Ticket to nowhere

I have just discovered a new technique for finding a space in busy car-parks which I've never tried before and thought I would, perhaps altruistically, share it with you.

The secret is . . .

Waiting!

This is not normally something I attempt, as I have the patience of a hyperactive fieldmouse. My de rigeur method of parking is to hammer in through the barrier, squeal round looking left and right for a space, tutting loudly when there aren't any and zooming over to the next car-park to repeat the sequence. This takes about ten minutes, uses a lot of fuel and invariably results in me eventually finding a space in the first car park I tried anyway.

Recently I realised that, generally, there's usually someone coming back to leave every five minutes or so, so why not hang around and take advantage, giving them an encouraging get-a-wiggle-on-matey-I-haven't-got-all-day smile, and revving your engine slightly?

That sounds more menacing than it is, but it's actually more of a friendly reminder to buck up than anything threatening. Like demanding money with menaces, which must be fun when the loan shark turns up with a couple of stripy-jerseyed cartoon ragamuffins.

So now, like a vehicular pike in a tarmac canal, I sit and wait for the vulnerable ducklings of tired shoppers to waddle back to their cars, slowly following them in a manner usually reserved for retired judges on kerb-sides at night, until they vacate their space. Then I pounce! Like a tiger.

A tiger in a Focus C-Max.

Of course, the chances are greatly increased if you've made your morning sacrifice to the gods of vacant spaces, which is usually a spot of 10w40 oil poured over a chicken's claw whilst chanting "chugga chugga chugga chugga chuggington" and turning widdershins.

Come on, we've all done it.

It must work because every time I do it, I subsequently get a parking space, and often after waiting only 20 or 30 minutes. Cause and effect, see?

As contractually obligated, the gods grinned their beneficent carbon-monoxidey grins on us, and an old biddy wandered in to vacate a space. Obviously, not without putting her shopping down, looking for her keys in a handbag so large you could keep a panda in it, finding them, putting them on the roof, opening the boot, putting the shopping in, reading the labels on every item as she put them in, closing the boot, watching in confusion as it bounced open again, removing her handbag from the hinges, closing it again, getting in the car, putting her seat belt on, patting her blue rinse, checking she could see herself properly in the rear-view mirror, undoing her seat belt, getting back out of the car and retrieving her keys from the roof, getting back in the car, starting her engine and then backing out at 1 MPH but 5000 RPM.

Of course, by this time, two other cars had come and gone, but because the old lady had smiled at me so sweetly whilst I was waiting, before kindly giving me her ticket and then getting into her cronemobile (a practically compulsory purple Nissan Micra), I felt beholden to use that space.

The ticket had twenty-seven minutes left on it.

Ooh, quandary.

I had about an hours worth of stuff to do in town, so I knew I was going to need to longer than that. You then have questions to ask yourself. Do I accept, and then risk not being picked up by the Parking Nazis*? Do I rush, and try to jam everything in to 27 minutes? Do I come back, and get an hour later on?

I could have graciously accepted and quietly got a ticket of my own anyway, and not use her nominally generous offer, but the presiding argument for not doing it was that it was free!

I love free stuff.

So I said thank you, bundled the family out of the car, which anyone with a toddler can tell would account for about twelve of those minutes, and began the shop. After a bit, I realised I had to go back and replace the donated ticket for a legitimately purchased one, which I duly did. Later, whilst eating a healthy meatball and jalapeno sandwich, I worked out that I had saved myself a whopping 30p.

I was pleased with this saving until I realised that, if someone had offered to go and change the ticket for me for thirty pence, I would have gladly agreed, so in fact I had simply paid for a walk I didn't want.

Still, it was free, and that's the main thing.

We concluded our usual shopping business, which essentially involves me grumbling incessantly about the price of razors, avoided the Earnest Young Things collecting for Dreadlock Relief or something, before making our way back to the car store.

I once had a pubescent Parking Nazi* tell me I wasn't allowed to give someone my ticket, although I pointed out that I was, because I had hired that space in the car-park for a certain period of time, and it was up to me what vehicle I wanted to put in it. I know I've won a discussion when the alternative argument is a whine including the words "policy" and "I'll get my supervisor". Then I run off.

As I was leaving, I saw a Porsche, and was amazed at how much they now look like battered, elderly Ford Mondeos:

It's definitely a Porsche because it says so on the boot lid there. I was going to ask the driver what model it was, a Carerra maybe, or a 911, but he was one of those jet-setting playboy types with an almost new shellsuit and a tattoo of a swallow on his neck, so I didn't bother him in case he was on his way to an important meeting.

I may have altered the number-plate slightly. You can barely tell, but if you zoom in, some of the pixels are out of alignment.

* I have been told that using the term "Parking Nazi's" for wardens can be construed as offensive. By Nazis presumably.