What a car-fuff le!
Couple forget where they parked their Fiesta ... for five days
WE’VE all had that fleeting moment of panic – ‘where did I park the car?’
But generally even the most absent-minded of us will find (or stumble upon) our vehicle within a few minutes.
However, that lightbulb moment never happened for Hilda Farmer, 79, and her partner Emmanuel Elliot, 89 – and they spent almost a week desperately trying to remember where they had left their Ford Fiesta.
The mystery led to a social media search, with even police and traffic wardens on the hunt.
The couple had travelled ten miles from Gloucester to Cheltenham General Hospital last Friday.
Finding the hospital’s car park full, Mrs Farmer dropped off Mr Elliot for his appointment and went in search of a space elsewhere.
The retired psychiatric nurse found a pay and display bay, and then spent half an hour walking back to the hospital. But on the return trip, the great-grandmother forgot where she had parked the 2012-registered silver Fiesta – and days of searching, assisted by her daughter, son and granddaughter, yielded nothing.
By Tuesday, having been forced to use their bicycles as transport, the couple offered a £100 reward, and their plea went viral online.
They were finally reunited with the vehicle yesterday morning, after it was discovered by builder Martin Tyler in a car park half a mile from the hospital. Mrs Farmer said yesterday: ‘Aren’t we lucky to live in a country where an old aged pensioner’s car gets national news coverage?’ She added: ‘ I’m a Gloucester girl so Cheltenham is like a foreign land to me.’
The car has picked up three parking tickets. But the local authority say these will be looked on ‘ sympathetically’ in an appeals process.