Vive le Skip

Once upon a time – and I mean a proper time, somewhere around the early 1900s when moustaches curled proudly and cars needed cranking – the word garage meant something. A place of dignity. A shrine to the motorcar. Borrowed from the French garer, it was a fine Gallic nod to shelter, to protection. Your Austin Seven, your Humber Super Snipe – they deserved a garage. It was their temple, their sanctum, their duvet against the British drizzle.

But now? Now a garage is a euphemism. It’s shorthand for "place where crap goes to die." Sheltering a vehicle? Don’t be ridiculous. The average British garage these days couldn’t house a unicycle, let alone a car. Try reversing your 2020s hatchback into one of these narrow brick coffins – you’ll shear the wing mirrors off before the back wheels are over the threshold.

No, today’s garage is a museum of bad decisions. A reliquary of half-finished projects, broken toasters, and that bloody exercise bike bought during lockdown and never used. It’s where garden tools go to rust, where spiders evolve into apex predators, and where old tins of Farrow & Ball paint congeal in pastel-hued oblivion.

Ask someone if they’ve got a garage and they’ll beam with pride – not because it houses their car, but because it houses potential. Not actual usefulness, you understand – just potential. One day, they’ll clear it out and turn it into a home gym. Or an office. Or a man cave. Or a she-shed. Or a microbrewery. Or something else they’ll never finish.

In posher parts of the country, garages have been reinvented altogether. They’re no longer for cars or clutter – they’re holiday lets. They’ve got bifold doors, underfloor heating, and names like “The Stables” or “Coachman’s Retreat”, even though the closest they’ve come to horses is a novelty wine rack made from reclaimed barn wood.

And so, like the term “gentleman” or “artisan bread”, the word garage has drifted into semantic retirement. It still gets wheeled out in estate agent blurbs – “Detached house with garage” – but we all know the truth. You’ll need a crowbar and three mates just to open the door.

It’s a shame, really. We used to respect our vehicles. Tuck them up at night. Close the garage door with reverence. Now they’re left out on the street like unwanted shopping trolleys, while the garage guards your 1993 Hi-Fi system and a box of tangled Christmas lights.

So next time someone says they’ve got a garage, raise an eyebrow and ask: "But can you actually put a car in it?" Odds are they’ll go quiet, look sheepish, and mutter something about “having a clear-out soon.”

And thus the noble garage – once a proud palace of petrol and polish – now languishes as a glorified junk bunker. Vive la révolution? Non. Vive le skip.