A Pheasant In A Pear Tree And Parking Problems

Posted By on 8th November 2014

With just under 7 weeks to go to the ‘big’ day (bah humbug) I’m not suffering from an early bout of Xmas song overload, honest, and here’s why.

On Tuesday teatime, just as the sun was going down about 4.30, I glanced out of the window just as a male pheasant was making his ungainly way into the branches of a tree in next doors garden.

After a while he settled on a suitable branch. He was still there 40 minutes later, I could see his body silhouetted against the pale sky, so I guess that was where he spent the night.

I’d been out to the bin a little earlier, and the temperature was already plummeting. The idea of spending the next 15 hours clutching on to a small branch with cold feet, in the pitch black and near freezing temperatures seemed unappealing.

Still I don’t expect he would have enjoyed sitting on the sofa for 2 hours, with the central heating on, watching Liverpool getting beaten by Real Madrid, but there we are.

On Wednesday night we had the first frost of the winter and on Thursday we went to the supermarket. Nothing special about that I hear you say, so let me explain.

Since moving here we’ve always parked the car in the drive, so every time we went out I had to reverse into the road, whilst trying to avoid the still demolished gate post, the odd pedestrian and passing traffic.

The back of the house, where we intend to park, was too full of rubbish to risk the car or it’s tyres, but as the rubbish shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon (a subject that I will probably return to in the next few days) I just re-arranged it a little, and 2 weeks ago attempted to park the car on the concrete base of the garage for the first time.

Driving is one of the few things I consider I’m good at, I can even parallel park when necessary, and my preferred option had been to reverse into the garage space.

My first attempt was a shambles, there was so much ‘stuff’ still to avoid, concrete kerbs, sticking up angle irons at the 4 corners that had supported the erstwhile garage, old window frames with broken glass, not to mention the corner of the brick porch, and added to all that the ground is notoriously uneven.

If I was marking my performance I’d have given myself a measly 5 out of 10, but at least when we went out next time I was able to drive out forwards.

On reflection we agreed the better way would have been to drive into the garage space forward, and reverse out into the ‘turning’ area thereby still being able to drive forward on to the road.

So on our return we had driven straight into the garage space, and later I lined up some of my ‘cats eyes’ (remember them?) along the edge of the base to avoid driving off the edge in the dark.
10 out of 10.

They say pride comes before a fall, and so it was in this case, when on Thursday we discovered that reversing out into the ‘turning’ area, which sounded easy enough, was even harder than reversing into the garage.

All the obstacles from before seemed more in the way than ever, and the corner of the porch now seemed to be sticking out at least 6′ more than when I last looked.

Even with Peter directing operations it took an age to get the car pointing in the right direction. In fact at one point I was convinced it would stay wedged between the porch wall and the concrete kerb for all eternity. A pathetic 2 out of 10.

Finally we prevailed, did our shopping and returned home. The temptation to park in the drive was great, but instead I reversed into the garage space for only the second time in my life.

Not perfect by any means, but I think a cheeky 7 out of 10 would be a fair score.

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