Bonus Episode: Car Parking, Parking Apps, Trolleys in the way and Bowling Shoes....

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Welcome to My Dad's Car, a podcast discussing our personal relationship with automotive discount. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be about your dad's car. It can be your mum's, your grand, your parents, girls, or even a neighbour's. If it made an impression, let's talk about it. How are you?

Well that. Yeah, good.

Good thanks. This is my friend the microphone. Works so much better, yeah. Hello, help.

Thought you sounded a bit distant.

We'll start that again. How are you doing, John? You're right. Yeah, good thanks. Fantastic. Let's talk about um car parks, shall we? We all use them and uh yeah, we went to car park the other day, and in their infinite wisdom, the local monthly story, you now have to pay before you go off to town rather than afterwards. And I find that really annoying because it limits me to what I'm gonna do. And it almost feels like a harkback, which I think we'll touch on later, to like the 20p in the meter at the side of the road. Yeah. Which, yeah, from a nostalgic point of view, lovely, but everything else about it, I just yeah, I dislike. I'd much rather pay when I get back.

Just adds pressure, needlessly, doesn't it? So you've either got to speed around in the allotted time that you've paid for. Yeah. Or you're gonna be sort of clockwatching and having to extend your time, which is just I mean, it's just a it's an it's a money-grabbing scheme, isn't it? They must be in cahoots with all the shops, I reckon.

Yeah. Go slow, please, go slow.

Yeah.

I think I guess what they want is people to pay for two hours when they're only gonna use an hour and ten minutes. And I think well maybe yeah, it's the northerner in me. Um that means I'd try and do it in 30 minutes and yeah.

Yeah, I think there's a local one near me where you used to be able to if you I think if you were it within like 20 minutes or something, it was a free go. Oh, okay. But I was in the same place recently and I was definitely within like 20 minutes, and I had to pay, I don't know, whatever it was, £1.10 or something inconvenient. But but at least that was one where you pay at the end and not in advance. Yeah. Have you ever had a parking ticket? Yes. Most recent one, I think I was it was a one of the kids' parties, and I parked in a car park. It's one of these car parks where it was free after a certain time, and I think I might have stretched it. I think I might have got there at like ten to the hour when it was free, and then came back, and then yeah, there's a nice little yellow ticket on my windscreen. But yeah, I've had a few over the years. I mean, some of them you just can't, it's quite unavoidable at times, isn't it? As hard as you try, you can get get done over. I've just had a trip this morning, I had to drive to Clapham and back. Yeah. And uh I'm just sort of constantly I'm conscious of like going into a bus lane or getting caught in a section of the road where I shouldn't be. And there are certain roads now in London where you can't even drive a vehicle. Oh really? Yeah, I went to see a friend in Tottenham earlier in the week, and uh he said, Oh, when you come out of my road, it's a one-way, he said, Don't whatever you do, go straight on, you need to turn left before the end because the straight on zone, I think unless you've got a blue badge, you can't go down there. So I said, Oh, what can you pay to go down? And he said, No, you can't. Just can't do it. No matter what, it's a 60 pound fine, yeah. So he says a lot of people they pull up to outside his house because he's just before the zone, and he he sees them like getting rags out of their vehicle to put over the number plates, that sort of stuff. Oh really? Yeah.

Oh, we're onto the old ULES cameras. Yeah. It's mad, isn't it? That you can't I've I think I don't think I've ever had a parking ticket. Really? You shouldn't say that. Oh, actually, actually, sorry, tell a lie. We went to we went to Crawley, actually. We parked in a car park for Wicks, I think, in Crawley. And then we ended up going in a big toy barnhouse or something like that. Not toys or us, what's the other one? Smith's Toy Sleepstore.

Yeah.

With the kids. And I think you could park there for like an hour and a half, and we were two hours or something along those lines. And then we got something through from like one of those like eye in the sky camera people.

Yeah.

And we took it up with Wicks, actually, I think, and said, Look, we actually did buy something from your store. Here's the receipt. And yeah, they kind of wrote it kindly off. But yeah, otherwise it's 60 quid. Yeah. You pay more for the parking than you did in toys and you know.

I think I have one in a similar situation years ago. I was going for a job interview somewhere, and I knew someone that worked in the company. And I said, I'll park in the um it's either a little or an Audi, parking there, and I did. I think I'd gone over by it must have been like six minutes or something, and that was a 60 pound fine. I did get that job though, so uh every cloud.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, so yeah, it's just a frustration. I would much rather pay. Just get back to the car. But yeah, parking is horrific anyway. Brighton's horrible. I imagine London's pretty horrible.

Oh yeah, Brighton's bad, isn't it? Yeah. We went there recently and we were struggling to find where it was that we were parking. I think we end up in a multi-story. I knew there was a multi-story or two there, but I just couldn't find them.

