Parking Ticket

So the screen on the laptop is buggered; that's the professional opinion, an opinion that's cost us $88.50 from a specialist computer shop in Surry Hills. I could have diagnosed that myself for $88.50 worth of fiddling with the hinges. Still, it's nice to know that the professionals agree, though I'm feeling particularly gaulled about the $88.50 since I got a parking ticket for $79 last night, having mis-understood the parking regulations outside Ella's nursery and parked in a spot that required a ticket from the machine. The really annoying thing about this is that I'm not one of those people who decides to risk it on the assumption I won't get caught. I'm a rule-abiding citizen, a tax-payer, an upstanding member of the community, at least, if you don't count the fruit-smuggling over the Queensland border.

Anyway, the sum of this is $167.50 incurred in the last eighteen hours for zilch, though when I say zilch, I'm not counting the absolute rant I gave the parking attendant as he stood tapping my registration number into his machine, a rant I really needed to have after almost seven months of living in a city where nothing really works properly and nobody really cares.

"Are you ticketing me?" I asked

"Yes"

"But I thought I could park here. I'm sorry, I've misunderstood the rule - I've been here literally five minutes picking my daughter up"

The parking attendant was a little Italian-looking man. He didn't even bother looking up at me because if he had, he'd have seen me struggling to carry Ella plus her bag while simultaneously evading the vegemite sandwich she'd nicked from the tea trolley in the kitchen. As a human, I'd have taken pity, but then we all know parking attendants aren't human.

"I'm just doing my job" he said, continuing to stare at his little machine, which I'd have quite happily knocked him out with if I'd had a free hand with which to grab it.

"Well thanks for that" I said. "And what a great job you're doing, a real positive contribution to the community. What a great Australian you are, and what a great country this is. You're bloody marvellous you Australians, bloody fantastic"

And with that I gave him the bird and called him something terrible and the injustice of the whole thing enraged me so much that I put Ella into her seat and forgot to strap her in.

"Straps Mummy!" She said. "Straps!"

It was almost worth the $79 to have a good rant.