This is the story as told by me to countless people.. Sorry if you’ve already heard it, but it’s now immortalised forever on the web.
It was Thursday 12th February 2009, the day after I passed my driving test. I was driving home from the pub after closing time and surprise surprise there were no parking spaces down my road. There never are any in the evenings. I turned at the end and went down the next road, no spaces there either… So I went down the other road near my place and a car pulled in behind me. There was a space there but I figured I’d loop back round and let this other car go past. I turned left at the bottom and took off towards the city centre, went onto the main road and the other car followed me and kept following me for the next 5 minutes or so. I thought I’d just go for a random drive around, why not – I wasn’t doing anything wrong. But the car was still behind me all the way to the ring road and back round.
Now I was getting worried. I didn’t know what to do in this situation when you’re being followed by a car; was it friends from the pub playing a joke? Was it a car full of chavs waiting to jump me when I parked up and steal my car? The true reality didn’t cross my mind for even a second…
Just as I was getting back to my road I saw flashing blue lights in my rear view mirror and the car behind me pulled over. So did I to let them past, except they didn’t go past. One police car pulled in front of me, one behind. About half a dozen police officers got out. I was extremely freaked out at this point.
I got out of my car, left the engine running… It turns out the car following me was an unmarked police car who weren’t allowed to pull me over so had to call the cavalry. They asked if I’d been drinking, of course I hadn’t – I’d only had two diet cokes at the pub. I took a road-side breath test which confirmed this and they also said I’d been driving erratically which personally I didn’t think I was but that was what lead them to follow me. I explained how I’d just passed my test the previous day, which was also the reason why I didn’t have my license on me at the time. They then explained that because I was driving slowly around the roads at this time of night they thought I was looking for a “lady of the night” and once I’d explained that I was just looking for a parking space they realised their error and let me go.
The moral of the story? Don’t drive too slowly when looking for a parking in my area of Norwich…? Well it makes for a good anecdote anyway.
Out pulling, eh?
Actually that sounds really stressfull. I once was followed by a car. He’d annoyed me by racing past me when i was going in the speed limit, so i blinked him in the back as a “fuck you”. And so he was driving in front of me, and when i signaled up to my place, he turned on the signal aswell, and followed me all the way to my parking space. Imagine how fucking scared i was when i was sitting in my parked car and that big bad looking audi was standing behind me. I really don’t like people in Audis, they really tend to be assholes!
That’s not the first time I’ve heard of bad Audi drivers!
You drove the whole way round the ring road? No Norwich chav is going to be that determined to jump your car! As for ladies of the night, you’re not going to find many on the ring road either, I shouldn’t think, I would have thought the police would have been aware of this and been chasing everyone in mile cross that drove slowly.
Not the whole way round, I just drove for like 5 mins before the cavalry turned up and pulled me.
So now kerb crawlers on Rouen Road know what to say when stopped…although the NCP car park a few metres away might make this excuse somewhat difficult to pull off. No pun intended.
Thanks for coming over to my place. Us poor hacks need all the help we can get!
WIB
ohmahdayz did u have flashbacks to a certain summer evening in hatfield in teh clioz00rz? heh