Office Memo

Dear Anonymous Car-Driving Member of Staff,

You recently sent me a verbal request via one of the office ladies. You wondered whether I might park my Harley on a gravel verge, instead of taking up a ‘car space’ in the staff parking area.

The answer is an emphatic no. For lots of reasons.

1. I’m staff and I need to park. That is what the staff parking area is for.
2. There’s no dedicated motorcycle parking at school – simply a ‘staff parking area’. I park in a designated parking space, just like everybody else. Anybody else who rides a motorcycle is welcome to share that space with me.
3. Piglet is a road bike, not a dirt bike. I am not going to try to manhandle 250kgs of Harley Davidson onto a small sloping patch of fine-crushed gravel on a clay base. You are totally clueless if you think that would be a simple thing to do. Gravel is unstable and slippery, and the clay beneath it turns into even slipperier mud in the rain. Given my history, it’s best avoided.  
4. Said gravel patch is used as a thoroughfare by students crossing the access road, and I’m not prepared to leave said Harley Davidson in their path.
5. I take up one parking space, which is no more than anybody else.  The difference is, I use single-person transportation. Perhaps there’d be more room in the parking area if a few more people rode single-person transport instead of whopping great 4-wheel drives or family sedans that are made to carry 4 or more people.
6. I am usually the first or second person to arrive in the morning, and the parking area is empty then. Perhaps you should get to work earlier.

Thank you, that is all.