I'm sure by now, people who read my blogs regularly will know that after watching a comedy gig live, particularly if it is a well known name such as Lee Mack, Sean Lock or Milton Jones, I blog about it in a 'Look who I've gone and seen' review, which more often than not is full of appraisal. Jimmy Carr would have been no acceptation. Although not one of my all-time favourite comedians, I imagine it would be a fantastic experience to sit through, especially if you had tickets for one of the front rows, and be close enough to be picked on like you see him do in all his stand-up DVD's. That is what makes him a great comedian in my opinion; to be able to interact with the audience in such an insulting way, but still making that person cry with laughter.
Imagine my excitement then, when I was told that I could have tickets to see Jimmy Carr, for free, to sit in the sixth row. I had spent the following few days looking forward to being a part of the whole experience. All I had to do was be at the Margate Winter Gardens on Friday 15th of July by 8pm, park legally and then walk into the theatre, with my friend and tickets in tow, then present them to the usher and sit down. Sounds simple. I've done it enough times when I've seen comedians at The Gulbenkian, Canterbury. I never envisaged any problems.
What ensued was possibly the unluckiest 5 minutes that I have ever had in my life.
I had walked into the theatre and was then asked by the usher to show my tickets. I looked in the envelope in which they were in, to find they were not in there. Complete shock took over my body. I went to the front desk, for them to deliberate for minutes whether to let me in or not (the tickets were not registered in my name you see). They decided that I could have just picked the receipt part of the ticket up and was trying to fool them. After becoming frustrated, I stormed out in a vain attempt to try and find the tickets on the floor outside. I left the house with them. They had to be in Margate. Ironically, I expect someone picked them up, fooled the usher, and took my seats. I hate to badmouth an entire town on this, but everyone in Margate is a bastard. There, I said it. Feel better? Not really.
My vain attempt to find the tickets took me along the path I took to get from the car to the theatre. I found nothing, so thought I'd look in the car before giving up. I looked over the car park wall on my approach to see a man bend down next to my car. I became an athlete (for possibly the first time in my life) thanks to something that could be described as adrenaline, and ran towards the car shouting. The man wasn't stealing it as it looked in my quick glance, but instead the complete opposite: clamping it. I got there before he clamped me, but still, even after I offered to get a ticket and explained the temperamentality of the machine and explaining it to be the reason for a number of other cars having not paid for parking, he still gave my car a bright yellow anklet, stuck a ticket to the window and demanding £120 for the release of my car. I also went for the sympathy vote, explaining that I'd lost my tickets for Jimmy Carr. They very helpfully looked around the whole car park for them. I'd rather they took the clamp off…
Those were the unluckiest 5 minutes of my life. Losing tickets and have some scumbag from Margate use them for himself rather than hand them back to me, before having some scumbags clamp me. A free night out, turned out to cost £120.
I'd done wrong. I understand that. I'm not trying to defend myself from my stupidity regarding the parking. I hadn't paid for parking in a car park which you have to pay to park in, and there were signs, even if hidden around the place, saying that they clamp people who disobey the rules. But the fact that I took the man who clamped me to the machine, and showed him it not accepting the coins in my wallet (it finally accepted one), annoys me. Apparently that was my fault for having dud coins. I think that's the machines fault, not mine. If I took the coins to a bank, they wouldn't throw them back. That stupid robot cost me £120. I worked out that from all the cars clamped in that one car park, they made £720 in the two hours I was there. No wonder they won’t replace the machine.
£120 is an extortionate amount however. £30. Sure. £60. Sure. But £120? That was ridiculous. I think of clamping as blackmail! If you took your child to a child-friendly area where other children were, in which you had to pay a small price for, but you didn't pay and they decided to not give you your child back until you paid a fine 4,000% more than what the original fee would have been, and didn't give you the chance to pay that original fee, and locked the child in a cage in front of your very eyes until the fine was paid, in cash. That would be called blackmail. That would be abduction. Clampers are child-abducting bastards!
I'm angry about this whole situation, mainly due to my stupidity. If it wasn't all so much my fault, it'd be fine, but the fact that all the unlucky events of those five minutes were due to me being stupid, I'm angry. I had to spend two hours in a Margate car park by the sea, watching a shit sunset, while I waited for my father to bail me out. Prison would have been a doddle.
Just in case you think I was being unfair to Margate in an earlier paragraph, I'm not. No good has ever come from me being in Margate. The Margate sands broke my camera last year, just weeks before my Photography exam, meaning I had to buy a new one. The same trip, I am sure to this very day, also gave me Chicken Pox after being in the slums of the town’s Primark, which led to me missing the said Photography exam, meaning I didn't go to University last year AND had to attend another year of school. I am still peeling off the skin from getting burnt on its beach a few weeks ago. And now, the unluckiest five minutes of my life. So, Margate sucks. Get used to!
Don't feel sorry for me though; I still went home pretty happy...
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