Jonola14

TRATHICK WARDUMBS

The main reason I haven’t been posting on here for quite some time is because I have been in hospital having a disc removed from my back and have been in recovery for a number of weeks.

Monday of this week saw me return to work - a few hours a day to ease myself back into the daily routine but the heat and the constant sitting are not good for me. Nor is running out of paracetamol. It was stupidly hot though on Tuesday afternoon when I got into my car after leaving work early, so I immediately took advantage of driving a Coupe Cabriolet, put the roof down, noted the 35 degrees on the temperature indicator and headed off towards Pinner with the wind rippling through my widow’s peak so that I could visit the local Boots and stock up on Ibuprofen and paracetamol to numb the pain.

Unfortunately Pinner is not blessed with free parking, so a short stay at the local car park was in order, despite the fact that I was going to be a maximium of fifteen minutes picking up my pills. As I pulled into the parking space right next to the parking meter, so that I could spare my back the pain of having to walk too far to pay the parking charge, the traffic warden appeared from behind a 4×4, watched me arrive and began to saunter towards my car, checking the tickets of the other stationary vehicles on the way.

Being a Coupe Cabriolet, I didn’t want to leave my roof down while I went to the shops, so I sat in the driver’s seat and held down the button that draws the roof back onto the car. It’s all done automatically and is really rather clever but it takes about 25 seconds, by which time the traffic warden had appeared by my driver’s side window. Once the roof had completed its manoeuvre, I pressed the electric window button to see what the traffic warden wanted.

In a highly sarcastic and rude manner, he said: “Do you HAVE a ticket sir?”.

It was hot, my back was aching from half an hour’s driving and this idiot was not only being obnoxious and asking bloody stupid questions, but he was blocking my exit from my car. Of course I didn’t have a ticket, I hadn’t had the chance to get out the car and get to the machine. Utter imbecile.

I managed to avoid losing the plot, but responded with the following: “No, I don’t have a ticket. You know I don’t have a ticket because I have only just arrived. This is why the roof is going ON and not OFF and besides which, you watched me arrive in the car park less than a minute ago. I will GET a ticket just as soon as you get out the bloody way.”

So I marched up to the machine and to add insult to injury, the wretched thing was out of order so I ended up walking half way across the car park to the other meter anyway. I half expected a parking fine notice on my car when I got back, but the stupid traffic warden probably realised that it’s not a good idea to wind up an overheating man with a bad back.

Still mulling over his idiocy upon my return to my car, I actively searched out another driver to give him the 40 minutes I still had remaining on my ticket, just so the council was deprived another 70 pence.

That’ll teach him.