Home already ...

Today I was home from work before 11 a.m. Not because I took the afternoon off, or because I felt poorly ...

When I arrived this morning at 6:50 a.m. there was a long queue of at least thirty cars waiting to be let into the underground parking garage. This has happened in the past because it officially opens at 6:45 a.m. and people tend to come in early to have a good spot, especially as there aren’t enough places to accommodate the complete office population. Parking in the streets around the building has become a problem since - two years ago - the local council instituted a ‘blue’ parking zone in the area. Changing your parking disc every two hours is a tricky and dangerous option. You can’t rush out every two hours to change your ‘time of arrival’. Moreover, the police often uses a primitive, yet efficient trick, to check whether your car has moved since the last time of control.

Using an ordinary piece of chalk, they draw a line on one of the tyres, and on the asphalt. If after two hours you haven’t taken the trouble of moving your car, they will see that the lines on the tyre and on the asphalt still match and that the car has been sitting there for longer than the authorized parking time.

But back to our ‘crisis situation’. When by ten past seven the gates were still closed, people in the queue, which by then was beginning to cause traffic problems on the nearby boulevard, were beginning to get nervous. I guess most of them were longing for their morning coffee … a daily routine most can’t do without. Everybody kept the motor running though, as it was freezing cold outside and the temperature in the car quickly became uncomfortable when you turned the engine off.

Finally, a sturdy man came walking down the line of cars, stopping and chatting to each driver. When he arrived at my car, I lowered the window to listen to what he had to say …

Being short of ‘exciting’ topics to write about lately, and because I know you like cliff-hangers … I’ll be back later with the rest of the story! Care to take a guess?


P.S. No photo today, because I didn’t have my camera on me and it was too dark anyway to take a decent shot showing the line of cars waiting to be let in.