Advanced Gun-Sticking

I feel we’re just scratching the surface on Pavement Panto™. Peter B comes up with another superb PP (Primary Class) U-turn routine, which also enables you to get out of the double u-turn (and possibly the triple as well).

Keep ‘em coming, please. There’s a sidebar feature in this, I can feel it. Hoodie gang passing techniques, for instance, are surely a rich vein.

For the moment though, I’ll just tell the story that thrust itself to the forefront of my mind following the delightful tale of Mrs Malty attempting to remotely unlock the wrong car at Tesco.

Similarly it concerns women and cars (nothing sexist, just a coincidence (Probably.).). The story involves a young lady, an ex-colleague, at the time new to the Bristol area. She went for an evening out in the town centre and parked up, as many people do, in Queen Square.

Queen Square, in case you don’t know it, is a reasonable-sized public expanse of green, surrounded by a cobbled road and various 18th century listed buildings. Car parking spaces are all the way along the cobbles and it used to be £1.60 for parking all night (now gone up to two bloody fifty of course, but that’s not pertinent to the story). The Square is very symmetrical and has various exits and entrances, at the corners and midway along the sides, making it potentially a little bit confusing for newcomers.

Anyway, the young lady parked up, went off for her meal with friends, returned somewhat later and lo and behold, the car was missing. She searched about with increasing franticness, then got a taxi home and called the police to report it stolen.

Typical plod investigation, then two days later she gets a call. Good news, they’ve found the car! Even better news, it’s completely undamaged! And where did they find it?

Parked in Queen Square and covered in parking tickets, of course.

What makes this story really intriguing, is not so much that she made a classic dumb blondeism (she was blonde too, as it happens), but that she absolutely, categorically REFUSED to accept that she might just have forgotten on which side of Queen Square she parked the vehicle.

No, she was quite adamant that the car had been stolen during the period she was at the restaurant, and then later returned and left neatly, and with no sign of break-in, in a parking space. Upon being challenged to explain the accrual of the parking tickets, she simply ignored the question. (I believe she quietly paid the fines though).

Even several years later, when surely the tale could have been a very useful laugh-at-yourself dinner party anecdote, she refused to accept that the car had not been nicked.

This brand of superlative pokerface acting isn’t exactly Pavement Panto™, I don’t think, but it certainly takes sticking to your guns to a virtuoso level.