Fellow b5er Ingrid at A Puerto Rican in France has a category on her blog called “wtf“. I’ve decided to steal the idea and call mine “What the @#!”. And, I’m going to start at #5 because I’ve already shared a few What the @#! moments in London. Marv and I encounter at least one What the @#! moment here every single day.

So yesterday, we went to our local high road to have lunch. We found a parking space along the street right across the green. All we needed to do was pay 1.40 GBP per hour, not cheap but not exorbitant. The first space we picked had a broken meter so Marv moved the car along to the next empty space.

To our pleasure, there was still 24 minutes left so we thought we could save some money by topping it up to the two hour max and have plenty of time for lunch. As usual, Marv reads all the small print on the meter that says you can’t move the car back to the same spot within an hour of the meter running out, blah blah blah. And there’s some incomprehensible rule about not adding money to the meter.

I told Marv to stop wasting time reading and get on with it. So he sticks a one pound coin in the meter.

It jams.

He uses the 20 pence coin to shove the pound coin in. It clinks inside the meter.

The time now reads 0:21.

We shake the parking meter. Nothing happens.

So now we know what it means about not adding more coins.

According to the Association of London Government,

You must buy all the time you want at once. Returning and putting more money into the meter (or buying a second pay & display ticket or voucher) is a contravention and you may receive a parking ticket, be wheel clamped or be towed away.

They neglected to add that the machines are set so it’ll just eat your money if you try to put more into the meter.

What the @#!