War with the parking guy
Inow judge how successful (or not) a day has been by the number of parking tickets accumulated. I often wonder what I did in a previous life to deserve the amount of parking tickets I collect.
The truth is, it’s not what I did when I was Joan of Arc or that serving wench in the Middle Ages, it’s just my hatred of parking too far from my destination and my lax attitude to paying for it.
In the years BC (Before Cwake) I worked out how much it would be to pay for monthly parking in a building.
Then I divided that by the number of days I might get a parking ticket.
I worked out that even if I only fed the meter 10 cents, the ticket was worth $12. If I put no money in the meter, the ticket would be $40. So even if I put a small amount of spare change into the machine and got caught four out of five days, it was the rough equivalent of a month in a parking building. Some weeks I’d never get caught at all. I thought I was winning.
Then one day I parked in a Wilson car park. It was a rough and stony piece of land and I hadn’t even realised it was pay-as-you-park. I returned to a $65 fine and although I was clearly in the wrong, I was outraged.
And so began the four-year war with Wilson Parking. Not that they have any idea we are at war but I find my stealthy attacks an advantage.
Ever since I paid that steep and dirty fine I have been trying to make my money back.
If I find myself at the mercy of a Wilson, I usually hang about until I see someone walking back to their car.
I lurk suspiciously then, once they look as though they are definitely leaving, I ambush the driver and ask if they have a ticket with any time left on it.
By the time I get around to asking, I’ve usually worked myself into a bit of a pickle and by the time all those hasty ‘‘please wind down your window, I have a life and death question to ask’’ hand motions wrap up, I look quite demented.
However, the drivers of Christchurch are a kindly and patient bunch and those who have heard my story seem to back me all the way. Either that or they think the easiest way to make the ranting ginger-haired freak back away is to hand over their parking ticket and skid away.
Despite how it sounds, I amdoing pretty well at making my money back.
By my rough calculations, I must have banked about $13.
Anyway, I have picked up some work in the central city lately.
True to form, I’m usually running late and am unwilling to walk too far in the rain or sleet.
The nearest car park belongs to Wilson so I have had to relinquish my age-old grudge and pay up.
Then last week the unthinkable happened. I was 45 minutes overdue to my car.
There it was, flapping about in the wind, another $65 ticket. I could have wept.
I’d just been thinking to myself a couple of weeks before that at this rate, I will have won by 2019.
Now that date has been put out by at least another eight years.
Wilson Parking, mark my words, I will make my $130 back even if I’m too old to drive.
I realise there are probably better ways to stick it to The Man but I’ll get there, one car park at a time.