A brush with the HSBC Police....

I witnessed mild road rage yesterday.... my own that is! To cut a long and infuriating story short I decided to drop my son off at HSBC Bank in Tonbridge so that he could pay in some money. He said that he wouldn't wait if there was a queue, but it was the first time he'd actually paid money in on his own. (He's good at taking it out!) So I decide to wait a little while outside the bank tucked in out of the way on River Walk. I swear to you that within 1 minute a Goon aka Parking Attendant had spotted me and signalled for me to move off the yellow lines. The dilema now was what do I do about my son? so I stopped the engine, as I was causing no blockage in the road, and ran into the bank to see how long he was going to take. Then I ran back out, reversed a bit went forward a bit (felt ridiculous, but at least I was technically manoeuvring so could not be caught out there. Then an HSBC employee was waiting to move into the narrow entrance to the road that I was, by now, at the junction of debating with myself whether to wait a little longer or to pull away, drive round needlessly for a few minutes and then come back in the hope that my son would have read my mind. (He's recently had his moble stolen so that wasn't an option either!) This HSBC worker, I knew she was that by the red sweat shirt which said HSBC on it, (I'll make a sleuth yet!) by now was rolling her eyes as if to say get out of the way I'm a busy lady. Due to that road rage feeling we all get in these sort of circumstances, this eye rolling annoyed the hell out of me, why was her day more important than mine! As she drove past me she rolled down her window and said that it was a private road (I'm pretty sure that that was a bare faced lie) so I said sarcastically why don't you call the police then and just lingered where I was for a few moments longer quietly fuming inside, in the hope that the lad would come out of the bank. I then saw in my rear view mirror that this bank lady was in her car (by the way now completely blocking the narrrow road herself) on the phone, seemingly writing down my number plate. So I got out of the car and walked up to hers, trying to keep my cool, being careful not to touch her car, signalled for her to wind down her window and said words to the effect that for her information I was waiting for my young son, who was a customer in her bank. Slightly taken aback by my boldness, she murmurred something about the traffic wardens being keen on booking cars in that zone, to which I spattered back to her that I'd already encountered one. It could so easily have turned nastier, but we both left it at that; it's plain to see from these mild examples of road rage how they can develop into a major incident. To cut an even longer story short I then had to drive round to Somerfield car park, only to find that they now charge 60p, and pay to park for the first time in Tonbridge for over three years (yes really, you just have to know where and be prepared to walk a little); but that's another story. And the moral is, don't mess with the HSBC Police, especially if they've got your money....