Moving violations
I received a whopping parking fine recently, which I argued down to 25% of its original amount (which was still too much, IMO). On Thursday morning I went to pay it. Here is what happened...
Our traffic department (TD) has moved four times since I've been in town (about 12 years). Don't ask me why. maybe no one wants to be their neighbour. Every other public building has had a permanent address (except the police station, but they're settled now).
I couldn't pinpoint in my mind where the TD was, so I took the new (new, mark you) phone directory and checked it for the street address. This took some time as the print was small and blurry and I had to check under "municipal", "traffic" and "provincial" before I found the blessed thing. According to the directory (new, I tell you!) the TD was at the end of St James Street, by the railway line. I went down there. There was nothing but an empty bureaucratic-looking building, with no notices or signs indicating either its purpose or the present whereabouts of its former occupants. So I went next door to its neighbours, the factory fabric shop. They had no idea where it had gone, but admitted that it had been their neighbour. Eventually one young girl mentioned that she had heard it was in Gordon's Bay.
Gordon's Bay is the town next to the town next to us. It is also a fraction of the size we are. So why would our TD go there? It makes more sense for theirs to come here. The five towns in our area are quite competitive about this sort of thing. I thought the young sales assistant's story unlikely and the result of rumour. We indulge a lot in that here too. So I repaired to the Police Station (luckily still in the same location).
This necessitated me driving from the railway station across town and up Main Road in the rush hour traffic. I reasoned that the police should know where the TD was and if they didn't, they could possibly detect where it was, because they have detectives. The officer at the counter informed me that the TD had indeed, for reasons unknown to him, moved to Gordon's Bay. When he saw my despondency he told me that if I needed to pay a fine I could do it at the Municipality.
Now I had spoken to the central TD in Cape Town about what to do with my fine, because they were the ones issuing the fine and altering it. The woman I spoke to told me that because the fine was altered I couldn't pay it at the Municipality, Post Office or a local supermarket. Instead I had to pay it at the TD. But the officer insisted that arrangements had been made for fines to be paid at the municipality.
So off I went. This involved my chugging all the way back down Main Road to town central and getting across our second main road in the rush hour traffic so I could park behind the Municipality's building (where, ironically, the TD had once been housed for a brief period before it migrated to St James Street). It was raining by this time. When I entered the building I noticed a queue. So to save time I asked a security guard if I could indeed pay my fine there. She said I couldn't, but I could pay it at the TD's satellite in the Main Street, at the Town Hall. I told her I had heard the the TD had moved to Gordon's Bay. She confessed this was true, but it had a satellite at the Town Hall.
So off I went again. I decided to leave the car where it was, because parking is difficult to find in the Main Road, which, incidentally, is where I got my fine in the first place (on another rainy day). I jay-walked across the second main road, took my life in my hands at the library intersection and trotted down to the Town Hall.
The Town Hall has been fenced in recently because of crime. So its small grounds are a maze of metal spikes and railings. The War Memorial has a little fence of its own and the three other entrances all have lockable gates. I entered through the open one and, on reaching the Town Hall itself, discovered a notice that informed me the TD satellite was indeed at the Town Hall, but in Church Street. I walked across the grounds to the Church Street entrance, only to find it locked.
So I jogged back the way I came, out of the grounds, and walked around the building to the other side, where I found a wooden door and a metal (and seemingly permanent) sign that informed me that this was indeed the satellite. A louche-looking doorman greeted me and asked the purpose of my visit. I explained I had come to pay my fine.
He directed me up the stairs to the first floor, where I found a minute room with two tiny counters. One was closed. The man at the other counter turned out to be a repair man. A woman popped out of a side door and told me she would accept my money. Luckily she issued me with a receipt. I paid my fine and left.
Clearly the satellite had been there some time: The sign was rusty and the rooms needed renovations. Why did no one (other than the security guard at the Municipality) seem to know where the place was? Why was the "new" address not listed in the phone directory? Was the main branch labouring under the illusion that its satellite was still in St James Street? The entire roundtrip of my not-very-large home town had taken me the better part of an hour. I was now late for work. We don't have rigid office times, but I'm quite busy and have deadlines to meet.
The true irony of it all only struck me that night, while I was lying in bed thinking of the day's events. I had ended up paying the fine only a few metres from where I'd been issued the original ticket! Little wonder I had collected a fine. The traffic officers had only to pop out of their lair, dodge a few rain drops and stick the fine under my windscreen wiper, although I hadn't seen one when I had returned to my car. Perhaps they had written the fine in the comfort of their wee offices and then decided not to pop it under my wiper, because it was raining...