Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

The village parking wars have taken an ugly turn

A crucial sign has been removed from outside our house on the orders of the village chieftain

‘Village greens are a nightmare,’ my lawyer friend said, with unusual fervour [simonbradfield] 
issue 28 May 2022

The dynamics of the village can only be understood with reference to what’s happening to the parking.

Unless you study the parking, you have no way of understanding the village. Not really. You may think you understand it, but you are just scratching the surface of the alliances and enmities that make the village go around.

For example, we recently lost the residents’ parking sign relating to the dozen spaces down the unmade track that leads to my house which had been used by those of us stuck down this track through no fault of our own, other than we had a rush of blood to the head and decided it would be nice to live on a village green.

My lawyer friend at the time I bought my house warned me not to, but I wouldn’t have it. ‘Village greens are a nightmare,’ he said, with unusual fervour.

I rejected this notion. In any case, there was designated parking, and an access track which was coloured yellow on the plan on the deeds of the house, with historic rights to use it with a vehicle established over so many years, and so on.

‘A mosaic has come to light that clearly shows you fiddling while Rome burns.’

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