Sarah Standing

Standing Room | 6 June 2009

It’s always the smallest thing that tips one over the edge.

issue 06 June 2009

It’s always the smallest thing that tips one over the edge.

It’s always the smallest thing that tips one over the edge. This week I cracked. I sat on the pavement outside King Edward VII’s hospital and shamelessly sobbed. My husband was ill with septicaemia, and I was desperate to get to him. I was panicked, worried sick and keen to get up to his room to make sure he was all right after an interminable night spent apart. I’d found a parking space — this particular grid of private medical care in the heart of London offers perhaps the last bastion of dependably available parking spaces — and hurriedly began the endless process of pay-parking by telephone.

I’d found my glasses, found the sign, texted my four-digit location code, confirmed my car’s registration, entered the number of minutes I wished to park, and was waiting for confirmation.

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