‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!’ I screamed through the window of the car while driving down Cobham High Street.
‘Are you aware,’ my saner self said to me, ‘that you are driving down Cobham High Street screaming a slogan from a film?’
‘Yes,’ I said to my saner self. ‘Yes, I am aware. And I’ll take it from here, thank you.’
I had been to the kebab shop for a chicken skewer to cheer myself up when it happened. It was 8 p.m., dark, and I pulled up outside Ali’s feeling utterly deflated by what I shall simply call ‘all the rotten hypocrisy’. I parked, as I always do, in the off-road space outside his takeaway joint and two others, a fish and chip shop and an Indian.
As usual, there were cars crammed in all over the place and I pulled up where I wasn’t blocking anyone in, went inside, said hi to Ali and ordered my usual.
I had only been waiting for about two minutes when a bloke came running in breathless, shouting: ‘Someone’s getting a ticket!’
I looked outside and a parking warden was indeed issuing a ticket at 8 p.m.
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