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.
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