King Of The Road

It’s fair to say I did something a little bit naughty in my car yesterday. Namely, in a car park in town, I spotted a parking space that I wanted and, as there wasn’t another car about, I nipped through a No Entry section of the car park, turned immediately left and drove through one space into the one I wanted.

It was hardly the crime of the century and, as the car park in question has a rather protracted one-way system, it just seemed easier. I broke the rules for a total of five yards but, having checked down the one way section first and looked in my mirror, there weren’t any other cars in my immediate vicinity to cause an issue to.

As I sat there for a moment in my Jeep, however, a green car pulled around in front of me and the lady in the passenger seat let rip with a tirade of verbal and gesturing abuse. Clearly, the keen-eyed passenger – whose car had still been on the entry ramp at the time of my misdemeanour – had spotted my flagrant disregard for the rules and was eager to let me know that I’d been caught out.

Such was her passion to point out to me that red-blooded khaki-short wearing four-by-four driving men like me are the antithesis of everything that is good for the planet and society itself that she almost punched the poor fellow next to her in the face.

She also failed to spot that, behind me, a tiny and ageing faded red Citroën AX had taken the exact same route through the No Entry sign as me, and had pulled in to the space behind.

An hour later, whilst waiting for Ali to finish shopping in Iceland, I returned to the car with the children to wait for her. The Citroën had gone but, as I sat there, a Renault Megane estate did exactly the same thing – breaking the law by a total of five yards – and pulled in to the space behind me. When the driver emerged from the vehicle, it turned out to be a lady. And one dressed in a quite well-to-do manner, too.

Chuckling to myself, I watched as two youngsters on BMX-style bikes raced each other the wrong way down the up ramp.

All of which makes me wish I could tell that gesticulating lady that misuse of the car park isn’t just the preserve of four-by-four drivers. Or men.

Or, for that matter, grown-ups.