I would like to consider myself a fairly passive being who manages to steer off most of life’s irritations with a bit of silent muttering…but an issue that seems to be really irritating me at the minute, is that of the selfish parker, so if you are one, perhaps you’d like to bow out at this stage……(yes, that does include you Max)!
The Leisure Centre
There are two main places in my locality that are particularly targeted for this heinous offence, the first, and perhaps most ironic, is the leisure centre. At this point I feel the need to emphasise that a leisure centre, by definition, is a place that you generally frequent to improve you or your childs fitness. Our centre has 3 car parks, one exclusively for disabled parking and coaches dropping off small children, conveniently and rightly located directly in front of the entrance. The 2nd, and the car park of choice, is about a 30 second walk away from the entrance, the 3rd, an overspill, is at a real push, a 1 minute walk away from the entrance. The 2nd more popular car park has lots of CLEARLY MARKED OUT spaces, funnily enough those spaces are NOT at the edge of the parking zones, that area, bizarrely enough is to allow cars to safely pass each other, otherwise known as a road. If after having a quick scoot round the carpark, you are in the rare position (and it is rare) that you cannot find a space, then you’re encouraged by the VERY LARGE sign on the main road, to drive up to the quite logically and conveniently placed overspill that is surprisingly provided for such occurrences. That’s a frickin mind blowingly alien concept isn’t it?! I mean, on what planet must this leisure centre, that promotes health and exercise, be on, to dare suggest that folk have to, god forbid walk, an extra 30 seconds (at most) to get to their door?! Apparently that is WAY beyond the limitations of my favourite parker….
The Hoverer
The other culprits are the ‘hoverer’s’…. frustratingly I was stuck behind one tonight whilst trying to park to take the girls to their swimming lessons. She waited a full 7 and a half (I counted) minutes for a man to walk to his car, climb in and drive off, so she could nab his space. It would have taken her less than half the time to simply drive on and park in the overspill. Initially I considered the fact she might have had a baby or something, but no, she was a young woman, on her own, dressed in gym gear, presumably off for a work out, yet not prepared to make the intensive walk from the other carpark….mind blown.
School
The second place that seems to be rife for it is school. Now this really does piss me off!! There are CLEARLY obvious places outside school where people can safely park, admittedly , they are limited but most people at our school live within a 10 mins walking distance anyway and if you’re willing to drive an extra few seconds around the corner, there are loads of spaces on neighbouring roads. The reason there are these funny white lines and big yellow letters on the road telling you NOT to park, is to, funnily enough, protect OUR own children from being run over as they block their view of the road when crossing over. We get MANY and MULTIPLE reminders from school asking us not to park in these spots, yet people still do!!! Now we have ALL been there, it is ridiculously frustrating when you have a baby asleep in their car seat, particularly if poorly, or worse a baby and a toddler and it’s raining, and maybe on the rare occasion, a bit of discreet not entirely legal parking might be required, and equally I’m sure there are the parents that have prior arrangements with the school/council to allow this….but surely that is not the case all the time???!!! At the end of the day, these rules are in place to protect our children!! Boggles my simple mind that folk just don’t seem to get this….!
A smaller yet nonetheless significant 3rd place is our local supermarket. I am not disabled so therefore would not park in an allocated disabled car parking space. Please people with no children, have some bloody respect, and leave the parent and child spaces to those of us that have them……
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