Results tagged “car parks” from Birmingham Mail - Is It Just Me

Is it just me or does anyone else think that the people who put the white lines in car parks think that either everyone drive Ford Populars or Austin Sevens or get in an out through the sunroof?

I was in the gym (ok, settle down at the back, it's not that funny) overlooking the car park in Mere Green this week when two women appeared with a supermarket trolley which they pushed between the last two cars in the corner at the very end of the car park.

I assumed that one of the cars was theirs but no, they emptied the trolley and walked off just leaving the trolley there. It meant that the driver or passenger of one of the cars - i.e. me - had to move the trolley before they could open their door.

Apart from being remarkably ill mannered it costs the rest of us in our food bills as staff have to be employed to round up trolleys.

It has not been a good week in car parks. I came back to my car yesterday to find some brain donor had managed to park over the white line to end up a couple of inches from my door which meant I had to clamber in from the passenger side - something I am not designed to do.

The driver of the offending vehicle of course had left himself, or herself, with enough room to not only climb in and out but knock up a patio and hold a barbeque if the mood took them. It would not have been so bad but it was only a Clio so did not exactly need a parking space the size of a tennis court.

Personally I think parking over white lines in a car park or, even worse, parking in a disabled space without a legitimate badge should carry some penalty even if it is just a sticker on the windscreen explaining the finer points of parking.

Anyone else think that Britain, or at least the British, are not housetrained?

I was in a pub car park a couple of weeks ago; it was early evening after a meal so we are not talking stagger out singing Nellie Dean time and I was sitting in my car waiting for someone who had decided to inspect the plumbing before we left when two men in their mid 30s or so came out, walked to a car, urinated in the bushes behind it, got in and drove off.

Now I will admit it is possible they had noticed that the bushes in question were showing signs of marked deficiencies of nitrogen and phosphate and were providing emergency horticultural first aid - but I somehow doubt it.

Last night I was in a multi-storey car park and like almost every multi-storey in the land it is advisable not to touch anything and to avoid breathing as much as possible while passing through the stairwells. This particular one seems to be cleaned on a fairly regular basis with fire hoses. If the floor is uniformly damp then it is clean(ish) but if it is patchily damp then watch where you walk.

Many shops start their day with a mop and a bucket of water and disinfectant in their doorway and we are a nation where public toilets are closed because left open they are either wrecked by vandals or used for nefarious practices.

We just have to admit we are a filthy nation these days.

One assumes that those who decide on the width of spaces in car parks drive around in Mercs, BMWs or 4X4 leviathans wider and longer then the average living room so why do they seem to assume that the rest of us, the peasants, all drive around in 1934 Ford Populars and all weigh about 9 stone so don't have to open doors that wide to get in and out.

We must be the only nation in the world where a car parking space is the width of a car with so little room for opening doors that drivers and passengers would find it easier to clamber in and out through the sunroof.