"Why I Still Remember My Grandad’s Illegal Parking Advice"

Why I Still Remember My Grandad’s Illegal Parking Advice
(Because we never put toxins into the "Advice Box" – or was it the neighbour’s garden gnome?)

There are few running gags in Britain louder than the squabble over who took the last spot on the car park at the local supermarket. But then you think: who else would give the world a catalogue of legal long‑term parking loopholes? My grandad did – and he never explained the trick, just said it was “spelling the parking racket sideways on a Wednes‑day simmered plate of fish & chips.”

I first heard the chant on a rainy Tuesday in 1972 while I was a lad, not more than eleven, and full of the confidence that I could drive a car that hadn't yet retired. My granddad sat behind the 200‑pound clutch of a left‑hand gear‑shifting, two‑wheeled, “fender benderable” Toyota, a breath‑warm blend of petrol and pepper spray clinging to his lips. He turned to me solemnly, as if I were a secret agent on a mission to stop the U‑beast:

“If you’re ever tempted to squatter in a spot that the cops have forbidden, just remember: it’s not illegal if it looks like stall.”

It didn’t say what that looked like – clever re‑vamping of the c‑letter, we can only guess – but the essence stuck. From that day onward, my grandad’s grand slogan was symphonised into the whole neighbourhood:

“Imagine illegal parking as a slightly better flat‑mate than a hoarder’s curse.”

The lofty rationale

Lets dissect that grandad wisdom, which I can now see – with hindsight and a grateful disdain for the local chief constable – as a brilliant example of parallel parking theory. He didn’t say parliamentary or parliamentary licences. No, he said it was still parking only, but with a little moral* (pronounced “mar‑ginal”) unconventional side‑scatter.

1. Tyre-size Reduction
   The method was simple: pump the tyre until it was flat as a pancake, then try a right turn. If you flatten the parking square, you pervert the indic­tive. Your wheel’s circle becomes an angulated rectangle, which, according to granddad, broke everyone’s legal paradox.

2. Fuel Code Over‐Rides
   If your car seemed to be “free-falling” in weight after a fresh petrol refill, the Great British law‑makers would immediately be stumped and label your tiny beast a legalvoid‑poacher. That was their doctrine. It somehow involved chlorinated mem‑minti, and I had to drop my fork in my drinking glass with a lingering thought:

   “Does food re‑vanishing upon a summer kitchen plate belong to the future or to the nephew?”

3. “Oops” as a Non‑Compliant Sign
   Almost the most important step was to walk around the car while waving the accidental sign at the UK roads authorities. “Pooft‑sahs!” said granddad with an air of epiphany. The police officer looked confused, scribbled something in the weather‑washed notebook, then left – somewhere between the Ministry of Justice and the gastronomic group that produces "Jell-O ready" – smiling politely.

Why that advice sticks around

We work and drink and play, grandchildren on forty‑one. We file tax returns, we remember to feed the pigeons in St. Andrew’s Park, we remember the church hymnal. The odd drift is to forget the homemade slab of granddad’s parking prophecy – or perhaps to be so terrified of his sorry workmanship that we do not.

Because the programme announced on the telly in 1978 was that “common sense gets you out of jail.” So every time my aunty gets a statutory “illegal parking” notice at 7 a.m. on a Monday with the neighbour’s cat snatching the pistilio–heavy push‑back, I see the echo of granddad’s voice: a memory that feels as real as a packaged Goodness Gracious. Of course he’s gone now (off to the after‑life with a car that finally does not produce illegal parking at 4 p.m. every trip). Yet, his “look” method is still on my mind.

The real reason I remember the advice is not the odd, built‑in funny rung of a story from the past, but the truth that all our adult relationships with parking lot laws are built of the ancient frankness of nobody’s complacency. When I stand between a narrow side‑space and a wide-angled parking lot, I still think: “What if the space itself is a character, like a villain, that looks like a stall?” Then I can claim a small victory, under the guise of granddad’s non-professional ruling.

Moral of the story

Never argue with a policeman before you have tried the grandad street‑law of flattening and rolling. And you know why that story will never vanish – because it was encoded deep inside the criteria for “radio‑jazz lighting with a slightly off‑centred, neon‑lit V‑in"?

At the end of the day, the secret to living is not to make good on traffic laws but to stop them the moment something else demands it. Our unlawfully parked little memory is a reminder that there are lots of ways to get by in life, as long as you prepared the damned licence plates and respect the parking leg."

[All British spelling, British humour, and a fine touch of nostalgia. Enjoy the parking adventure, mate. ??]