Wednesday 17th November

As predicted, the weather has been grey and/or wet and miserable all day, but at least I don’t live in Cornwall.  They’ve clearly had even more rain and if anyone wanted to get into or out of the county, they’d be hard-pressed.  I wouldn’t even recommend making the trip by boat, as there is talk of gales.

So, remaining in again, I trawled the internet.  I am getting better at Facebook, though Celeste still complains that I don’t understand the difference between writing on her wall and writing a status update and has threatened to come home and give me lessons.  George has been more laid-back about it: ‘Cool, Mum, welcome 2 FB’ was written on my page from him on the second day, and I haven’t heard from him since.  

But I have also been spending time looking at local pages and blogs and was somewhat irritated to find one today that says the local council is putting up parking charges.  Now, 10p an hour is not much extra to pay, in the grand scheme of things, I suppose, but I was rather more narked to see that they are going to start charging for parking in the evenings – when the town is already half-dead anyway – and on Sundays, presumably to nab the people visiting the outlet mall who park in town and then (shock horror!) walk to the shops.  And although it doesn’t affect me directly, I was a little surprised to see that they are thinking of charging the blue-badge holders.  What with the clamp-down on obtaining a blue-badge in the first place, I’d have thought those who managed to claim one would have been in even more need of flexibility when parking.

Will it stop me from going into town?  Probably not.  I don’t go in that often as it is, trying where possible to buy from the shops in the village, which supports them rather than the supermarkets and also saves the cost of petrol while giving me some exercise.  Some things I have to drive for, such as the doctor (who has his own car park) and the dentist (who doesn’t).  And of course, the parking in town is not nearly as expensive as the parking in the city, which has an hourly rate of approximately three times that of the town.  We still pay it, though it does make the park and ride look quite attractive these days.