approaches irony and social commentary, but if there isn't, then that's okay... Enjoy!'

Which gets me to my point. I think people put up signs like this because they want to a) identify their belonging to a particular property b) publicly celebrate their identities in what is otherwise a fairly anonymous and 'unclaimed' alleyway, and c) use that moment when I pause to share their whimsical take on life, and make me smile.

Which it does.

The word sprayed out is MINEN. I pause briefly to reflect that the people at Number 11 probably haven't laid mines in their own back garden to blow up invaders, unwanted wanderers, or burglers. But I have no answer why someone sprayed out the word. Have you?


* I have a large metal-backed number, probably used in a sports scoreboard before they went digital. I don't play any sports. I like the big number, unfancifully presented. It's positioned where no-one except the family can see it.

The Conscience Inside my Head meets the Judgements of the Outside World

We have many NO PARKING signs around the town.

People paint these signs - or put up ready-made signs - on garage doors at their properties, or by public spaces adjacent to their property boundaries, or where doors and gates are associated with business premises.

Basically, I think of these NO PARKING signs as meaning the person putting up the sign wants to claim, temporarily and arbitrarily, the public space by the sign. To claim a priority over this space, they use the short, prohibitive language of authorities who have legal powers: NO PARKING. (Even though the resident's sign simply means, We want this space whenever we like!)

These signs are clearly aimed at drivers rather than pedestrians, and they face outward to public access.

I interpret these signs to refer to the physical space in front of the gates or, as in this next example, the space in front of the sign, and not a declaration that parking is not allowed on the inside of the door, gate, or structure, where their own vehicle is kept. (That would be ironic, yes?!)

I see these NO PARKING signs all around this car-dense town. I wonder if they're telling me about existing points of conflict between vehicle traffic - corners, turnings, narrow roads, junctions of private land and public road, and so on.

(Here the No Parking sign is enforced by the threat of a bit of metal.)

(The threat of clamping is losing its power, I think, thanks to legal restrictions on clamping companies.)

I can see how the signs appear in a range of materials, media, colours, letter organisations and sizes, and on a range of surfaces (but I've not yet seen one painted on the ground). Sometimes these signs are alone or with other signs; sometimes they explain the prohibition (as if the word NO needs a reason); sometimes politeness words are added. It's quite a rich mix.

(Classy - engraved and painted in gold letters on grey slate, and with the added polite word please!)

The hand-painted signs I see are often in capital letters. And I wonder if the person, in the act of painting, thinks, 'the bigger I paint this, the more it will show I mean it and I will follow it up with a hammer!'

Perhaps the writer hopes the super-large paint gives the word not simply greater visibility but greater authority, maybe as if the owner was there to wave their arms, and shout 'My patch! Clear off!'

(The strategy of paint it large and write it twice clearly doesn't work.)

People place shop-bought metal signs too. These signs might contain red (danger! authority!); have a circle and bar (standard sign meaning 'NO'); and the accompanying text might be in lower case.

But how do I, as a driver, read these signs? I'm just driving around, desperate for a parking space!

This is probably the order of my thinking.

1. Is there a Council logo?
If there isn't, then I might risk parking the car, perhaps for a short time. Like below. These NO PARKING signs are not 'official'. I know they are 'unofficial' - i.e. put up by residents and people working at businesses - because these signs do not bear the Council logo. Ha!

(Should I risk it? Signs not from the Local Council!)

The Council logo comes with this strange power: it carries the inference that their instruction, NO PARKING, can be backed up with 'official sanction'.

Might they bring these sanctions to me at any future time - long after I've moved the car from the NO PARKING site? What if there are cameras? I imagine the Council use CCTV to aggressively outline, monitor, and sanction their spaces. They would either very smartly have a foot-patrolling traffic warden on me, or maybe I'd receive a fine through the post? Either way I'd face a financial punishment of £60. I couldn't claim ignorance, disability, noble cause or hardship to wriggle out of it. I already feel a bit disreputable just thinking about trying.

Then again ... I do not know whether events would unfold like this. Could I get away with my 'illegal' activity? But I've had the experience of being fined for overstaying a parking limit by the Council. (I could have spent my sixty pounds on something better.)

Past experience guides future wisdom, so affects my present behaviour. My judgement says, 'Never park in places that have the Council logo!'

(Should I risk it here instead? Signs not from the Local Council!)

But look, these are not Council-marked spaces! They're from locals protecting their garage access. And I don't believe these (literally) half-hearted attempts to control this space with a broken threat about clamped.

But what am I learning so far about these urban NO PARKING signs?

I'm already using these simple two words as a starting point to weigh up the risks of legal enforcement and financial punishment, even though these signs largely mention no such things.

