Another entry from our neighbours, again involving a flash car, but the damage this time was more likely to be caused by me than by themselves.

Under our block of flats, we have off-street parking, with one parking bay per flat. Since our neighbours in #4 don’t have a car, we asked them not long after we moved in five years ago if it would be alright to use their parking bay as well. This made things a lot easier since the turn to get into the park is quite difficult due to a garden bed that juts out. Since I don’t have power steering in the Rocket, being able to use both parks is practically a necessity. However, it has led to problems in the past with other residents wanting to take the park from us without asking.

One other person that did not get written up into a full SPOTD had been knew I parked occupying both parks, yet decided we did not need them both and parked their car in #4. Not just parked it there, but with the intention to store it there, since it was an old Triumph, complete with car cover and everything. When I asked them to shift it, they replied that they thought it was not being used so it would be okay. This from someone that had seen me parked there ever since they arrived three and a half YEARS ago. But I digress. There is another SPOTD on this occasion.

It seems that the people in #6 have very nice incomes since they have the very latest cars all the time. You might recall one of them winning a SPOTD award for getting his expensive car stuck in the driveway, but it would appear he’s now sold that car and gotten another one. Not quite as low, but still with all the frivolous rear-spoiler type attachments hoons stick on their cars.

Unfortunately, this leads to a problem for them. With new cars, they want to park them off the street. With three cars in the household, and only one parking bay allocated to them, there’s always going to be trouble. Initially they put one car in #6 and one in #5, with one parked on the road. After a while, they decided that we didn’t really need two parks and began to use #4 or #3 or in front of #7 - completely trapping those residents.

Since they’d kept to themselves since arrival, we were forced to introduce ourselves as the people who wanted them to shift their car so we could have our parking bays. I explained to them the fact that we had a deal with the people in #4 where we compensated them for the use of their park (which we do), and they apologised, and moved their cars into the street.

However, since that original time, we have had to get them to shift cars out of our park on no less than nine separate occasions. The excuse is always something pathetic along the lines of “well, I wasn’t going to be long”" or “sorry, we have visitors and they didn’t know not to park there”. As an aside, we live in a dead-end street, with no through traffic to damage cars, and what sort of visitor pulls into the driveway of their friend, sees there are marked parking bays and then puts their car in one designated for another tenant?

Which brings me to the reason they won the SPOTD on this occasion. Usually I just mutter quietly to myself and don’t bother writing them up as SPOTD reports, but on this occasion, they went a step further. Di and I went out to have lunch in the park for a change, and when we returned, pulled down the drive and went to put the car into our space. There, parked down the centre line of both parking bays was a new car we’d not seen before, though we knew instantly who it would belong to. Black, shiny, new and hotted up, it could only belong to a friend of our neighbours, and once again we’d have to go through the ritual of “please move your car” followed by “sorry, our visitors did not know not to park there”.

We reversed back down the drive to the street, parked the car and went upstairs to see them. As luck had it, one of them was coming down the stairs at the time, so I stopped him and said “look, I’m getting a bit sick of this, can you please shift your car from our parking bay?”. He looked blank for a moment, then asked what car it was, and when I described it, sure enough, it was a visitor who apparently was there for the first time and since he obviously didn’t know where to park (ie: the street), he’d just parked in our spot.

Bear in mind for a second, this person had never been there before, yet chose to park in the middle of the parking bays for #3 and #4, and would have had to assume that both households owned vehicles that could be home at any time. Instead of just parking in one parking bay, he doubled the odds that someone was going to be inconvenienced.

Our neighbour went back upstairs, said something in Chinese to his friend, then turned back, apologised to us and we went inside our flat. About an hour later, I went to go across to Uni, and walked down to the car in the street. Out of curiosity, I checked the car park and the car was still there. I figured there was no point getting them to move it at that time since I was about to drive away, but hoped it would be gone by the time I returned.

It wasn’t.

I reversed back down the drive, frustrated, then stormed up the stairs to their flat. I knocked on the door and as soon as the guy inside saw me, he quickly said “oh, I was just going down to shift it”. I think he seriously expected me to believe that two hours had passed since I originally requested it moved and just at the precise moment that I knocked on the door, he was just about to go shift it.

I’d had enough of this constant silly game by now, so laughed at him then, before he could scoot past me to shift the car, eyeballed him and said “Perhaps when I asked TWO HOURS AGO for you to please shift the car, it is possible I wasn’t clear. What I really meant was - SHIFT THE F**KING CAR NOW!”

His response was what won him the SPOTD award. Just a little wide-eyed with fear, he blurted out “Oh, I thought it would be okay to leave it there just a little longer because then you went and parked in the street”.

As though I had a choice - the car was occupying both of the parks. Where the hell was I supposed to park? On two wheels, propped against the wall of the carport? He then moved the car from where it was parked to the now empty #6 parking bay. Yes, I’ll stress that again - now EMPTY #6 parking bay.

It would appear that at some point, one of the people in the household had gone out in a vehicle, and nobody thought at that time it would be a good opportunity to move the car illegally parked where I wanted it moved from.

Ah, the hell with one person winning the SPOTD award - I’m going to give it as a group nomination to every single person that lives in #6. It’s a hive of stupidity up there, and all of them deserve it equally.

Categories: SPOTD