to be slightly taken aback?

[MrsWembley]

Now I know I may be a complete innocent and am completely open to the possibility that I may BU, but I'm feeling not a little shocked.

We'd just parked up to go to a cafe for breakfast (treat for the DCs in the holidays) and a young man passing me stopped to ask me how much it was to park in this area. I told him and turned back to the DCs to ask them to stay with the car and so he was at the machine before me. I did what I needed to do and we all walked slowly to the cafe.

To find this young man settling himself down outside begging for change!

Surely if he can afford to run a car, he doesn't need to beg? Or do some people actually see this as a job? Seriously, I feel like I've just seen a different world! God, I am really naïve, aren't I.

When I visited Dublin about 12 years ago there were children begging on the streets. My heart ached for them.

Until I heard them yelled for by the mum to go in for dinner and they flitted off to the not cheap flats over the road.
The friends I was travelling with said the families made a fortune through their kids begging. I lost a bit chunk of niavity that day.

Is it possible he was looking for forgotten change, rather than putting the money in the machine?

I began to wonder about some "beggars" in Edinburgh years ago. I sat in a comfortable, moderately priced(!) restaurant feeling guilty, looking out at a man wrapped in blankets on the pavement. After a while a few others joined him and then they went off leaving the blankets behind.

Whilst it's obviously not convenient to carry blankets everywhere you go, it struck me that if they were your only protection against the elements for the night, you would never leave them unattended.

Plenty of people live out of their cars.

He can have a car and still be homeless

Oh, I never suggested he was homeless. I know that begging for a living doesn't necessarily mean you live on the streets. I was merely suggesting that the cost of keeping a car is quite high and to consider begging as lucrative enough to do it is shocking.

Lurking, I'm not quite sure what you mean.

Years ago I worked in a bank. We had a regular customer who looked like a tramp (very scruffy but not dirty or smelly) and we never did find out what he did for a living because his account had been opened years before 'know your customer' requirements came in and before anti money laundering was taken seriously and he was dead cagey about it. However he had literally hundreds of thousands of pounds in his account. Us cashiers used to joke between ourselves that he should spend some on new clothes and maybe a hair cut or a razor... or a house!

A few years later I was walking along the high street on the opposite and more affluent side of town and spotted him outside the M&S. He recognised me "I know you!" but clearly couldn't place me for a minute. The look on his face when he realised who I was and that I'd caught him selling the Big Issue was something to behold.

Not that there was anything I could do about it because of the confidentiality issue and because I had left the bank long before. So no, nothing surprises me now.

Maybe the beggar community use the machine to time their shifts ?

Begging is a business, so has to run like one. Don't think anyone can just rock up and pinch the most lucrative pitches without some form of system.

A paid-for ticket from a parking machine is as good as a timecard.

Thank-you, Lurking, for giving me visions of Pratchett's Guild of Beggars operating in Bristol!!

And I'm surprised but happy to be not alone in my . Though some of your tales are even more so...

Bet the chap outside M&S chose a different pitch from then on.

Maybe his car is the last thing he's got left, and it is preferable to have some shelter than none.

Why is it shameful? To be honest it's fairly enterprising.

Really? To pretend to be destitute and prey on the sympathy of members of the public to give them money (many of whom can ill afford it themselves but want to do what they can to help someone who claim they are starving and desperate), when actually they are living in nice housing, driving nice cars and making a lot of money without paying any tax on it? (plus a lot of the people in the investigation I saw were falsely claiming benefits on top of the tens of thousands they got begging).

You may find that enterprising but I'm sticking with shameful.

Really? To pretend to be destitute and prey on the sympathy of members of the public to give them money (many of whom can ill afford it themselves but want to do what they can to help someone who claim they are starving and desperate), when actually they are living in nice housing, driving nice cars and making a lot of money without paying any tax on it?

Quite a close fit with the behaviour of the government, actually.

I was quite shocked to see a beggar sitting by the ticket machine inside the car park, fixing everyone with a gimlet stare as they paid for their tickets. I am surprised that the car park company allow this, as he was still there at 11pm, and car parks late at night are not comfortable places for women on their own.
Like a previous poster, I give directly to charity, particularly the Salvation Army, as they deal directly with derelicts and know those who are genuine.

The Salvation Army doesn't use the word derelict to describe a human being

There was a blog a while back apparently written by a woman who was homeless and lived in her car. Might be what's happening here.

Yes, yes, all well and good, people do live in their cars, but he paid for parking instead of begging in a part of town where he could have parked for free!

Hmm yes, that's bizarre. Probably not the case here then!

Perhaps he's living in his car

Not on the centre of Bristol, he's not! Not with our traffic wardens!!