Unfair parking fines and strange coins

A bunch of us arrived for Frisbee training by bicycle, and parked up in the local pay and display car park near John Bunyan’s cottage, next to the local pub (strangely not the John Bunyan). We chained our bikes along the fence to keep out of everyone’s way. For some reason, all but two of us bought car park tickets and attached them to the bikes – I and one other didn’t, as it didn’t really seem necessary.

Just as we were heading to the pitches, the parking attendant arrived and began writing up fines for the two bikes that weren’t displaying tickets. I quickly tried to buy a ticket from the machine before my fine was completed, but failed. However, in trying to extract my ticket, the machine spat out a load of coins, which I pocketed. Having failed to prevent my fine being issued, I went to training.

On our return, we inspected the tickets we’d been given. I had a £50 fine for failing to display a valid parking ticket. The other non-ticket-holder had the same fine, plus and extra £100 fine for having his vehicle facing the wrong way. Since this isn’t an offence, and in any case a bike could be picked up and turned around by hand, we were understandably livid. Closer inspection also revealed that the parking attendant was getting kickbacks from the pub – in lieu of a discount for early payment, the fines would be waived if we agreed to spend at least 50% of the fine amount on food therein.

Back at my parents’ house some time later, I looked at the selection of coins I’d received from the parking machine. They included:

Two copper fifty pence pieces from 1941, with very sharp corners.
One two pence piece from 1870, depicting an incredibly fat, almost spherical Queen Victoria.
One wildly impractical ‘coin’, a rectangle measuring some 6 inches by 4 inches, commemorating the feats of a famous quarterback in the NFL. The value of this coin was $14.

At this point I remembered how utterly furious I was with the unfair parking fines, and woke up in a bad mood.

February 3, 2010 Posted in: Dreams