Thursday, February 26, 2009

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.

5 comments:

  1. Slightly OT, but not completely.

    About 10 years ago in the US a guy parks his late model Saturn, which is some sort of cinnamon color.

    Returns, chucks his stuff in the back seat, drives home.

    The next day, he gets call from another guy who did the same sort of thing, only to discover that some stuff he left in the trunk wasn't there, but some stuff he didn't leave was.

    Turns out there were two cars of precisely the same make, model, year, color AND keying in the same lot at the same time, with one parked several spots down the same row.

    First guy out got in the first "his" car he saw, which was the other guy's.

    Second guy out did the same thing, but since the other "his" car was only several spots further down, didn't notice the difference.

    Which proves intelligent design, right?

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  2. Wonderfull Brit, the porridge scoffers have a name for such ladies, "nippy sweetie" I love 'em, the more they dig their heels in the more erotic they become, I digress.
    Have we considered the ersatz nonchalance adopted whilst waiting outside of tricky knicker establishments ? trying not to appear like a transvestite, dying inside, squirming internally.

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  3. I gave the pantyshop-waiting problem a perfunctory mention in the first Pavement Panto post, Malty, since the mobile phone provides a perfect prop.

    Plenty more meat on that bone, however.

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  4. (As Roy Hattersley once said to me. Fortunately I was wearing galoshes.)

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  5. OK, feigned nonchalance (2) As you approach the silver or gold mummer and think "groan, not another one" then prepare to saunter past wearing an air of world weary indifference. However, one of your voices is nagging you, "stop, watch, leave coin, enjoy." As the audience is normally made up of giggling kids taking the piss so your other voices are saying "walk on, walk on."
    Decisions, decisions.

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