It's not quite Colin McRae Rally, is it?
Most of you will know that my alleged commute involves driving to the near edge of Bath and then pottering along the river/bike path into the centre of town.
Sometimes the handy bit of A4 where I usually leave the car is filled with complete bastards, so I park in a quiet backstreet where I could probably stand to live if I was rich, smug and middle-class enough. It's also obvious that parking out of office hours is a nightmare prospect for all who live there.
This evening, said backstreet was really not quiet at all. When I rolled up and was busily shoving the bike in the back of the car, there was someone parked in the middle of the street, offloading stuff into a house. 'Fair enough' I thought. It's a good and warm evening and I can sit there with the windows open and wind down while they do their thing, toddle off and leave the road clear for me to pull away and beetle home. After a while, they did indeed trog off, followed by a half-dozen cars that had queued up behind them in the interim.
I pull out, get halfway down the road, and am met by a pair of cars. They're not going backwards because, oh, try persuading two motorists to reverse, so I have to reverse halfway back down the street and back into the last parking space on the street that I had just vacated. The first car of the pair obviously wants my parking space, so hovers a few metres past me, expecting me to sod off out of the way. I'm going nowhere because the second car has... Stopped in the middle of the road in the same place to offload stuff.
Eventually, they both sod off, followed by another queue of cars that the second offloading has collected.
I pull out again, and am halfway down the road when I'm met by a pair of cars. This time there's nowhere for me to reverse to since the last car in the most recent queue has just nipped into the space I vacated. I make the international hand signal to the driver of the other car that means 'I've just done this twice. Now it's your turn.'
She reverses into a parked car, putting a right old dent in the rear passenger door. At this point, I can see that no good is going to come of anything now, so decide to reverse all the damn way down the road to the damn t-junction at the end. Terrible-reversing-woman takes this as a sign that one accident's not enough and follows me pretty much bumper-to-bumper in order to escape the consequences of not being able to reverse a Corsa worth a damn. Or wants to even up the score by causing dents with both ends.
The t-junction at the end has cars parked all round it, so reversing out of it and uphill out of the way is a bit of a fiddle. Terrible-reversing-woman elbows past as soon as she is able and steams down to the next junction, only to meet someone else trying to turn into the road. Where there is no space for two cars. There's more reversing, this time by other people. I get the hell out of the way and out of Bath as quickly as I am able.
Sometimes the handy bit of A4 where I usually leave the car is filled with complete bastards, so I park in a quiet backstreet where I could probably stand to live if I was rich, smug and middle-class enough. It's also obvious that parking out of office hours is a nightmare prospect for all who live there.
This evening, said backstreet was really not quiet at all. When I rolled up and was busily shoving the bike in the back of the car, there was someone parked in the middle of the street, offloading stuff into a house. 'Fair enough' I thought. It's a good and warm evening and I can sit there with the windows open and wind down while they do their thing, toddle off and leave the road clear for me to pull away and beetle home. After a while, they did indeed trog off, followed by a half-dozen cars that had queued up behind them in the interim.
I pull out, get halfway down the road, and am met by a pair of cars. They're not going backwards because, oh, try persuading two motorists to reverse, so I have to reverse halfway back down the street and back into the last parking space on the street that I had just vacated. The first car of the pair obviously wants my parking space, so hovers a few metres past me, expecting me to sod off out of the way. I'm going nowhere because the second car has... Stopped in the middle of the road in the same place to offload stuff.
Eventually, they both sod off, followed by another queue of cars that the second offloading has collected.
I pull out again, and am halfway down the road when I'm met by a pair of cars. This time there's nowhere for me to reverse to since the last car in the most recent queue has just nipped into the space I vacated. I make the international hand signal to the driver of the other car that means 'I've just done this twice. Now it's your turn.'
She reverses into a parked car, putting a right old dent in the rear passenger door. At this point, I can see that no good is going to come of anything now, so decide to reverse all the damn way down the road to the damn t-junction at the end. Terrible-reversing-woman takes this as a sign that one accident's not enough and follows me pretty much bumper-to-bumper in order to escape the consequences of not being able to reverse a Corsa worth a damn. Or wants to even up the score by causing dents with both ends.
The t-junction at the end has cars parked all round it, so reversing out of it and uphill out of the way is a bit of a fiddle. Terrible-reversing-woman elbows past as soon as she is able and steams down to the next junction, only to meet someone else trying to turn into the road. Where there is no space for two cars. There's more reversing, this time by other people. I get the hell out of the way and out of Bath as quickly as I am able.