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Parking Woes

48 posts & 29 voices | Started 2 years ago by user-removed | Latest reply from timber

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car culture

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user-removed - Member

I live in a terraced street full of mostly pleasant people. My wife has a wee fiat and I have a Focus estate - it looks a bit grubby just now as the sills and doors have patches of primer all over them, after I applied liberal doses of Kurust last week.

Anyhoo, all the neighbours treat the space outside their houses as 'their space', even those who haven't got a car..... I've had a couple of really nasty notes left under the wipers and been asked by a few neighbours (three / four doors up) not to park outside their houses because the grandkids visit and they're really heavy, etc, etc.

Nobody's keyed my car yet, but several times the wipers have been left up and a cone on the roof once or twice.

We do have a garage but it's tiny (and full of bikes ).

Buy a gun and keep watch?

Posted 2 years ago #
aP - Member

Try living in London when sometimes you can't park in the same street, let alone outside.

Posted 2 years ago #
breatheeasy - Member

No-one has a right to the space outside their door. Annoying it might be, if you've got a car and they haven't what do they expect.

If you want a really compromise maybe next time say if their grandkids do arrive (I assume they don't visit everyday) then you'll try and move the car if possible. Could you park over your garage entrance as a gesture?

Or if you're feeling really nasty paint a 'disabled' parking space outside their houses, and a fake bus stop.

Posted 2 years ago #
cynic-al - Member

who's parking outside yours? Do other houses have 2 cars?

Posted 2 years ago #
user-removed - Member

Wouldn't mind parking in the next street if I didn't think someone was looking out their window cursing and thinking of running their keys along my car

Posted 2 years ago #
aP - Member

If that's the case then you'd better get a garage. In the last year we've had 4 hit and runs on our car and both sides have been keyed. Its nothing to do with us as everyone else in our road has the same done to their cars as well. At least the local golf club haven't been past on one of their pub crawls recently - they knocked off 60 door mirrors that night.

Posted 2 years ago #
jam bo - Member

buy a shit heap of a car for £50 and leave it outside their house for a couple of weeks.

Posted 2 years ago #
user-removed - Member

Some of the houses do have two cars and seem to manage alright - some have garages and park in them. I have looked into extending our garage which is one of these modular things, made up of flat panels, but the cost of extending the base and buying more panels is more than just buying another garage!

The wife is usually home before me, so her car usually sits outside our house - we do try to swap spaces as much as possible, so our cars aren't sitting outside anyone's house for more than a day.

I just want to get on with the neighbours, but they are making it bl00dy hard!

EDIT: Jaysus aP - sounds like you live in a warzone!!

Posted 2 years ago #
anotherdeadhero - Member

Sell your car and learn to live with one car in the household.

Posted 2 years ago #
user-removed - Member

hero - not gonna happen. Mrs Removed has to commute 40 miles and do a load of home visits throughout the day. I'm a wedding photographer (had one in Worksop on Fri and I live near Durham!) and there's no way I can carry all my gear in a Bob trailer.... I also do various commercial jobs and portrait shoots which makes my car, sadly, indespensable.

Posted 2 years ago #
waihiboy - Member

Sell your car and learn to live with one car in the household.

or buy a motorbike like i did,

Posted 2 years ago #
user-removed - Member

See my previous post ^^^

Might have to look at building a car-port in front of the garage (at the back of the house). Bit dodgy though, as the land the garage is on isn't really owned by anyone, and the land beyond the garage is in a similar state of limbo - planning nightmare!!

Posted 2 years ago #
project - Member

Many years ago living in a Northern town,on a terraced street[b], the old biddy next door hammered on the front door at 5.30 in the morning,the reason there was a car parked outside her house,and she was getting the grand kids around and it was HER,space,and no matter what i said she just wanted the car moveing,eventually i shut the door on her, half an hour latter she was at it again, threatening the Police etc,about 2 hours later she was back with the local know it all.

Who again repeated i should move the car,to be neighbourly,i tryed explaining i wasnt going to move the car,and yet again got threatened that the police would be called.
Lunchtime the neighbours family turned up,and said i was being petty, and nasty etc,the grandmother was really traumatised and had called out the DR.
I shut the door on them, went and got a sheet of paper, and wrote on it in big letters,

THIS IS NOT MY CAR,
I DO NOT HAVE A LICENCE,
I CANT DRIVE A CAR.

Which i put under the wipers, and through her door,she never apologised as doid either of the family,and i left a few weeks latter.

Posted 2 years ago #
ski - Member

Sign in your front garden:

or

Posted 2 years ago #
pjt201 - Member

there are some people near me who put cones out in front of their house (2 houses out of 50 in the street). i take great pleasure in running over the cones with my £250 renault clio and leaving my car in the space. everyone else has to put up with not being able to park outside their house, so why can't they?

