There have been a lot of Facebook posts recently about that hoary old chestnut - parking on pavements in our village.
This is particularly annoying for people with pushchairs and those in wheelchairs who have no chance to get past parked vehicles. So I wrote a story about this for my coming Hethersett Herald and just a couple of hours later walked into the village to go to the dentist. I had a haircut earlier in the day, so a big one on the tarting up front.
I decided to pop over the Memorial Field on the way back to take another photo of the ever growing pavilion. Just before the entrance to the field (incidentally where there is a significant car park) there was a rather large (no a very large) car. Now I'm absolutely useless when it comes to cars so I couldn't tell you what kind it was - but it was big.
The vehicle was parked in such a way that it was very difficult to get past. I had no intention of going out into the road, however, as it was close to a bend. So I tried to shuffle past. I had my compact camera on my wrist ready to take the picture of the pavilion and this by necessity bounced along the body of the car.
Cue angry young man who came out to get into the car.
"You could have waited and I would have moved it," said angry young man
Cue angry old man (me).
"You are causing an obstruction."
Angry young man - "you could have waited for me to move. Now you've scratched my car."
My first thought was "well I certainly didn't mean or intend to scratch your car but if I have that's entirely your fault."
I walked on and he hurled some unsavoury abuse at me. There were absolutely no scratches on his car. A simple apology from him might have sufficed. But that was never going to happen. So here we have the problem. These people seem to think that they have every right to park on the path and make it impossible for pedestrians to get past and that we should be apologetic if we damage their vehicle in any way.
Isn't it strange that we live in a world where law abiding citizens are abused by people breaking the law. I rest my case.
* * *
Which reminds me, today I should enjoy a unique slice of Norfolk history.
We are going along to hear a 100-year-old lady talk about her life at Plumstead Road Library in an event organised by the Friends of Plumstead Library. I will be interested in this from two levels. Firstly from a historical viewpoint and secondly as a member of the Friends of Hethersett Library.
We are hoping to have the talk recorded for use by the Norfolk Family History Society. Will let you know tomorrow how it went.
I hope you figured out the deliberate grammatical mistake in the above. The 100-year-old lady will obviously be talking about her life in Norwich and not her life in Plumstead Library. I put that in because it reminded me of an amusing incident many years ago when I was a young reporter covering magistrates court in Lowestoft. This case involved a man who had an out of date excise licence for his car (these were the days when you had to have a tax disc on the inside of your windscreen). When approached by police he scrunched the out of date licence up and ate it.
Of course I reported this as: "A Lowestoft man was fined £20 for eating a tax licence at Lowestoft Magistrates Court on Tuesday."
That should have read: "A Lowestoft man was fined £20 by Lowestoft Magistrates after being found guilty of eating a tax licence." He didn't eat the licence in the magistrates' court.