No Parking - No Cry
As of next week I am, for the most part, sans workplace parking. The parking space is no more, it is a former parking space. The parking space as we once knew it is deceased. Where there was once a parking space it is no longer accessible. Ladies and gentlemen my parking space has left the building.
Only it hasn’t really. The space I know and love so dearly still remains, cold, lonely and unused in the basement beneath my feet. I can go and visit it sometimes, so long as I’m on two feet and not four wheels.
Your writer has become a victim of the corporate line of ‘cost cutting’. Although reading the small print it probably transpires I’m not important enough to have a space and was bloody lucky to have it for the past 3 years, although on the days the important people (for whom the journey is a mere 5 miles) do not require their spaces I may enter the realm of the parked employee vehicle. Blessed indeed am I.
However, until I find the corporate ladder and climb it, I have to look at the alternatives. The most obvious being public transport.
The mere mention of those two words bestows upon a car snob such as myself a feeling of utter dread; the haunting smells of wet coat and sweaty commuter; the tinny drone of iPod music coming from almost-blown headphones, the mobile phones ringing incessantly their badly recorded novelty ring tones; it’s Chinese water torture. Not to mention the cost.
An average day’s commute from home to work and back would involve: driving to the local main line train station and parking in their ‘state of the art’ sodium lit glass strewn hard standing known as the station car park . The buses round my way are your typical ‘in the cuds’ line of transport of one vehicle per week - so that would count them out. Parking costs £6 per day, a return mainline ticket including London underground transfer for 2 zones costs £16.. Add roughly £10 per week petrol for the journey to the station from home and a total journey time of 1 ½ hours. That’s £120 per week or roughly £5760 per year and that’s deducting my holiday time.
The discount isn’t much either if I was to buy a weekly or monthly ticket as I rarely travel by public transport on a weekend. Compare that to my weekly fuel bill of £35 including weekends despite the fact petrol round my way at the moment is roughly 86 -89.9p/litre. Making annually including tax and insurance and an extra £1k for maintenance and maybe a bit more petrol £3600 - it’s a no brainer.
And the bureaucrats of this land we live in are trying to get us out of our cars and onto public transport. Sorry but my salary just doesn’t stretch that far and don’t get me started on reliability!
Therefore I am left with one rather promising solution. For work purposes and with no problems parking (as it’s in abundance for this mode of transport) I turn to two wheels.
No, I don’t intend on pedal pushing my 60 mile daily round trip. I’m going motorcycling.
I have a number of friends who are avid bikers and have encouraged me wholeheartedly. It’s a world I have more than dipped my toe into having been to several bike shows and ridden pillion on friends' bikes on numerous occasions squeezing them til they had my fingerprints imprinted on their waists whilst deafening them with my insane giggles of joy. I have also gingerly ‘shuffled’ along on friend’s machines as I do have a fear of dropping them and rendering their pride and joy a useless wreck. And I wouldn’t mind if I had to dress like a Power Ranger, get used to 'helmet hair' and have a bike that looked like a Harley and sounded like a hairdryer, it could be worse…I could be on a scooter!
So I seized the moment (almost) and took my first steps into a couple of showrooms this weekend. I felt like a kid on the first day at school trepidated by the unknown
The first large dealership I entered, a man with a very unfortunate surname came to assist, immediately starting his sales patter to the chap I was with - typical! Upon finding out it was, in fact, a shopping quest for a lady, he started pointing out to me the dealerships range of scooters. Scooters? Hold on a second do I look like a scooter gal to you? Not bloody likely! In my opinion riding a scooter is like vegetarian sausages - pointless. If I wanted a scooter I wouldn’t be standing drooling next to the motorcycles. So I high tailed it out of the shop, taking several of the sales guys’ business cards for comedy reasons.
My second venture into a bike emporium was far more encouraging. It was a small local dealership with new and used motorcycles and with an opening line from the sales manager of “well the tag is £1199, but everything’s negotiable” I was hooked. This man should be running for Government. He described in great detail the offers I could take up with them and even offered to take me and my purchase to the CBT centre, coupled with the fact the little 125cc bike I was looking at does a staggering 100 mpg albeit with a top speed of 60mph. Ok so I’d be no Rossi but I didn’t care I was in learner legal heaven. Take me to your leader I have converted.
So once I have scraped together the necessary funding, (my kidney on a popular auction site near you soon) Muppet goes leather-clad and on two wheels.
