White Van Parking

I'm not the greatest fan of rear window stickers in cars, but I was rather tickled by one I saw in rather a smart vehicle, which read "Actually, I DO own the road!"

But roads really belong to the White Van Men, surely.  Ask any of them, I'm sure they'll confirm it.  Or at least, they certainly seem to behave as though they do.  It's so annoying: if they're in front of me, they dawdle along, presumably with time to kill before the end of shift;  if they're behind me, they're nudging my rear bumper, eager to get past - perhaps there's a cup of tea getting cold.

But it's in their parking - well, truer to say the places they choose to stop - that the White Van Man demonstrates his ownership of the road.  White Van Parking seems to be a feature of so many of the journeys I make these days, especially at the busiest times of the day.  Now, I'm not an intolerant guy, and I do recognise that these vans may well be delivering parcels or collecting them, picking up co-workers or dropping them off, or sometimes just searching for hard-to-find addresses . . . but really, SOME of the places they stop!

Near me there's a sharp left hand bend after which the road goes very steeply downhill.  It's none too wide at that point and there is a layby on the left (going down) which is always full and from which many of the cars project a little way into the carriageway.  So this morning, a little before nine, there's a white van double-parked at the far end of that line of cars, right on the brow of the hill and also, of course, right on the bend in the road.  If there had been prizes on offer for the most dangerous place to park, no-one else would have had a look in.

Well, I thought, that's surely it for the day, so far as White Van Madness is concerned!  But no - once on the main road I came to a halt, as did traffic in the other direction, while two gentlemen in identical white vans, one going my way and one the opposite way, elected to hold a conversation.  I'm sure it was important;  I accept it was brief (though it didn't feel brief to me at the time).  But this was nine o'clock in the morning, comrades!  A time when every second counts!

I was very restrained in the face of both sets of white van provocation, but I decided to behave in a less temperate fashion toward the next white van that in any way inconvenienced or annoyed me, whatever or wherever it might be.  As it happened, though, the next one to get in my way had a little black camera painted on the back, and discretion overcame any urge to valour.  There are some white vans it's best not to annoy!