Come on, you say, how on earth can there be any MORE irritations? What's wrong with you man? Get a grip. But it's true, I can find a few more annoyances and irritations, and more that drive me stark-staring nuts.
What is it with the layout of carparks? Why do the idiots who decide how you drive around them have to make it so illogical. I'll give you an instance. I am driving to Milton Keynes Hospital every day to visit Carol on Ward 20. I park in the multi-storey carpark I could use the ground level one, but it's a long walk around the hospital site to the new entrance. (I'll come back to the irritation of having to walk around to where the new entrance is when it used to be dead opposite the carpark, but I'll skip it for now.) Driving in to the carpark they have got two barriers, where you have to stop to take a ticket out of the machine. So, if there are two cars side by side at the barrier and one driver gets their ticket from their machine first, it's like the start of a Grand Prix as you put your foot down on the accelerator so you can get a parking place before the other cars gets there first. But it's really the layout of the carpark which causes the annoyances with me. You have to drive round and then find some areas, for no good reason known to man, that are out of bounds. You have to make a complete circuit of the carpark in order to drive out when you leave, and at the exit have to be extremely dextrous with your driving in order to avoid hitting any of the barriers and low bits of concrete edging, a really crazy way to design an exit. No doubt some bureaucrat in an office in Whitehall, doodling on the back of an envelope, with absolutely no idea of the frustration and havoc caused by his ignorant carpark design.
I had to park in the carpark again at the weekend. I can get free parking as Carol is a cancer patient, by going into Macmillan's unit, which is on the floor below Ward 20, and get my parking ticket stamped which allows me to exit the carpark without further payment. But on Sunday, when I left (unfortunately you have to pay, even as the relation of a cancer patient, because Macmillan isn't open over the weekend.) But on leaving, even though I'd payed at the machine, where you have to put your ticket in the machine and it shows on the digital screen how much you have to pay, which was £4.50, by the time I got in the car and drove out of the multi-storey carpark, for whatever reason, the barrier was raised, which meant I could leave without putting the ticket into the slot in the machine which raises the barrier (if after all this you are still with me, as it's far to complicated to describe. Sorry if I lost you throughout all that.) So, you can imagine how annoyed I was about the fact that I had spent £4.50 on parking and then being able to be released from the carpark with the barrier raised (I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps the system was out of order. Which was all very well and good, but if that was the case, why was there no notice on the ticket machine to say you didn't have to pay? I bet there were a lot of other people using the carpark who were as annoyed as I was regarding this matter.
Anyway, the following day I decided, once I'd parked in the multi storey carpark, to take my ticket to the little office which is within the carpark and demand a refund of my £4.50. When I asked the man who was in the office, he politely refused to refund me. WHY I wanted to know, curtly, but I must add, politely (as I try to be polite, even when I'm annoyed, which can be very difficult at times, particularly when faced with such bare-faced jobsworthishness (now THERE'S a new word!) But he was. He could easily have said 'I'm so sorry, sir. Here's your refund. I'm sorry you've been inconvenienced!' But no! Perhaps he'd got out of the wrong side of his bed, or some such disagreeable matter to make him so uncharitable to me. But in all this, you will agree that it was yet another of life's irritations. I think, if Victor Meldrew had been involved in this incident, that grumpy git character played by Richard Wilson in the BBC sitcom 'One Foot In The Grave,' he would be bound to utter his famous catchphrase 'I don't believe it!!!'
Later.
Continuing on from what I've written regarding the parking at Milton Keynes hospital, and my experiences with the ticket I paid for on Sunday and the fact that once I'd payed the £4.50 to be able to get the barrier to raise to let me out and then finding it raised, the same thing happened today. I walked past a queue of people as I went into the carpark, as they were paying their money to also become released. As I walked into the carpark I saw that the barriers were raised. I did attempt to tell people they were wasting there hard-earned cash by putting it into the wretched machine, regardless of the fact that the barriers were raised. Will someone tell me why nobody had the sense to put a notice on this machine to the effect that this was unnecessary? This whole thing is a scandal and a good way to make money.
Later.
Continuing on from what I've written regarding the parking at Milton Keynes hospital, and my experiences with the ticket I paid for on Sunday and the fact that once I'd payed the £4.50 to be able to get the barrier to raise to let me out and then finding it raised, the same thing happened today. I walked past a queue of people as I went into the carpark, as they were paying their money to also become released. As I walked into the carpark I saw that the barriers were raised. I did attempt to tell people they were wasting there hard-earned cash by putting it into the wretched machine, regardless of the fact that the barriers were raised. Will someone tell me why nobody had the sense to put a notice on this machine to the effect that this was unnecessary? This whole thing is a scandal and a good way to make money.
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