Watch this space.
Only it hasn’t really. The space I know and love so dearly still remains, cold, lonely and unused in the basement beneath my feet. I can go and visit it sometimes, so long as I’m on two feet and not four wheels.
Your writer has become a victim of the corporate line of ‘cost cutting’. Although reading the small print it probably transpires I’m not important enough to have a space and was bloody lucky to have it for the past 3 years, although on the days the important people (for whom the journey is a mere 5 miles) do not require their spaces I may enter the realm of the parked employee vehicle. Blessed indeed am I.
However, until I find the corporate ladder and climb it, I have to look at the alternatives. The most obvious being public transport.
The mere mention of those two words bestows upon a car snob such as myself a feeling of utter dread; the haunting smells of wet coat and sweaty commuter; the tinny drone of iPod music coming from almost-blown headphones, the mobile phones ringing incessantly their badly recorded novelty ring tones; it’s Chinese water torture. Not to mention the cost.
An average day’s commute from home to work and back would involve: driving to the local main line train station and parking in their ‘state of the art’ sodium lit glass strewn hard standing known as the station car park . The buses round my way are your typical ‘in the cuds’ line of transport of one vehicle per week - so that would count them out. Parking costs £6 per day, a return mainline ticket including London underground transfer for 2 zones costs £16.. Add roughly £10 per week petrol for the journey to the station from home and a total journey time of 1 ½ hours. That’s £120 per week or roughly £5760 per year and that’s deducting my holiday time.
The discount isn’t much either if I was to buy a weekly or monthly ticket as I rarely travel by public transport on a weekend. Compare that to my weekly fuel bill of £35 including weekends despite the fact petrol round my way at the moment is roughly 86 -89.9p/litre. Making annually including tax and insurance and an extra £1k for maintenance and maybe a bit more petrol £3600 - it’s a no brainer.
And the bureaucrats of this land we live in are trying to get us out of our cars and onto public transport. Sorry but my salary just doesn’t stretch that far and don’t get me started on reliability!
Therefore I am left with one rather promising solution. For work purposes and with no problems parking (as it’s in abundance for this mode of transport) I turn to two wheels.
No, I don’t intend on pedal pushing my 60 mile daily round trip. I’m going motorcycling.
I have a number of friends who are avid bikers and have encouraged me wholeheartedly. It’s a world I have more than dipped my toe into having been to several bike shows and ridden pillion on friends' bikes on numerous occasions squeezing them til they had my fingerprints imprinted on their waists whilst deafening them with my insane giggles of joy. I have also gingerly ‘shuffled’ along on friend’s machines as I do have a fear of dropping them and rendering their pride and joy a useless wreck. And I wouldn’t mind if I had to dress like a Power Ranger, get used to 'helmet hair' and have a bike that looked like a Harley and sounded like a hairdryer, it could be worse…I could be on a scooter!
So I seized the moment (almost) and took my first steps into a couple of showrooms this weekend. I felt like a kid on the first day at school trepidated by the unknown
The first large dealership I entered, a man with a very unfortunate surname came to assist, immediately starting his sales patter to the chap I was with - typical! Upon finding out it was, in fact, a shopping quest for a lady, he started pointing out to me the dealerships range of scooters. Scooters? Hold on a second do I look like a scooter gal to you? Not bloody likely! In my opinion riding a scooter is like vegetarian sausages - pointless. If I wanted a scooter I wouldn’t be standing drooling next to the motorcycles. So I high tailed it out of the shop, taking several of the sales guys’ business cards for comedy reasons.
My second venture into a bike emporium was far more encouraging. It was a small local dealership with new and used motorcycles and with an opening line from the sales manager of “well the tag is £1199, but everything’s negotiable” I was hooked. This man should be running for Government. He described in great detail the offers I could take up with them and even offered to take me and my purchase to the CBT centre, coupled with the fact the little 125cc bike I was looking at does a staggering 100 mpg albeit with a top speed of 60mph. Ok so I’d be no Rossi but I didn’t care I was in learner legal heaven. Take me to your leader I have converted.
So once I have scraped together the necessary funding, (my kidney on a popular auction site near you soon) Muppet goes leather-clad and on two wheels.
Watch this space.
posted by Manda @ 9:00 am
1 Comments:
Noooooo!
They can't take your parking space away! Evil evil people. :sulks:
Good luck with the CBT too!
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