by David Jones
I seem to have an unfortunate knack of finding trouble in supermarket car parks.
Maybe I have a magnet attraction for nutters/thuggish individuals, or perhaps supermarket car parks bring out the worst in people.
Shoppers bent on aggro seek me out like moths to a flame.
A few weeks back, while trying to find a parking space, I slowed down briefly while a woman was attempting to reverse out of a tight space.
She was making a right mess of it, so I carried on because a queue was building up behind me.
As I drove around the car park, I noticed she had stopped her car in the middle of one of the exit lanes and had begun screaming at the top of her voice. I soon realised she was screaming at me. I couldn’t really hear what she was saying but I did catch the sentence: “Have you got issues?”
It was clear that it wasn’t me who had “issues”, but this irrational outburst made me wonder what the consequences would be if her crazy behaviour manifested itself on a motorway.
Last Saturday, trouble sought me out again. In the same supermarket car park I was just about to pull out from my space into one of the exit lanes, when a woman drove into the lane the wrong way, so fast as to be reckless, and screeched to a halt just a few yards away from me. If I had not braked sharply there would have been a head-on collision.
I slowed down to give her one of my famous icy stares when a man, presumably her husband/partner, jumped out of the passenger seat and shouted “Today’s not the day, mate.”
He was in a confrontational mood and you would have thought it was me who had just driven dangerously.
Then, the woman jumped out of the car and shouted: “Do I look as though I care?”
I was lost for words. Funny, isn’t it that you always think of the appropriate slick response after the event. What I should have said was: “You ought to care, love, because I’ve got your number and I’m on my way to the police station to complain about your dangerous driving.”
I have concluded that there is no point in having a slanging match with people like this.
It’s not worth bringing yourself down to their level.
Next, I saw a tattooed man in a vest, behind the wheel of a huge camper van which totally occupied the space set aside at the store’s entrance as a drop-off point, particularly for elderly or disabled customers.
Then I saw a boy racer driving round the car park at 30mph, oblivious to the fact that a child could have run out from behind car at any moment….
Then I saw a car parked across two spaces.
Then I saw...
No, that’s enough. I think I’ll just stay away from supermarket car parks in future. They do nothing for my stress levels.
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