I’M FINED

Mutter, grumble…

Why, you might well wonder, is old miseryguts finding something else to mutter and grumble about once more on this fine morning…?

Hah! I will reply. Fine is quite the most appropriate word, is it not? But not, alas, for either the morning, or my state of being today.

This is because I got notification of a fine yesterday evening for a driving violation committed over the festive period, which is already, as regular readers might have observed, not my favourite time of the year, but, because I did dare to venture out of the house and attempt to have something approaching a social life, by the laws of the great forces of balance in the universe, there just had to be a price to pay, and I don’t just mean for the cinema tickets.

In fairness, this contravention of the local traffic laws does seem to have me “bang to rights” and all that, and it is my grim face that is clearly visible through the windscreen of my very own motor vehicle negotiating my way through that rainstorm, but I still feel rather peeved about the whole business, even if it was due to my own carelessness in daring to venture across the border into the great metropolis where the regulations so suddenly change, and even though I was still convinced that where I was at the time was still within the boundaries of one of its peripheral bordertowns, where the rules about bus lanes are markedly different and only apply during the designated “rush hours” rather than, as I have now discovered, between 7am and 7pm on weekdays, even if that weekday is a soggy old Friday the day before New Year’s Eve, it’s lunchtime and there’s hardly anyone about, and I really didn’t actually see any warning signs.

“If you don’t want the fine, don’t do the crime…” Mutter, grumble…

Be warned. I intend to sulk about this rather a lot, despite having paid up immediately to avoid having to pay double (or even triple!) later on.

Because, of course, ignorance of the law is no defence, and I obviously did break the rules. In fact, having received this rather expensive piece of paper which now consigns me to the realms of petty criminalism (I may start wearing a hat and growing a thin moustache…), I was rather surprised to find that I hadn’t inadvertently broken that very same rule on several previous occasions, because it’s apparently been policy for nearly half a dozen years now and this was the first time I had been made aware of it.

“Overzealous, opportunistic, bureaucratic nonsense…” Chunner, grumble, moan…

Still, there are still myriad opportunities for the online payment system to screw up, deny that it ever saw the colour of my money, and move me into the tedious world of irritation and mitigation and multiplication of the infuriation and, obviously, give me something else to complain about. This would, rather naturally, find the whole event moving over into the “Flaming Typical!” file of my life and would be unlikely to please me, but, as it hasn’t actually happened (yet!), it’s probably best not to dwell upon it.

I wouldn’t have minded (actually, I still would, to be perfectly honest) but I’d already had a bit of a wretched day at work, and so this really wasn’t the sort of news that I was overjoyed to find greeting me upon the doormat as I gratefully opened up the house last night. In fact I had a moment where, because I’ve only fairly recently acquired Blinky’s replacement, I wasn’t convinced that it was actually a photograph of my car that I was looking at.

“Just a flaming money grabbing, budget balancing exercise…” Moan, grumble, gripe…

But, of course, it was, and, after the customary stomping around the house and general cursing, I decided that I’d better just pay up and I sauntered over to the keyboard and reluctantly kicked up the website and spent a few minutes petulantly parting with my hard-earned and resolving, in that way you never really mean but which makes you feel slightly better, to never, ever venture into that city again, even though I know I will.

Nevertheless, I did catch myself, because of being “caught” myself I suppose, just for an instant, uncharitably wishing, or perhaps rather hoping that, without the benefit of my rare visits, all of their cinemas would crumble to dust from lack of custom and that all their shops would go bankrupt due to the great mass of shoppers deciding to stay far away and visit other, more welcoming streets, but of course I didn’t really mean it.

Why should the innocent business owners suffer when it is the bureaucrats sitting upon their huge mountains of ill-gotten gains that I really resent…? Although perhaps what I really resent is just falling into their cunning trap.

The swines.

“Thirty flippin’ years I’ve been driving and this is the first time anything like this has happened… Bah!” Grumble, moan, chunner…

Well, I did warn you that there would be rather a lot of sulking…