As a useful rule of thumb, I tend to think that if Joan Bakewell can’t handle something then I oughtn’t to try. So I’ve given those pay-by-phone parking meters a wide berth since the BBC presenter ended up in court for failing to operate one properly.
Last week, however, I found myself in need of parking in Harley Street, the very place where Ms Bakewell came to grief. With nowhere in sight to dock the Peugeot other than the dreaded pay-by-phone spaces and with time running out for me to present myself for a blood test, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that the hour had come for me to face my fears.
‘Come on, Melissa. Gather. Gather.’ (I have been practising Kate Winslet-style self-mustering techniques.)
Naturally, the building opposite was swathed in scaffolding and swarming with builders drilling, concrete mixing and hammering. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to hear. Joan couldn’t hear. That was part of the deal. I was prepared for it.
I dialled the number on the sign and a very polite man at Westminster council’s parking service answered. My spirits lifted a little. Maybe, just maybe it was going to be all right.
Casting pride aside, and to the great amusement of passers-by, I shouted the registration of my car like I was an extra on The Bill — bravo! kilo! zero! three! foxtrot! mike! victor! — no less than five times and with an urgency that suggested I had just rumbled the Brinks Mat bullion robbers. I then requested he read it back to me in the same mode twice. I paid for two hours at a cost of £6. He told me my card had been debited, and I quote, ‘That’s all gone through now, madam, thank you.’
Now look. I’m no idiot. I know this is no guarantee. That’s why I specifically asked him to check again. ‘Madam, it’s gone through,’ he insisted forcibly. ‘I hear what you’re saying, I really do,’ I told him. ‘But I want you to check again. I want to know that this is going to work and that I am not going to end up like Joan Bakewell.’
He assured me that not only had it gone through, it had gone through in such a wholly satisfactory manner that I could now simply text from inside the building if I wanted to extend my parking time. It was all just about as hunky dory as a thing could be and he was certain that I was going to come away from the whole experience brimming with satisfaction.
So I went to have my blood test. Of course you know what happened when I emerged 15 minutes later. I hardly need to write the rest of this column. Two parking attendants were standing over my car in the process of issuing a ticket.
Turns out that when the man at Westminster council said it was all completely fine what he really meant to say was that it was all a load of old cobblers.
‘Why does it have to be this way?’ I asked the parking officers, tears of bitter disillusion welling in my eyes. And to their credit they were so struck by my abject collapse that they let me off the fine. But they told me I must move off immediately as the ticket that I so vehemently insisted I had only just bought for two hours had in fact ‘expired’ ten minutes ago. In the end it was easier to agree with them, apologise and move on.
As I drove away Shostakovich’s ‘Ballet Suite No.1’ came on the radio. The crazed waltz was the perfect background music to my predicament as I drove round and round in circles looking for another space to pull into where I might dodge the parking attendants long enough to telephone their bosses at parking headquarters to ask them what had happened to my £6.
When I finally got through a deliriously happy young girl said she had never heard anything like it in her entire life. ‘It’s incredible!’ she enthused.
‘In any case,’ I said, ‘can you please check my transaction.’
‘Oh, wow,’ she said joyously, or some exclamation to that effect. ‘It says here your transaction was foul.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Foul transaction,’ she repeated cheerfully. ‘It hasn’t gone through.’
‘But he told me it was all fine.’
‘Well, you should have checked, really.’
‘But I did check. I asked him and he said it had all gone through.’
She suggested, and I’m not embellishing here, that the next time I tried to operate the system I should pay, then phone back a few minutes later to check that it was still all right. Perhaps Joan could give me some handy hints about parking tribunals.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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