A dimly lit street in a drab south London suburb at 8 p.m. on a weekday night. A girl driving to her friend’s house for dinner. Suddenly the girl gets a blinding headache and needs to pull over. She searches in vain for a space but cannot see anything. The headache gets worse and worse until just when she thinks she is going to pass out from the pain she spots a small opening by the curb outside a shop. Thank goodness, she thinks, I can get some painkillers. There is an eerie atmosphere in the dark street as she parks. A climate of fear seems to prevail. If this were the opening scene from a horror film, some really creepy music would start to play as the girl steers her car into the space outside the shabby line of shops.
Obviously the girl is me. I struggle for a few minutes to get into the space, all the while fretting that something feels wrong. I look around desperately searching for anything denoting that this is not a valid parking place. Even though I am pulling up in a quiet street in Norwood, not Piccadilly Circus, I am terrified. I check and recheck, I note the cars stopped behind me and, when I am satisfied there are no signs forbidding parking, I get out of the car and click the lock.
The moment my key beeps a voice from nowhere starts screaming in panic, ‘Don’t stop there! Get back in your car, now!’ I look round and a man is running towards me, people are coming out of shops, everywhere there is confusion.
‘What’s happening?’ I shout. He reaches me in a state of breathlessness. ‘The camera,’ he gasps, bent double from the exertion of running across the road so fast.
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