My supermarket of choice at nearby Watchmoor Park has an area which is adorned with the words ‘pick-up point’ in big white letters and has some double-yellow lines for extra clarification. Actually, I’m unsure of the actual painted words because they always have cars parked on top of them. But I do know for sure the words don’t say “park here if you’re lazy”. Yes folks, the pick-up point – which I assume is there to allow people to drive into, pick up a passenger, and carry on – is permanently full of parked cars.
I have observed people getting in and out of the these cars – they don’t appear to be disabled in any way, so I can only assume that they are parking there because they are ignorant, selfish or lazy (or any two of those, or possibly all three). Less than a minute’s walk away are hundreds of empty spaces, but for some reason these people aren’t able to manage that hundred-yard journey and instead render the pick-up point useless, much to the inconvenience of anyone who might want to use it for its actual purpose.
I once overheard a lady who was kind enough to give us an illustration of the staggering ignorance of these people. As they got out of their car she said to her boyfriend / husband / ape “wow, that was lucky finding a space right outside”. Lucky indeed, certainly more lucky than the lady in the wheelchair who struggled with two bags of shopping but managed to get into her car which was parked in the disabled spaces further from the door. However, that couple probably weren’t as stupid as the lady who reversed out of her ‘space’ and nearly ran over some pedestrians who were innocently using the nearby zebra crossing and weren’t expecting a car to reverse towards them. Some swearing ensued, and quite rightly so.
