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Mrs. Monk's Would-be Diary, should have been written by Mrs. Monk, since she is the "Writer" in the family.
However, since she is a writer only in the conceptual sense, I have undertaken to fill these pages on her behalf.
If not by her, these pages will certainly be about her, and other important matters of the day

Leslie Monk

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Mrs Monk’s Would-Be Diary .........

Tough Parking

1 March 2008

In our street of old Victorian houses there is simply not enough roadside parking to accommodate the cars we all wish to own. There might just be enough space if each house had just one car, but that is not the case. The local council has restricted parking to one side of our street since we live in a narrow road, and by recent mischance, that does not happen to be our side of the street. You can only park on the other side of the street, and some of the residents on that side are starting to resent residents on our side parking on the chosen side of the street.

Our problems are exacerbated by the commuters who use our street for free parking while they commute to London from the station at the end of the road, and also by the overzealous wardens who now fly in on scooters and can write you a ticket in the time it takes to get your sorry arse off the couch.

Mrs Monk is always curtain twitching for passing wardens and is always keen to pass on the good word to an illegal neighbour when a free space has become available. However, as the supply of roadside parking spaces exceed the demand, the local people are getting ugly about it.

We are frequently alarmed at 8 am by the sound of neighbours berating wardens who seem to appear at about that time, since it is then that the parking restrictions kick in. The neighbours take it out on the wardens but they also turn on each other, squabbling over the meagre scraps of kerbside tarmac.

Here are a few strategies that have been adopted by un-neighbourly neighbours who wish to get an unfair advantage.

1 Permanently Park an unregistered unlicensed motor bike in a strategically diagonal formation, positioned thus to deny another would-be user.

2 Have an ongoing, never ending DIY project

3 Buy a bag of sand and let it sit in the road for two years.

4 Place a cone in the road, or a plank on a chair, or a skip with double planks.

5 Put up a “polite” notice asking you not to park.

6 Invent a driveway.

How do you invent a driveway?

There are local bylaws that govern the parking of cars in front gardens, but estate agents like concrete gardens and the off street parking premium. Consequently the narrowest and shallowest of front gardens are given over to park the car, even if it involves a complicated manoeuvre and a huge crossover to achieve the objective, all of which is not in the public interest, and also, illegal.

The meaningless crossover has become the latest weapon of the selfish car parker. People with these would-be “driveways” do not intend to park their cars in their “driveways”, because they don't have “driveways”, but they do expect to claim for themselves a large piece of the public highway for their exclusive selfish use.

We found this notice on our car because we parked on the public highway at a crossover that has not been used for years, if ever.

shoestringonline.co.uk

The neighbours turn on each other, squabbling over the meagre scraps of kerbside tarmac.

One car parking in a space for two