Kerfuffle

Leeds today, and after dropping Ms Dogwood off at school I arrived at the office a minute or two after nine. I picked my way through the car park looking for a space, but the place was full. There is some building work going on at the far end which takes up a quarter of the available spaces and it looked as though there was a sales meeting due today, judging by the number of company Lagunas in situ.

I carefully reversed the entire way back to the entrance and parked up by the front door. The security guard bustled out of the door, red faced and puffed up with self-important excitement.

"You can't park there! You'll 'ave to move it!"
"I know" I replied "I need to get a permit for the overflow car park from the desk upstairs"

He harrumphed a few times, and eventually let me past to the receptionist on the first floor. I asked her how to get to the LA Bowl where we have extra car parking spaces and she told me I just had to do a sort of u-turn and follow the road around.

Hmmm, not easy when our office is on one side of a motorway junction and the other car park is on the far side of a tricky one way system. I headed in a likely looking direction and found myself on a spur of the motorway with no obvious turn off in sight. I filtered into the left hand lane and took the first exit after a couple of minutes, and then sat and waited in a queue. There had been a three car accident at the top of the slip road, and the traffic was at a standstill whilst insurance details were swapped and photos taken.

Eventually I turned right at the top and headed back in the direction of the office, and gambled on which turning to take off the road on the way back. Fortunately I guessed right and parked up and walked into the office, having wasted over half an hour. Sigh.

Oh, and I also found out that I need to be putting three times as much into my pension as I am at the moment if I don't want to live on cat food in my dotage ...