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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

My very own CF parking thread!!

129 replies

Hiphopopotamus · 24/08/2019 09:30

My anger at the situation is ever so slightly mitigated by the fact that I get my very first parking thread!

My DH and I are heading out this morning. We’re picking up our niece to take her out for the day. She has a fairly chaotic home and for us it’s important that when we say we’re doing something with her we follow through, as other adults in her life let her down a lot.

So...we go to get the car out of our driveway. We have gates across the drive so it might not be obvious that there is a car there. However, directly outside it is a dropped kerb, and it is our drive. I open the gates to get the car out this morning, and a car is parked right across it! It’s impossible to manoeuvre around it and we’re properly blocked in.

What do we do? We have no way of knowing who the car belongs to - it could belong to anyone on a fairly big street. It feels early to knock on doors on a Saturday morning (I have no problem waking up the CF, but I would feel bad waking up the innocent! ) but we genuinely have no idea what to do. We’re already going to be late for DN as we were supposed to leave 45 minutes ago.

OP posts:

Ihatemyseleffordoingthis · 24/08/2019 13:01

set off the alarm!

WalkofShame · 24/08/2019 13:05

It’s fucking thread.

Waveysnail · 24/08/2019 13:09

I would have rocked it gently and set the alarms off - I have no patience 🤣

diddl · 24/08/2019 13:19

"You'd be sent to the far side of fuck if you did that to me when I was sleeping, at the least."

Ah, Ok.

Blame the person trying to get out of their drive, not the twat who blocked them in.

Tanith · 24/08/2019 13:32

The grumpier programmers used to use "Tell them to RTFM!" (Read The Fucking Manual) on their helpdesk responses when I worked in IT in the 80s and 90s. Obviously, that message was carefully paraphrased to the users
I think it goes back earlier than that.

FazakerlyJackie · 24/08/2019 14:53

"I think it goes back earlier than that." Dead right there.
As in ( allegedly):

RTFT
(Tablets)

Moses

ps Good result OP, hope the day goes well.

MRex · 24/08/2019 15:35

@diddl - by that logic, if someone scratches your car you get to go around scratching the whole street? No, inconveniencing many people just because you have been inconvenienced is still wrong. Call the police or local council if it's a dropped kerb, because it's their job to deal with it. Or knock on doors when it's a decent time. Dozens (at least) of other people do not deserve to have the annoying alarms blaring and horns tooting outside their bedroom windows specifically trying to wake them all up!!!

PuppyMonkey · 24/08/2019 15:43

CF is actually just short for cheeky fellow too.

OP, please can you provide more info on what happened here, what you said, what she said, a diagram, otherwise you’re not doing a parking quite thread right imho.

LakieLady · 24/08/2019 15:58

Call the police or local council if it's a dropped kerb, because it's their job to deal with it.

RTFT! OP called the police, who refused to get involved, and the council offices aren't open on a Saturday.

Dozens (at least) of other people do not deserve to have the annoying alarms blaring and horns tooting outside their bedroom windows specifically trying to wake them all up!!!

Which they wouldn't be, is the CF hadn't acted like a twat.

Wtf is someone supposed to do if they really have to be somewhere and it's time critical, like the airport? Would you really miss your holiday just because someone had blocked you in and you didn't want to wake the neighbours?

(This nearly happened to my friends. Their drive was blocked and they had a 5am flight. The offender was staying with their NDNs, so they only had to knock at one door to get the car moved. The same NDNs used to block the shared drive and objected to being woken at 3 am when friend's mother was critically ill and not expected to last the night. Twats.)

MRex · 24/08/2019 16:20

@LakieLady - Wow, you have breathtaking levels of entitlement. That's exactly the kind of attitude shown by the person parking on the drive in fact, maybe somebody parked where they wanted, so that makes it "ok" in your world for them to park on the drive. In fact they're doing better than you because they've only inconvenienced one family and you want to inconvenience the whole street as a result!! OP could have called back the police to get a solution, they may not have understood it was a dropped kerb etc. It's a shit situation, but ruining everyone else's sleep with alarms and horns is unlikely to achieve anything except a whole load more upset. If we were going on holiday we'd have a taxi anyway, so it's not comparable. I've had all sorts of inconveniences with transport but you just work round them as best as you can.

Illbeagransoon · 25/08/2019 17:46

Last week we parked in a garage forecourt overnight, as instructed, it was firmly signed "garage only". As we were blocking someone I wrote my mobile number and put it under our windscreen, although we assumed the car was also waiting for the garage.

We got up at 7, as usual and two minutes later there was a call from a very irate man bellowing, " Move your F*ing car!" I checked and the first message was at 5.18, and there were 58 calls between then and 7am.

Major sound-off from him when my husband appeared to move the car. It turned out he'd cut the fuel pipes! When they took the car into the garage it spewed petrol everywhere.

Police are prosecuting, garage are prosecuting (they have CCTV, but not actually of him cutting). Oh, and their landlord has given them notice because their contract stipulates reasonable behaviour (or some such).

