From Fined to Found!

The saga of the zero waste parking ticket!

This story starts on Monday, when on returning from a half-term visit to the cinema, I was met by a Parking Penalty notice ungraciously attached to my windscreen.

With my blood pressure starting to rise, I spluttered the words made famous by Victor Meldrew....

"I don't believe it!" I ranted, getting all hot and bothered in the car park.

I was convinced I'd paid for the ticket and I was certain I'd placed it carefully on my dashboard, but with two children who were frollicking around like a pair of ferrets, who knows what could have happened.

As I peered into my car, I could see the flimsy piece of paper lying on the floor in the footwell. It must have blown off the dashboard while my little ones were getting out of the car.

I was vindicated.

As a honest citizen, I'd felt enraged that I'd been accused of bypassing the system. Geez, I don't even give other people my unspent parking tickets, so to be fined £20 when I'd already paid was enough to send me into a spiral of discontent.

"It would never have happened if the bus service was running." I muttered.

"And it certainly would never have happened if the council still used those annoying stick-to-your-windscreen parking tickets. They never used to blow away"

And that was it. I had obviously lost the plot, because only months earlier I had been praising the benefits of the new ticketing system as a means of reducing paper waste. No more gummy paper to send off to landfill, just simple lightweight paper tickets I could bung in my compost bin.

So while I work on my appeal and gather the evidence of my innocence, I must remember to add one more thing to my shopping list.

Blu-Tak!

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