Posted 2 years ago #
Flaperon - Member

Crate of wine + ask nicely. You might be surprised, especially since if they agree they might then "adopt" your car and start keying other people's when they park outside their door. Worked for me in Leeds.

Edit: I know that technically you can park wherever the hell you want (within reason) but the world's not fair and sometimes you need to bribe people.

Posted 2 years ago #
Spongebob - Member

I blame the Victorians for building houses 3 feet from the pavement and giving long strips of land at the rear of the house.

Why didn't they build the houses set back a litle to create some space?

Who gives a stuff about growing veg?

Posted 2 years ago #
andylaightscat - Member

needed the garden for the horse..

Posted 2 years ago #
mastiles_fanylion - Member

I have exactly the same problem with an old lady who expects to have the space kept free outside her house (even though she has only one car and has her own parking space at the back of the house she uses - she just wants the road to the front of her house keeping empty). Recently she told me not to park there so I was incredibly polite and told her very firmly that she has no right to the road outside her house and I will continue to park where I can.

She has since started parking there (on a main road) rather than at the back of the house purely to stop me parking there. It is so petty - she would rather risk her car being damaged on the main road and leave her private space unused for no other reason than to stop me parking there.

Posted 2 years ago #
user-removed - Member

Lol @ project's old biddy story and the signs......

I would actually far prefer it if the neighbours ran out their house when they saw me parking, and tried to give me a pice of their mind. At least then there's the possibility of discussion.

What got / gets me is the anonymous notes ("dont park yer fook1n b'stard car here again you c*ntin f*ckface", was one memorable missive) which leave you standing in the street fuming and looking wild-eyed and suspicious at all the neighbours' windows. Makes you feel awful - totally impotent unless you go round banging on random doors.....

Posted 2 years ago #
user-removed - Member

Aye, Mastiles - I remember that thread...... Daft old witch!

Posted 2 years ago #
zokes - Member

Mastiles - go and park on her personal space at the back of her house then?

Posted 2 years ago #
-m- - Member

We are fortunate enough to have a (shared) drive with space to park 2 cars. 99.99% of the time we use the drive. Very occasionally we need to leave a car on the street.

The first time was the day we moved in. We were coming and going in a van so didn't have space to leave the car on the drive. About 7pm there was a knock on the door "We just wanted to come and say hello and welcome to the neighbourhood [pause] and to ask when you're going to move your car that's parked outside our house". Not wishing to upset the applecart on our first day in the village I refrained from using my favourite "oh, sorry, I didn't realise you're disabled" line and instead offered to move the car later. Which I did. At 5am the following day

The second time (different part of the street) we just got an unpleasant note under the windscreen wipers...

Interestingly we've never had any complaints when our more anonymous/inconsequential Fiesta has been left out on the road.

Posted 2 years ago #
mastiles_fanylion - Member

Mastiles - go and park on her personal space at the back of her house then?

But that IS her space and she is welcome to it - I am not being belligerent by parking where I do, I just take whatever space is available and legal.

Twas funny the other morning though - she was in her garden and I walked by so I shouted the singularly most cheerful 'MORNING!' I possibly could - she almost exploded with confusion at my apparent friendliness LOL!

Posted 2 years ago #
ti_pin_man - Member

I have similar problems, people dont seem to approach the situation in the right way, a lady tried the same with me and came at me with anger and aggression to try and make me move. If she'd approached me and asked nicely and do I mind then the result would have been different. On a public street you could have a house 10 mles away and you can still park there. If they threaten you with the police stand there and call them whilst they are shouting at you. The police will come and state the law which is that the house deeds dont include a portion of the street so anybody can park there. I've had a few notes on my windscreen, I put them back into their letterbox.

Posted 2 years ago #
mastiles_fanylion - Member

People are really quite barmy aren't they? I must admit that the problem around our way is exacerbated by the fact that the rear of the properties IS privately owned (unadopted road) so some people like to think this applies to the front of their properties too.

Posted 2 years ago #
MrSalmon - Member

People + cars = odd behaviour.

Apparently normal people do start behaving in very odd ways when cars are involved, even when they're not driving them.

Posted 2 years ago #
Nick - Member

Make friends with you neighbours, organise a street party, start a residents association, do random acts of kindness for people, do anything but be antagonistic.

