Fun With Public Transport
So. Gareth took his car in for its MOT yesterday and it turned out to have quite a bit wrong with it and cost lots to put right. All this was bad enough but he finishes work at 5pm and the garage shuts at 5.30pm and half an hour wasn't enough time to get from work to the garage.
Can he be the only person in the world who finishes work at 5pm? I don't think so. You'd think the garage might stay open a tad longer, mightn't you?
So Gareth couldn't collect the car yesterday, so got the train back to York.
So he and I invented a Cunning Plan for this morning. I would collect Gareth from Leeds station at 8.15 and take him to the garage and he would collect the car just in time to get to work for 9am.
All went well until there was a signal problem with the train and it was delayed by three quarters of an hour.
Now, at Leeds station they rely on you having psychic abilities. You have to guess in advance, as you park, how late the train that you're meeting is going to be.
It costs 50p to park for 20 minutes. That's the kind of value for money that Dick Turpin would have been proud of, but actually that's cheap. After that the money goes up on a steeply sliding scale and I forget what it is exactly but if you want to stay for over an hour it will cost you something like the gross national wealth of the Arab Emirates.
So I had paid 50p. I had rung Gareth and found out that the train was going to be late, so I went back to sit in my car and wait to see what happened.
I was half hoping that the parking attendant would come up to me and demand to see my ticket so I could explore this exciting let's-guess-the-train-delay further. I was looking forward to a Bit of a Row, followed perhaps by the Station Manager, a high-profile case in the County Court and finally a triumphant victory in the European Court of Human Rights.
The Parking Attendant wandered through the car park after I'd been there for about thirty-five minutes. I looked up hopefully.
He avoided all eye contact and walked away.
You see, I just radiate respectability, and I'm not sure why. He just took one look at me and knew that I am the kind of person who'd turn up at the station car park, look at the car park charges, rush to the nearest cash machine to withdraw my life's savings and pour the lot into the machine, along with a note promising to spend the rest of my life in slavery to pay the difference between my life's savings and the gross national wealth of the Arab Emirates.
And he was so very wrong. If I can swindle the car park at Leeds City Station, I will. I swindled them today, I have always done my very best to swindle them in the past and if I get any kind of opportunity to swindle them in the future, I promise you I will, and I suggest you do the same.
Car Park Revolution, brothers and sisters! Bring it on!
Can he be the only person in the world who finishes work at 5pm? I don't think so. You'd think the garage might stay open a tad longer, mightn't you?
So Gareth couldn't collect the car yesterday, so got the train back to York.
So he and I invented a Cunning Plan for this morning. I would collect Gareth from Leeds station at 8.15 and take him to the garage and he would collect the car just in time to get to work for 9am.
All went well until there was a signal problem with the train and it was delayed by three quarters of an hour.
Now, at Leeds station they rely on you having psychic abilities. You have to guess in advance, as you park, how late the train that you're meeting is going to be.
It costs 50p to park for 20 minutes. That's the kind of value for money that Dick Turpin would have been proud of, but actually that's cheap. After that the money goes up on a steeply sliding scale and I forget what it is exactly but if you want to stay for over an hour it will cost you something like the gross national wealth of the Arab Emirates.
So I had paid 50p. I had rung Gareth and found out that the train was going to be late, so I went back to sit in my car and wait to see what happened.
I was half hoping that the parking attendant would come up to me and demand to see my ticket so I could explore this exciting let's-guess-the-train-delay further. I was looking forward to a Bit of a Row, followed perhaps by the Station Manager, a high-profile case in the County Court and finally a triumphant victory in the European Court of Human Rights.
The Parking Attendant wandered through the car park after I'd been there for about thirty-five minutes. I looked up hopefully.
He avoided all eye contact and walked away.
You see, I just radiate respectability, and I'm not sure why. He just took one look at me and knew that I am the kind of person who'd turn up at the station car park, look at the car park charges, rush to the nearest cash machine to withdraw my life's savings and pour the lot into the machine, along with a note promising to spend the rest of my life in slavery to pay the difference between my life's savings and the gross national wealth of the Arab Emirates.
And he was so very wrong. If I can swindle the car park at Leeds City Station, I will. I swindled them today, I have always done my very best to swindle them in the past and if I get any kind of opportunity to swindle them in the future, I promise you I will, and I suggest you do the same.
Car Park Revolution, brothers and sisters! Bring it on!
posted by Daphne at 9:04 pm
3 Comments:
I also like tram fare dodging too, so much easier in the run up to Xmas!
I get sick and tired of car park fees. There are many places where I think you should be able to park for free such as hospitals, work places and railway stations - then they wouldn't have to employ preying parking attendants and clampers. Up the revolution! Justice to road tax payers!
Parking here in most places is free.....we just take it in the hiney for everything else!
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