Michelangelo spent four years painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Tolstoy devoted six to “War and Peace,” and the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan took more than twice that to erect the Taj Mahal.
But did any of them park in every single spot of their local grocery store?
Maybe they would have, given the chance and the existence of a Publix or Tesco. Instead the feat was achieved by Gareth Wild, a 39-year-old production director who assiduously took up space, in one spot after another at the local Sainsbury’s of his London suburb, until he had used 211 parking spots over six years.
“If you do anything small, or a little thing over a long period of time, it doesn’t feel like too much,” Mr. Wild said. “Then you put it together and suddenly you’re being interviewed by people for your car parking exploits.”
Mr. Wild finished his unusual project this week, drawing notice from the BBC, The Guardian and other news organizations after he wrote about his “magnum opus” on Twitter.
three prime ministers, a royal wedding, Brexit, “Megxit” and a pandemic, Mr. Wild closed in on Spot 211 this week. “I don’t want to call it an anticlimax because it was still great to finish, but by the last 20 or 30 it was inevitable,” he said. “I was getting one each week, it was pretty easy.”
Leisure Studies Association, said that while he had encountered many quirky hobbies and pet projects over the years, “I’ve never heard of any thing like this, to be brutally honest.”