I try to keep up with the modern world. I have all the mandatory equipment: computer, cash card, mobile phone. I can do things online, I can tweet, and I have learned to obey robot voices without screaming – but, sometimes, even with all my equipment, a little everyday task can defeat me. Such as trying to park the car. Because, of course, things have changed again. Last week, I found that the days of coins and tickets are over – for no particular reason that I can find, other than to drive me raving mad.
I only needed to wait 20 minutes, while Mavis went to the doctor, but I couldn’t, because I couldn’t buy a ticket, and I couldn’t pay by phone, because I hadn’t got my cash card and I don’t have the app.
“You can park and pay in a shop,” said a passing warden, “but one of you should stay in the car so you don’t get a ticket while you’re in the shop.” Oh, thank you. But soon there was only me, because Mavis had to get to her appointment, so I couldn’t do that, because what if there was a queue? The dogs would suffocate in the sweat-box car and I might get a ticket. So I drove round and round almost blubbing, past the gate to the tantalisingly shady park, and the inspector, again, chatting to another warden.
“Found anywhere yet?” he asked. No. I described my difficutlies, I offered him coins. Please. Take them. Just let us get out of the car before we melt. And he did, kindly. Because he saw that I was on the edge.
And was he keen on the new cashless system? Not really. Wasn’t it more of a faff for wardens to fiddle with “hand-held devices” than just look at a ticket? Yes.
And this is called “seamless, stress-free mobile parking”, now in “a number of the UK’s largest cities”, here to drive you up the wall, so that your council can save squillions “from the former cost of maintaining machines and emptying them of cash”. So there is a reason. Money. Almost the only reason for anything.
