What was the last thing you saw in a car park? We were in Knaresborough for Uncle Jim’s seventy-fifth birthday and had just squeezed our diminutive Kia Picanto into a space when a large shadow passed overhead. A red kite hung above us. Tail tilting this way and that like a ship’s rudder, it glided slowly over, the fingers of its great wings strumming the market-town air like a lutenist. Great excitement among those standing on the humble asphalt. I’ve seen vultures in the African bush, but this was even more awe inspiring: majesty where it’s not allowed. Usually car parks are ecological disaster zones; the very opposite of an oasis, these patches of scorched earth, cluster our communities like bomb craters. But does it have to be like that? The car park at our loca