No parking tickets for 63 years. Now two at once for Dad
They say that two buses always come along at once, which I suppose is true, but they still never come when you want them to, do they?
And so continues the saga of My Father and the Parking Ticket.
Regular readers will recall that Dad received his first parking ticket in 63 years a few weeks ago.
Many of you wrote in his support – even though he had, after all, forgotten the time and parked for longer than he should have done, albeit to allow a disabled person to use his own off road parking space.
Parking, it seems, is a matter that inflames us round here more than most and I found that sympathies tend to be on the side of forgetful 80 year olds rather than people in uniforms whose purpose in life, whether intentionally or not, generally has the effect of making other people's day that little bit worse.
It struck me last week, while on holiday in Norfolk, that the sign 'Parking: Free' I spotted in Gorleston as I headed for lunch at the Storm House Café, is an increasing rarity in these straitened times.
Perhaps readers can enlighten me as to where else in the region such delights can be found?
Anyhow, I returned home at the weekend to learn from my mother that Dad has managed to double his parking ticket tally in the space of a month.
After 63 years of innocence – two chastisements in quick succession! What are the chances?
Anyhow, this time he had parked in a local car park he uses regularly but was penalised for parking over the line.
He does have a very large car – for which he deserves no sympathy in my view.
But, as he pointed out to me, the line he slightly crossed was next to some bins and a railing so it wasn't as though he was stopping anyone else from parking next to him!
One does begin to fear a campaign against 80-year-old men with loud-mouthed daughters, but that couldn't be the case, could it?
It's hardly his fault that I am his daughter.
No actually, scratch that.
When I said I might write about the matter again, he said, without a beat, 'Go on. Stir it up! Maybe I'll get three!' Not his fault that I am his daughter?
Perhaps, after all, it is.
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