Yeah. Brighton station is a good deal, actually. If you go to Brighton Station, you can park there all day for like eight or nine quid, I think. Right. Whereas if you go to like Churchill Square, for example, that's ten quid for four hours or something ridiculous.

Yeah. Nasty.

Yeah, by the time you've bought a sandwich for everyone, and all the it's £30 before you've even stepped in a shop.

Yeah. A lot of them are cashless now, aren't they? Got a phone up and I hate the apps. I hate the apps. There's a street where I park. Um, my oldest has got piano lessons in Greenwich. So uh there's one street that I've sort of found that is it's close enough, but it's the only one that's got usually some parking spaces in it. You have to pay. Yeah. And that's on the app. But the lessons are only half an hour long. We usually get there around half four. The lesson finishes at five. So it's like, do I pay the extra half an hour? I usually don't pay on the app until I'm like just around the corner on foot.

Yeah, yeah. You can still see the car. You just sort of stretch it, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What what I find with the app, and I have used them. What I find really frustrating is when you get to somewhere, especially if you've been on holiday or something like that, you're in an area you don't know, and it goes, I'll pay on the app, and then you go to do it, and either there's no phone signal or it's an app you've not got and you've got to download the app. Yeah, and there's no phone signal.

Well what usually happens is because there are sort of three or four apps, aren't there? There's like pay by phone. Is there a Ringo or something like that? Ringo is a good one, yeah. Um, but whatever place you turn up at, the one that you need has uninstalled itself usually. And then obviously you try and log in, password, you won't know that, do you? So you have to reset password, and yeah, it's just it's a horror. It's not a nice experience. There's got to be an easier way, hasn't there? And then you feel like a pensioner trying to look for a telephone number to phone them up. You just you can't do that. I I'd rather just drive around and not park than actually dial up the landline. That's just I've done that. I remember in the past I used to have to call out your um your number plate. Oh, you read it out and it goes gets it wrong every time. Yeah. Did you say, yeah? Yeah. You say that R8, and it's just like S two. A blue Rolls-Royce.

No, no.

Yeah, I mean, I think you'll struggle to find anyone that's got sort of positive words to say about a parking experience. Um, yeah, we've got a weight chosen town to be fair.

You can park there for two hours for free. But there used to be like a little guy on the gate checking that you had a receipt.

That seems to have gone, but I imagine um I think Sainsbury's have got a feature where you can claim your money back in store. If you show your parking ticket, they'll give you like a quid back or something like that. It used to be like that. I don't know if it's still doing it, but yeah, it shouldn't be this hard to park. No, definitely not. So it sort of leads me on to a point I raised for you earlier in the week as well about in the supermarket. You think you spotted your bay that's free, but then as you pull up to it, it's not the small smart car, it's the shopping trolley that someone's left in there because they're an absolute slob and they couldn't take it back to the uh the trolley garage.

Yeah, yeah. You gotta then get out, haven't you, and move it, or you've got to try and chance your arm and and just drive in very slowly to nudge it.

Yeah. It amazes me, some people they don't mind parking next to them, which I find surprising, really. Yeah, it's fair enough if you've got a bit of a banger, but if you've got something that's relatively new and pristine, I probably wouldn't chance it parking next to it.

No, people who put trolleys back, very, very frustrating. Or and uh leaving them in the bay, even but you kind of think what they've done is they must have been in one bay, so they've pushed it into the bay next to them, not even onto like the path or the pavement between the bays.

But I regularly see people in the supermarket, they've emptied the shopping from the trolley to their boot, and then they'll just get the trolley and literally just nudge it, you know, into a bay or just away. I mean, that's something that's just pond life, isn't it?

I guess that's the argument for putting the pound in it, but yeah, that quite often they don't work.

Yeah, that's true. Should be some sort of deposit, like a watch or something, or a passport.

Like renting a car.

Yeah.

Maybe yeah, they all had a I'd be hilarious, wouldn't it? To print out like some pretend contactless things.

Yeah.

Stick like April Fool's Day, just go up to the local Liddle and bolt one of them to every trolley and just flatch it.

Yeah. I think a lot of the trolleys were getting lifted as well, um, locally at one point because of the the metal value. People were taking them for so I I think some of the supermarkets have moved on from metal trolleys now, haven't they? I think there's some sort of plasticky plasticky ones. Yeah.

Saints were up the road from us. They used to have like a cattle grid type thing, so you couldn't push it out.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

But they've just lifted that and that and that's not there anymore.

They should have those in school, shouldn't they, really?

So kids don't run out of the they all have to have special shoes, a bit like going bowling. You just have special shoes that can't walk over those.

