Battle Royale

There's a grand tussle going on today for the reins of the country but closer to home, there's an even bigger battle - the one for the prime parking space.

My neighbour and I both have a driveway big enough for two cars inside our gates. For my family, it's ideal for our needs but for my neighbours who have a fluctuating number of cars depending on how many inlaws and outlaws they have staying over, it's a different story. They have at least four cars in the family, and for some reason, they like to park only one car in the driveway. When my family decided to do the same (don't ask me why) the whole parking thing became a very interesting game indeed.

The battle started when the neighbour across from us decided to do some renovation work. To do that, he needed to park a large garbage receptacle in one of the available spaces at the side of the road, thus depriving the two warring factions of a vital parking space. As soon as that vital extra space was taken away, the fun began. We've always parked our car in the space outside our house, right beside our gate, and the neighbour kept his cars outside his house on his side of the gate. However, when that extra space across from us was taken away, he started taking up all of the available places on his side of the gate, which he's supposed to share with his other neighbour. That neighbour kicked up a fuss, telling him that the space was needed, and asking him not to park there anymore. So he took to parking outside my house, which was a little annoying as the only other available space was two, or sometimes even four houses away. However, he moved the car now and then when he had to use it, so it was only an intermittent problem.

In the last week, though, his car has been sitting pretty in that spot and to our knowledge, it has yet to be moved. Sneaky. Very sneaky. We don't have very good relations with our neighbour to begin with (long story) so we haven't taken it up with him and don't plan to. And so our battle has reached a very unsatisfying stalemate.

My cousin's battle with her neighbours, however, is just getting juicy. She bought a link house about a year ago in a gated community but she and her husband have been busy with work so the house has been vacant for a while. Recently, however, their schedules have lightened a little so they've decided to do a few basic renovations before moving into their new home. My cousin got a rude shock, though, when she took the contractor to her house only to find a car parked in her driveway. Better still, her gate was padlocked shut! She surmised, correctly, that it was her neighbour's car, but when she told the neighbour that the padlock was inappropriate and asked him to move his car, her neighbour responded that the gate had to be kept locked otherwise it was too much of an inconvenience for her! Of all the nerve... And that's just the beginning of her troubles. But that's another story.

All in all, I guess it's better to have your neighbour parking outside your house rather than inside. The moral of the story is, be thankful for little victories!