The most dreadful thing happened last night!

Babel very kindly came to have dinner with me after work, because we hadn’t had much chance to talk to each other at the weekend. We initially struggled slightly to find somewhere to eat, because everywhere was busy and full of accountants, but ultimately ended up in a branch of O Neils, which certainly isn’t my favourite establishment but was nevertheless better than nothing. I was a bit disappointed on two counts; firstly, that our favourite pub to eat in opposite where I work has just been rebranded as an “eatery” and is now full of yuppies. Secondly, that my second pub to eat in just down the road from where I work is operating a new dress code such that if you can only go in if you dress like an accountant I had quite a nice barbecue chicken melt in O Neils though, and afterwards we went on a walk in a quest for coffee, and it was all very pleasant until we tried to get back to the car.

Now Babel had been very generous and offered to give me and my sister, who was in town for another reason, a lift back home. I already felt guilty about him offering to do this, especially as he looked kind of tired, and it really would have involved him getting home quite late. I’d advised him to park in the same carpark that we used a couple of weekends ago when we went shopping, and I assumed everything would be fine. It didn’t occur to me to tell him to check what time the said car park closed, or to check myself when I was standing outside it.

You can probably guess where this story is headed. We arrived back at the carpark at 10pm and there seemed to be a strange number of gates outside it… It took a few seconds before the horrible reality sunk in – the carpark was locked

Babel did an admirable job of not exploding with F words in front of my sister, but even so it was a pretty desperate situation. There was just about time for him to run and catch the last train back to Leicester, but he decided it would be preferable to stay in a hotel. This was a decision which worried me somewhat; I was concerned that if he didn’t find a hotel at what he deemed a reasonable price, he might decide to do something silly like sleep in a doorway

For a while things didn’t sound too hopeful, but whilst my sister and I made our way home on the bus, from what I understand Babel managed to find a cheap room in the Etap and was okay. Phew The only thing left to worry about was the fate of the Moosemobile. I for one certainly didn’t get much sleep as I ran through all the dreadful calamities which might befall it. It was perhaps rather irrational of me to worry that someone might break into it, seeing as the gates did look pretty insurmountable, but you never know. More realistic was the worry that the car might not be able to leave the carpark without paying some sort of dreadful parking fine, or that the car might not be able to leave the carpark at all because it had been clamped

A very stressful night was had by all, but luckily this morning Babel seems to have managed to retrieve it and get to university without any further misadventures. Methinks it will be a long time before he offers to come and visit me again!

Tags: car park, disasters

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 9:37 am and is filed under Random rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.