Next time I’ll take a photo
We’d just been at a popular weekend farmers’ market. Like the story of the three little pigs, we’d got there early to avoid the big bad wolf parking warden, if there was such an animal lurking in the area. We parked the car under a P60 sign in a residential area and went off merrily to peruse the bustling market’s stalls. A little under an hour later, we made our way back to the car. There under the windscreen wiper was what looked suspiciously like a parking ticket. Had we really tarried so long at the fair? Surely not, I frowned, plucking it crossly from the window and stuffing it in my pocket.
I’ve lived most of my adult life in Wellington and flatted in the infamous winding dog-leg of Devon St, where a car once went through the front of the house. That street and many others in Wellington are so narrow you sometimes have to back up when you face off with an oncoming car to avoid a scrape.
This suburban street might have been full of parked cars but, by Wellington’s standards, it was a boulevard. I looked about for angry residents, who might be fed up with Saturday parkers overstaying their welcome, but there wasn’t so much as a twitch of the blind.
I’m one of those people who immediately feels guilt when they see a police/traffic officer and any evidence of their calling cards. Probably a hangover from Springbok tour days – that’s why I didn’t read the note till I got home.
It was from a citizen. The offender supplied her name and gave a phone number explaining she’d caused ‘‘minor damage’’ to my car, and asking me to ring her and exchange insurance details.
What damage? I circled the wagon to, sure enough, find a dent on the front panel and a series of sideswipe scratches on the paint job. Good grief, I thought, she must be a lousy driver, or have been really stoned, drunk or hungover to have achieved that result on a parked car in such a wide street.
I immediately rang She Who Pranged Me’s number, only to discover it was one digit short, and that she had left no registration number. Yup. That old trick. You know, the one miscreants do when they smash into you and, aware that people are watching to see if they do the decent thing, become mime artists making a great flourish of scribbling a note. If she hadn’t left the note, there would have been plenty of citizens only too happy to have taken a photo of her car rego on their phone, and supplied me with the details.
Next stop, my insurance company, who said I’d have to pay the $400 excess, which really brought out the bloodhound in me. I tried to find this person on Facebook, and rang variations on the number, thinking she may have left a double out of one of the numbers. I explained to the puzzled people who answered why I’d rung, and they all said, ‘‘Good on you’’.
I returned to the scene of the crime and knocked on the door outside where I’d parked. A lovely obliging chap answered, and we worked out possible prang angles and looked for street cameras that may have recorded the incident, but to no avail.
So next time I witness a prang and see someone leave a note, this vigilant citizen is going to take a photo of the driver’s number plate and make sure the registration’s included in any left note. Just call me Herculette Poirot.