Should you ever wish to know how it feels to have your mood in tatters before your day has even begun, take a cruise around Hemel Hempstead at eight-thirty in the morning then try to actually use one of the car parks; that should do the trick.
Take today as a typical example. I am on my way to work. In Hemel. Which believe me is depressing enough. I have been in the car less than two minutes before I fall victim to a Range Rover driver with a complex. Clearly overcompensating for the fact he has a penis the size of a button mushroom by purchasing a large car, he’s practically in my boot for the entire journey, blaring his horn when I have the audacity to hold him up by giving way to the right at a roundabout. (Abusing people for obeying the Highway Code is how they roll here). I really must remind myself to be more enraged at life before getting behind the wheel again.
I swerve into the car park – though obviously not the one next door to my office, which charges EIGHT POUNDS a day – and barely make it to the ticket machine before I’m beeped at again. Seriously, I’m on the path, how can I have committed another horn-worthy offence? Oh. I see. A white van. I should’ve guessed. It is after all an integral part of a van driver’s job description to beep and rev at anyone they’re 90 per cent sure is female. Perhaps I should be flattered. This might be as good as it gets.
So that takes us up to 8:45am. I then spend the next five minutes digging about in my purse, attempting to make £3.50 out of the four 10p’s and two 20p’s I find. Couldn’t I just feed it that nice crisp £10 note I keep stashed away for pick and mix emergencies instead? Or perhaps it prefers plastic? Well in short, no. It’s coins or nothing. Except for 5p’s, which ‘as of the week commencing 25th March’ this machine has also taken an aversion to. Incidentally, it’s not that keen on giving change either, with a sticker cheerfully declaring ‘Overpayment Accepted’. How kind. Where’s all that extra cash going I wonder? To charity? Or towards making the traffic wardens’ Nazi-themed Christmas Party a little bit less tragic? I wonder. Why not just put a sign up saying ‘Thieves Operate in this Area’? Because they certainly do.
Of course, they only make it this hard for us to buy a ticket because they don’t actually want us to. Because if paying to park was made easy, everyone would do it. And then traffic wardens would have nothing to do. They would cease to be sad individuals hiding in bushes with cameras, and would simply become weird individuals hiding in bushes with cameras. Then how will they reap their revenge on the world for dealing them such a shit hand? No, that wouldn’t do at all. Although I suppose there’s always the totally powerless role of Police Community Support Officer to fall back on, should Hemel council ever drag their parking system into the 21st Century. At least then they could continue to exercise their misplaced sense of importance; striding around the town centre, bellowing made-up acronyms into walkie talkies and pouncing on any youth who happens to be in possession of a beverage stronger than Red Bull. But for now it seems their jobs are safe. I suppose I could just walk to work. But then I’d really have something to complain about.
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