The garage replaced the pipes free of charge.

Foggycannonball · 25/08/2019 17:48

Many years ago, in similar circumstances, my dh and I bounced the offending car out of the way. You press the car down against its springs and it bounces up. When it goes light at the top of its bounce you guide it in the direction you need it to go. Probably haven't done it for a very long time because it's not without its risks -but I think I'd have given it a go in these circs and hope to leave it somewhere surprising without causing anyone else a problem.

RosaWaiting · 25/08/2019 17:51

OP what did he actually say?

Doidoit19 · 25/08/2019 17:59

Glad you managed to get on your way, OP. Did he even apologise or give you a reason?

I’m a police call taker. To answer a couple of queries posted here;

The police get involved in certain circumstances. If the local council has take out Civil Parking Enforcement then they are the ones who deal with it which is probably why they said it’s civil. I would imagine councils in the London area would do this.

The police do not get your phone number from the DVLA. If someone reports a car blocking a drive we check on the police national computer to see who the registered keeper is. Then we check our own systems to see if they are on with contact details (if they’ve ever reported/witnessed a crime for example). If we find the vehicle owner/registered keeper on our systems we would try the numbers we have on record for them. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t as some people change their number all the time. But we don’t ring the DVLA for phone numbers. I don’t even know if they have them, I don’t ever remember filling my phone number in on a log book?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

mummymayhem18 · 25/08/2019 18:26

Some people are right idiots aren't they. What did they say when you found them? X

colourlessgreenidea · 25/08/2019 18:41

by that logic, if someone scratches your car you get to go around scratching the whole street?

That’s no sort of ‘logic’ at all. Knocking on doors to find a car owner so they can move their car and rectify the problem they caused isn’t equivalent to causing random retaliatory criminal damage just because someone did that to you.

gill1960 · 25/08/2019 18:46

Ring the police because this could be a stolen car

Intheupsidedown · 25/08/2019 18:48

OP what was the guys excuse for parking like a moron?

Ated · 25/08/2019 18:53

Break the window, release the handbrake, push the car into the middle of the road or, failing that, flatten each tyre.

Original poster

Hiphopopotamus · 25/08/2019 19:00

I apologise for the lack of drama after the event (and I realise I committed a grave error in not producing a diagram)

It was actually the owners brother who came and moved the car - all he said was that he thought his brother would have had more sense than to park on a dropped kerb. To be honest I didn’t hang around for too long an explanation as we were fairly desperate to get away!

People sometimes do stupid and selfish things, either by mistake or not thinking through the consequences. I was suitably cross and annoyed yesterday but I maintain that I did the right thing by minimising the disruption to the rest of the street. Also, the house that the owner and brother were in was quite a way up the street, so if I had done some of the suggested car alarms/horns, it would not have been them that were most disrupted by it!

OP posts:

colourlessgreenidea · 25/08/2019 19:16

Ring the police because this could be a stolen car

Yes OP, time-travel back to yesterday morning and do this.

FelicisNox · 25/08/2019 20:22

Bit late to this party but I would set the alarm off.

LadyMcLokington · 25/08/2019 22:47

I had a similar issue this evening - I park off road, needed to take non-driving friend to emergency dentist. Stepped outside to find a) car wedged behind me off road/over the footpath, and b) car parked on the white line across dropped curb. Even with car moved off white line, the car behind me was so close I couldn’t move. No idea whose car it was, knew whose it wasnt, if that makes sense. As I was trying for a 57-point manoeuvre to try to squeeze out after the white line car had been moved, CF neighbours came out, with a grin and “sorry, just leaving ourselves”. Not their car but their friend’s. They have form - father in law and brother have both done similar, so I suppose I should have guessed 😕

MRex · 26/08/2019 00:32

@Hiphopopotamus - If the brother had to move it, perhaps the driver had been drinking?

@colourlessgreenidea - car alarms and horns actually are an equivalent, they are designed to alert everyone, there is no targeting, you will definitely disturb many people who know nothing about the car. At 9.30 you can knock on doors like the OP did. If it had been 6am it's more tricky, because it actually isn't reasonable to wake people up in lots of houses who have no involvement with the car, those people don't want to be disturbed because you have an issue with someone else. Therefore unfortunately if it's 6am and you don't know whose car it is, you have to find a different way.

Bl3ss3dm0m · 26/08/2019 00:56

I once, many years ago, accidentally - but still completely my fault - parked in front of someone's small driveway (row of houses on both sides of street). It was dark, wet, and there were lots of trees lining the street, I didn't see any other spaces as the road already had cars parked outside of most of the other houses, I was visiting a house further up the street for an IVC event, and didn't know that area of town at all (Bournemouth). Anyway, I just didn't notice that I was parked in front of a driveway, so when I got back I was mortified to find a very cross note on my windscreen, so I took a deep breath - I am very shy, but felt terrible - and went and knocked on the door (quaking in my shoes!), and apologised profoundly; I think they must have been very surprised that I knocked, as they took it really well 😊 and I have been extremely careful to never do that again!

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