A long story about parking....
A number of years ago, the house I lived in had a 'semi' garage with my neighbour plus three parking spaces. We were in a semi rural area so parking as such was not at a premium - there was plenty of parking round the corner by the shop for example. The neighbour had no parking spaces other than in front to their garage
garage - neighbour
garage - mine
parking - mine
parking - mine
parking - mine
When we first moved in and after about a month, a volvo estate kept parking on our ground across the three parking spaces, so we had only one space and needed two. After a few days, I got fed up with this and made some enquiries. Discovered the car belonged to a new tenant of a rented house across the road which had two parking spaces anyway. When challenged he told me the agent had said it was OK to park on my ground and when I asked why when he had two spaces he said it mean't his car was pointing the right way for going to work the following day. Think he had strong words with the agent, but did not park on my spaces again!
My neighbours, a retired plod (policeman to our US cousins), would always ask if they had visitors if they could park on our ground. Even if we were away, we would come back to a note through the door - 'had visitors who parked in your space, hope you don't mind'. Of course we didn't mind unless we had visitors ourselves.
The neighbours moved to be nearer the sea and our new neighbours (a retired vicar) could not have been more different. As ours was, their garage was full of 'stuff' so no room for their car and without asking, they would park in front of our garage so a visitor could park in front of theirs. To be fair we would be at work so may not have been aware of every time this happened. Their rationale was because it was their car and not their visitors on our ground, that was OK. Although irritating, we lived with this arrangement, we only needed to get into the garage occasionally to pull out the mower, etc.
Until the day they went on holiday.
Most of this I found out afterwards. They were going with friends in one car (theirs) but because a) their parking space was nearer their front door and b) they wanted to park in it on their return without having to move cars(!), their friends car was parked in front of our garage. Right up to the door (apparently so the back of their car wouldn't get sprayed by passing vehicles when it rained, at least that was their excuse). We knew none of this, only that a strange vehicle was parked in front of our garage, we couldn't get into the garage and it had been there a few days, and as it happened I had wanted to mow the lawn and also needed the ladder to clear the gutters. I knocked on the neighbours door, but of course, no answer.
So I called the police, I genuinely didn't know the story but explained the problem and that I thought perhaps the car had been dumped. They were able to track down the owner (they had gone to the Lake District, about 150 miles from us) and told them if the car was not removed within 24 hours, it would be towed and impounded. So they had to come back early from their holiday to remove it. Poor souls...
But they still hadn't learned common courtesy. A few months later they were having a family gathering on a Saturday. The first we knew of it was when we came home from doing some shopping to find all our spaces had been taken. I was not a happy bunny. Some of the family were apologetic and immediately moved their cars, but the son decided 'it wasn't fair' and he would have to walk round the corner, others had moved their cars so now we had somewhere to park, so why did he have to move? I suggested that perhaps the exercise would do him some good. Couldn't believe his attitude.
That was the straw that broke the camels back. I wrote my neighbour a letter stating emphatically that he did not have any permission, implied or otherwise, to park his or his visitors cars on my ground and if found to do so, I would take appropriate legal action. He could write to me asking permission if he so wished and I would consider it.
His family and visitors became a lot healthier from walking round the corner after that.
To end the tale, a bit later I built a new house in our back garden, the drive to which was via the parking spaces, effectively isolating our garage from our house. So I sold my garage to my neighbour for the price of building a new one in a more convenient location. Afterwards he thought it unfair that I had a new garage and he had an old one and couldn't understand that I hadn't just sold him the bricks and mortar, but also the ground under it and the parking space in front of it.
The thing I never understood is why they bought next door anyway. Clearly they needed more than one parking space.
