Two loaves cost me £35

Earlier this week I found myself being bitten by My Year Without Supermarkets - in the form of the £35 parking ticket.

I'd ducked into Meringue, Chesterfield's amazing artisan cafe and bakery, on my way home from the stables to grab some fresh bread. There are usually a couple of parking spaces outside the shop but unfortunately they were full, so I thought I'd just pull up in the bus stop about 50 metres further down the road instead.

After all, I was only planning on being in the shop for 30 seconds. It it really is a very long bus stop, so I reckoned the buses could probably still get in.

I bought a seeded brown loaf and a rustic French stick, but because they were busy in the cafe I ended up waiting for a couple of minutes to pay.

And as soon as I left the shop I realised my error as I spotted a parking warden pasting a big yellow ticket to the front windscreen of my car.

"But I only popped in for some bread," I wined, running up to him.

"Sorry," he said. "Can't park in a bus stop."

"But it was literally for just a minute," I pleaded.

"Sorry," he said. "Can't park in a bus stop. But if you pay within 14 days it drops from £60 to £35."

Oh well that's okay then.

So my two loaves of bread have ended up costing me £35 and I've also had to endure the jokes of my friends and colleagues, who have been slightly-too-cheerfully pointing out that it's free to park at Asda and Tesco.

And another friend suggested I should have feigned a water infection as the reason behind my illegal parking, but with two loaves of bread in my arms (rather than a carton of cranberry juice!) I'm not sure the parking warden would have had much patience with that one.

Workmates get creative

Under normal circumstances I might have tried batting my eyelashes to get him to rip up the ticket  but I'd just been riding in the rain so I looked like a drowned rat. No point in even trying.

I got into work that afternoon to find that my lovely colleagues, in a rare fit of creativity, had made and pasted a poster to the front of my computer emblazoned with the word "Bus-ted!".

On a serious note though, it does raise the point that actually, one of the reasons people do just drive to big superstores is that they don't have to worry about parking. Whereas if you set out to visit a favourite local shop, such as my bakery, and there isn't a parking space free outside, then you're a bit stuck.

Councils could do a lot more to support small independent businesses by improving parking facilities in towns and suburbs.