Normally when I drive to work I park over in the Euro car parks on Tennant Street, near Five Ways. Last Thursday, however, some donkey decided to have an accident in the early hours of the morning. Somehow he/she managed to completely FLIP his little car (about the size of a peugot 306) in the middle of the road! I didn’t see any sign of another car involved, and the flipped vehicle didn’t seem badly damaged in anyway (apart from the whole being upside-down part)…

Anyway, by the time I got there the entire corner had been blocked off by polcie, including access to all of the car parks in that area! The only alternatives I could think of for parking neraby were a) the car park in Brindleyplace (at a cost of about £8 for the day! no thanks!), or b) the NIA. At the time I had never parked in the NIA before, so I didn’t know how much it would cost but it surely couldn’t be as extortionate as Brindleyplace… but I was wrong. £6 for the “privilege” of parking in that concrete monstrosity for a mere 8 hours! I had always thought the £3.80 for 12 hours that Euro charges was pretty steep, but it turns out it’s a bargain in comparision.

“Use public transport” you say? Would that I could! Apparently it’s “too hot for trains to run at full speeed” (which is the summer version of winter’s “too cold” and autumn’s “too many leaves on the rails” excuses – apparently the designers of our nation’s rail tracks live in a tree-free, climate-controlled environment which never deviates from around approximately 15C), meaning that the Birmingham – Lichfield line is only running once every 30 minutes (when it’s running at all, that is. It was closed yesterday for some reason!). The bus option is slightly quicker, but they only go to Corporation street, leaving me with a mile-and-a-half walk to get to work (and a mile-and-a-half to get back in the evening), which, in this heat, suddenly doesn’t appeal to me very much at all.

And so with all this missus Gaz and I are buying new bikes next week and shall be cycling to and from work every day. Hopefully we’ll avoid being run down by the lunatic drivers that seem to be growing in numbers these days!