I fucking hate posh thick students, especially when they're my neighbours. To be fair, the majority of students living on my street are no trouble at all, bar occasional late night noise (worse in summer, when they bray more), ostentatious underwear parading and kebab box litter. They have shit landlords, earning my sympathy, and they are burglar magnets (too many Sony VAIOs and video iPods in one house for their own good), earning my gratitude. On the whole, we rub along, and I think we've had as many noise complaints in the last five years as we've made, so the feeling's probably mutual.
But every year there's one little brat who got a souped up hatchback for his/her 18th without the parking lessons to go with it. These kids, I want to annihilate. It is murder parking round here in term time, and the least you can do is park considerately. By which I mean not in the middle of two parking spaces, so you can drive in forwards and you've got plenty of room to get out, and not on the fucking pavement.
There's a house down the road which has that rarest of things in East Oxford, an off-road parking space. You could use it perpendicularly, by parking under the archway between it and the house next door, or you could use it parallel-style, by parking in front of the front window and across the archway. I have seen it used both ways.
This year, however, the bint with the Clio thinks she can use it by parking perpendicular to the front window. This means that the back half of her car is on the pavement. Quite often one of her friends parks on the street blocking her in, which means that there's about a foot of pavement left to squeeze past in. Meanwhile, their driveway lies unobstructed.
If you ask them why they don't park there, they tell you that it's because that's because they'd block access to their front door.
Right, I said tonight (on the third attempt), but it's all right to block the pavement for everyone else? How am I supposed to get my pushchair past?
OK, so I lied about the pushchair, but they lied more, with their inconsistent flick-and-drawl 'we don't actually live here', 'the letting agent said this was our parking space' and 'the owner of the car has just today gone away for 2 months' shite. If that's the case it shouldn't be a huge inconvenience for her if I put her little runaround on bricks and burn the tyres in a righteous pyre.
I think I may be premenstrual*.
joella
* I was.
3 comments:
Ah, the misery of parking in east oxford. How many times have we expressed similar sentiments. Our students failed to be sufficiently adept at being burglar magnets to stop our laptop being nicked, however
I'm living in a house with a 40mph section of road outside that is about 25 metres from a 60mph section of road. It is bad enough that only one in 20 drivers observes the distinction, but the thing that really gets me is the owners of the house opposite who park their car on the pavement (no pavement our side) so as to leave enough room for Kate Moss to get past if breathing in, and (get this!) have a Child on Board sticker in the back window. Aaaargh. "Look out for our dear precious child, but wheel your own into the most lethal section of road in Cheshire. He/she is not our child and may die with our blessing."
I do not have a child either, but you know...
I think that Child On Board stickers should be banned, although Iain Banks's Whit has a great joke about them which kind of offsets the gackiness of their existence. On these grounds alone I try and stop myself rear-ending any vehicle sporting one, which is probably good for me as I am usually on a bike at the time.
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