2. What lines are on the road?
Double yellow lines mean NO PARKING. If a shop-bought NO PARKING sign combines with double yellow lines, what is that telling me? That the owner knows people ignore the traffic law here, so they're reminding us of it? Will it mean the controller of this door has the right to ring up a traffic warden, have them pop over, and slam! Another £60 fine!

What about the place below? Could I park? Here are two signs on brick, not on the garage door. I wonder if brick gives the signs the reference point to the road, rather than to a measurable space in front of the garage door.

But look. They win. I'm not parking here. Too risky with those double yellows.

What of this next place? No double yellow lines here! The yellow perils end with a bar, to the right-hand side of the precious parking space.

Would you park? A low risk of a fine? Only for a short time? 

But I'm now checking the immediate context as well as the sign. This tells me that signs work with and within their surroundings: I need more clues than just the sign if I'm to take away the information on which I make my judgement.

And now of course I now make Consideration Number 3.

3. Safety.
As drivers, we're brought up to the idea that road signage helps maintain free-flow of traffic and ensures public safety - we are, after all, in charge of a vehicle that can be deadly. I scan along the road ahead and behind to look for how the road shapes; I'm assessing the likely movement of other vehicles.

If I park here, impede the traffic way, force another driver to change speed and direction, and they have an accident - horror! what if they are injured? - then can I retrospectively defend my judgement when I contravened a NO PARKING sign? What's my insurance position if another driver hits my car, parked in front of two NO PARKING signs? And what if I am sat in my car and am injured too?

Now my parking decision, which started with one sign, is all mixed up with my speculation of the future, my fear that I'll be despised because my inconsiderate actions hurt another driver, I am in hospital myself, I have no car to park because someone else drove into it, and my insurance premiums will rise.

I need consideration Number 4.

4. Consideration.
I guess these next NO PARKING signs trade on this. While the sign on the right is the standard variety I'd expect to buy at the home-and-garden centre, the sign on the left seems to recognise that this anonymous, industrially-stamped metal sign with its generic NO circle, well, it has no real force of law unless backed up with yellow lines. (There aren't any.)

Hence the owner of this gate (and would-be controller of the public space) appeals to my sense of neighbourliness and ethical behaviour by explaining why they want to control access.

Now who is unkind, uncaring, and cruel enough to park here?

What I've found out about these signs is how little they say in words - two words in some cases - and those are prohibitive rather than information-giving. But how much is going on in my head! How much culture, contextual knowledge and personal experience I'm bringing to the sign! It's a bit scary, even to me.

My judgement about where to park the car now includes thoughts such as - Should I park far away, walk, and take exercise? Should I start a pressure group for Resident Permit Parking? Should I even own a car, if parking is so much trouble? My culture, ethics, sense of morality, safety, responsibilities of car ownership, thoughts about insurance, fears about the power of the local authorities, my willingness to engage in hierarchies of deference or my impulse to protest and be defiant, my stand about the right of public spaces not to be claimed by private hands, my risk and hazard perceptions, my self-identity, friendliness (or otherwise) with the neighbours, my experiences of the past, my judgements about the future, my needs of the now, and the practical considerations (driving round back streets looking for a parking space on an empty fuel tank) sometimes leads me to do what I said to myself I would never do, never, ever.

Park in front of NO PARKING signs with Council logo. But aha! Precise local knowledge tells me I can get away with parking in front of the left door for 20 minutes after 6pm. But not in front of the right-hand door. (Never the right-hand door.)

So what did I learn? These signs - which state unambiguous prohibitions and attempt to control my behaviour at the moment I read them - only ever impact on my thinking; they do not ultimately determine my behaviour. Over a period of time, they may get me to think in particular habitual ways and so, in some way, regulate, or organise my behaviour.

In this way, it could be argued that signage could be used as one point to explore a view of myself in the world meeting the world telling me what to do. (That would create a piece of text for a psychological fest or some phenomethodological fun!)

But these signs also have suggested to me more than my own psychological analysis.

They suggest ideas about authorship, authorities, declarations, needs, wants, and motive; I now wonder about how people use signs to negotiate as if by proxy when they themselves are not there; I have a view of how drivers and signers behave and interact in space and place; time seems to be an important part of how I interpret signs - I might be able to reinterpret their message at different times of the day, or they may carry a weight into the future, or suggest a history of the past; I realise I need to study context and place alongside the actual sign to extract meanings from it; I might need to assess a variety of information in graphic form through this world of communication by colour, shape, size, composition, form; and then I bring to any interpretation a huge amount of my own cultural experience and local knowledge - before I even begin with how all these assessments and judgements feed into my actual driving behaviour.

All thanks to the fact I couldn't find a parking space.