Posted 2 years ago #
ti_pin_man - Member

our local police were spoken to and they suggested a meeting of residents but then the old witch seemed to calm down and it never happened. Maybe a good idea, minimally speak to them and riase their awareness. Thye probably have a beat copper you've never seen who covers your street. In my case her and her old man now park with 4/5 feet in-between their 2 cars and thus reduce the parking space everybody has.. I am currently managing to rise above this and annoy them by being polite and saying nothing... but its a fine line btween that and accidently slipping near their car whilst I hold a sharp metal object.. or oops dropped some paint stripper on her bonnet or.. oh, whoops did that glass bottle break behind your tyre! lol

Posted 2 years ago #
mastiles_fanylion - Member

My mad old bint demanded to know who I worked for. I said to her that I didn't see what that had to do with anything. She claimed it had EVERYTHING to do with things (I can only assume she was gonna try 'shopping' me to my bosses for parking my company car outside her house or something).

It threw her when I said I had my own business. I should have not told her and just given her my 'employers' phone number and waited for her to call my boss - I could have had all sorts of fun with that.

Posted 2 years ago #
project - Member

Another mad old bidy story.
Got a job driveing the oncall Doctors round from 20.00 to 02.00 hrs, as they covered a large area, and some places where a bit rough, got a call to attend urgently a lady in a reasonable part of the town at 01.45 in the morning, the radio said she was in pain, and didnt want an ambulance,so arrived at a block of 4 storey flats.

Almost as soon as we arrived a window opened an the most foul mouthed women ever screamed what the F..k are you parking there for, this is a private f..king car park, and i know you,youre a f..king drug dealer,and dont even think of f..kiing haveing sex in the car like last week.

Window slams shut,and then opens a few minutes latter as im getting out of the car to look for the entrance with the DR,she screams again ,the f..king POLICE are on the way,i shout up to her is this Grim towers(not the actual name)she shouts yes, and where is the entrance please, this is the DR on an urgent call out to see a patient,she goes quiet and says would that be Mrs Grimmm,im sorry i cant tell you that,she then says THATS ME.

Me and the DR, just look at each other, and retreat back to the car,where he hands me his case and stethascope and says deal with her please.

Eventually we go back in,SHAKEING, me standing guard on the door, oh what a good night that was.

Posted 2 years ago #
coffeeking - Member

At my parents place it's generally considered rude to park in front of the neighbours houses as everyone has drive space for 2 and room for at least 2 cars in front of their house on the road, but one or two like to leave cars dotted around anyway. Most of the neighbours would happily share drives etc if needed for visitors, but the "dot-arounders" like to bring work vans home and then have their sons 3 different partners arriving at the same time each in their own car etc, often followed by a police car. In that sense it's quite annoying to find someone parked in "your" space when they just as easily could have parked in theirs if they had bothered to move their other car back onto the drive properly after extracting the first etc (i.e. plenty of space but people can't be bothered moving cars so they take your spaces instead). At my flat it's a case of find a space where you can, no-one cares other than the fact that none of the customers of the local chinese use the car park and instead park where we normally do after a long day at work, so we have to park several hundred yards away for someone stopping for 10 minutes. Thats a bit annoying. Its all down to consideration for fellow humans really, seems a lot of people just dont think about it.

Posted 2 years ago #
hora - Member

Crackers. Recently a couple were killed in France (Lyon?) by an angry home owner who didnt want anyone parking at the front of his house. He shot them both.

Around our area there are big drives at the front yet people STILL put cones outside so they dont have to bother parknig on the drive etc. Sheesh.

Posted 2 years ago #
takisawa2 - Member

As fun & antagonistic it all sounds to wind up the local biddies / know-it-all's; there's nothing worse than a neighborly dispute. It can really start to blight your life over time. You have to live near these people so I always go down the diplomacy route, even if it means backing down somewhat.
It might be a bit far drastic but what about suggesting a private gated access route at the rear. Funded by you, all but with some help from the council ? Get you local councillor on your side & you'd be surprised what can be achieved. If its constantly a problem they might be keen to help.
I've often thought they should relax the rules on off-street parking in areas where it a problem, in particular the cost of the permit(s) for dropping kerbs etc. I've heard of figures of £500 being involved, FFS!!!
My street is ok, we've all got 2 bays & most have converted drives for parking but occasionally it can be a problem. It's only ever going to get worse.
I must begin work on my folding car idea.

Posted 2 years ago #
ART - Member

Craaazy world or what, at our previous house we had a shared access across the front of our house. If we stopped to load/unload for anything longer than a few minutes our neighbour would drive his car out and insist he had to leave urgently and that we should move. Needless to say we had a lot of fun with this one.... As some have said though, this stuff can go from funny to confrontational so quickly that diplomacy really is the only sensible way. That or move - which is what we did eventually - hurray for off road private parking and gate to keep the blighters out!

Posted 2 years ago #