Parking at the hospital is interesting at best.

It’s difficult on a good day -

when you are in a small to middle sized car

but when you are in a bus

it’s never a good day to find a parking spot at the hospital.

There are good nights, say at around 1am.

Then you can get a spot close to the hospital doors

but if you need to present,

in an emergency

in the middle of the day,

say, on a Wednesday, for example (but every day would be similar)

with a vomiting, feverish child

then finding a parking spot for a big white bus

is impossible.

Impossible and fine worthy, apparently.

Let’s just imagine the car park system at the hospital for a minute.

It consists of two multi-level areas.

One is at the front end, where you generally need to be for an emergency

and the other is at the opposite end of the hospital,

which makes getting to where you need to be about a ten minute walk on any given day.

The *Siberian car park has a top level – reserved for patients with disability permit (of which we don’t have because Ivy may have trouble walking at times and come to the hospital frequently in a state that makes her unable to walk but at the end of the day, she does not need a wheel chair or a device of any kind because she has me and my legs)

but by 8am that car park is full

and every other level underneath cannot fit a bus.

Walking is not an issue generally, if you are lucky enough to secure a space

but add in a vomiting child to the mix

and it’s not ideal.

Which brings me to the other car park.

Let me preface this situation with a story about a mother in a big white bus

who, after circling the car park one morning for over an hour,

finally found a small non- disability spot, that, with a little three pointing, she would be able to wedge her long vehicle into

but before she could angle the bus

a small angry woman, in a smaller, sleeker car bypassed around it and took the space.

I kid you not.

It happens frequently in the hospital car park.

People are busy.

They have appointments

and of course,

when you are feeling poorly, you don’t need to consider anyone else

because you are sick and therefore the most important person in your world.

Yes.

Everyone who has a need to be at the hospital will attempt to park in this parking station -

even in the middle of the day, on a Wednesday

when you can clearly see from the road that there is not a space to be had.

Cars circle the two levels,

stalking people like it is three days before Christmas and nobody has started shopping.

If you are driving a bus, the second level isn’t an option

so you have a choice of sitting on level one, waiting if you have the time

or circling out through the exit, around the outside of the hospital

and back to the entrance to try again.

There is a courtesy  service -

where you park at the football stadium and hope the bus is coming soon

but again,

in an emergency it’s not ideal

which brings me to why I was parked on the road, along side the hospital

and where I was given a nasty yellow notice  slip -

there is nowhere to park a big white bus, with a small vomiting child inside

in the middle of the day

on a Wednesday (or any day)

and I parked there in desperation.

I will pay my fine but I will pay it under duress

because I think that they should have adequate parking for buses

and they don’t.

They don’t have adequate parking, for a very public, highly populated area, period.

Parking is impossible in the delegated parking stations

and illegal everywhere else

and that’s really hard to deal with when you need to frequent the hospital

often in an emergency.

* Siberian =  as far away as you can imagine.