Yeah. Oh, the bowling shoe's gone now, though, isn't it? I think you just playing your own shoe. Strange how that sort of got abolished overnight.

Yeah, all of a sudden, the kind of the falsehood that you needed special shoes for bowling was like, I know we were we were just joshing. No, you didn't need don't really need them, yeah. You're not gonna fall over. It's just a thing. Oh, oh, you want you want to hire some shoes? That's an extra two quid, mate. Yeah, how many of you? Yep, yeah.

The 16 pounds, please, for shoe high. I think there's a big sort of warehouse somewhere or lockup that's got all the old shoes, but uh some sort of barn find.

They sent them to a third world country and somewhere there's Lenny Henry's dishing out multicoloured clown shoes for small kids who haven't got proper trainers.

Incredible, yeah. You suddenly see um a surge in popularity of bowling in Kenya, become like an Olympic sport, and they'll be not very good purchase on the muddy terrain with those shoes, they're very slidey. No, it would be slippery, wouldn't they? No traction on those. Yeah, yeah, what happened to them all? Just seemed to happen overnight, didn't it? It wasn't like a sort of, oh, we're gonna phase these out, it was just gone all of a sudden. Yeah, it's it's the the other one as well in supermarkets is um a lot of people parking in the uh parent and child spaces that clearly haven't got a child in their car.

Yeah, yeah, very annoying. At some point, we're getting to the stage where you kind of think, you know, we've got one on a booster seat, one just not on a booster seat at all. At some point, we probably need to stop parking there, really.

Is it worth having another child just to continue?

No, absolutely not. Um the the other one that annoys me is sat in parent and child, dad's still in the car. Yeah. Perhaps with the children, mum's gone to do the shopping. It's like if your children aren't getting in and out, you didn't need a bigger space.

Yeah. The thing is though, all of this stuff, like the trolley's being left, people parking in the wrong bar. I see people parking the click and collect bays at Morrison's as well. And just run in. They're not clicking collecting, they're going to do a big shop. Yeah. Um it's not police, any of this, is it? No. That's the trouble. Until they sort of get some sort of security on it, or they could just bring something in, couldn't they? It could be a good money maker for the supermarkets, just third party, yeah. Like the car washers. Yeah, it could be like a TV programme, like the sheriff's, couldn't it? That sort of thing. Oh, you can't park in, mate. Go knock in. Yeah, we've got a reference of you, yeah. You've been parking in uh parenting sharp bay. Got repossess you're fear? Why? Why? Because you parked in the parent space at Little. Caught you on the school Yellow Lions as well. Oh yeah, yeah. Zig zags. I think that one should be a night in prison on the Yellow Lions. They'd soon stop, wouldn't they?

Have you got a road near your school which is so impossibly narrow and everyone parks? It's like I think deliberately they build schools in roads which aren't very good to Yeah, and it's a bus route as well, where the school is.

Classic, yeah. A long bus comes down, and regularly cars and buses are mounting pavements, and yes, it's crazy, isn't it? Like cars mounting pavements with kids walking to school. Yeah, you do worry about what might happen. But madness. Not good. No, I've had a little vent there that's all better after that.

Cool. Yeah, share with us your thoughts on uh car parks and uh trolleys left in parking bays.

Yeah, it'd be good if when that does go out on Instagram or whatever to see some comments of people's top rilers, shall we say?

Yeah, yeah. What annoys you, what gets under your skin?

Could be anything, yeah.

Oh, the other ones, McDonald's rappers out of moving cars.

Oh, any wrapper out of a moving car, yeah. I mean that should be three nights in prison, shouldn't it? I think the arm amputation. Sometimes when I put up to um like major roundabouts near the M25 or whatever, when you see the Oh you're not gonna say the ties a bottle. No, no. But you know, when you see like the grass verges next to you, if you're sort of in the lane next to the grass, it's just absolutely covered. They're growing Big Macs. Yeah, absolutely covered. Yeah, littering is it's mind blowing, isn't it? I saw someone do it coming out of the gym the other day. We'd take the kids swimming and um just driving out. There are bins obviously in the car park, and you just see all this stuff just tossed out of someone's car window. Shocking, isn't it? Yeah, well it's genuinely shocking. It's shocking to see someone getting assaulted in the street, I think. It's just yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know who they think clears it up, but if you threw it on their front garden, you know, they'd probably be annoyed. Or maybe they wouldn't, maybe like it'd just blend in with the fridge freezer and the sofa and yeah, the dog mess and all the rest. It just would have yeah.

Living like the twits.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. The twits, but with a slightly nicer tracksuit.

Yeah. Rusty Zafira.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Cool. Yeah, we'll wrap that up. That was a little bit of fun. Yeah, thank you very much, John. Pleasure. And uh yeah, roll the credits.

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