Hmmm? Isn't it? Banana?

Thursday night

Right then. To get all of you up to speed with the way these things normally go, I went to Devon with 4 of my friends this weekend as has become traditional. We go to Dawlish (small coastal town) for the Winter, and to Great Yarmouth for it's tackiness and location of several more friends, for the Summer. Last year on the Yarmouth trip, all the plans turned to crap on the first night as the person who 'booked' the hotel had cocked up enormously and booked a month later than the trip. Still, at least it was 11 at night when we found this out, and we had plenty of time (Ha. Ha.) to get accommodation for 5 people at no notice... Anyway, we got away with it, as seems to be our run of luck and ingenuity.

This time, three of us were in one car and intending to meet up in Exeter at around last orders to sneak a beer in before heading the last 15 miles or so to the house. We just make it - for once my punctuality 'issues' having no bearing on our arrival time- and park in the grounds of the Cathedral. We had a rather pleasant couple of beers before closing, with time to admire the local lovelies, and retired to the cars.

Ah. Bugger.

Both of our cars had a big, yellow shiny clamp on them... This is now at about 2320 or so. Admittedly, there were a few signs around the place telling us that it was a private road, but who pays any attention to that at half ten at night? I mean, really?

So, we are back at the cars (4 qualified Engineers and an Environmental Scientist, for reference) and we are having a bit of a look at the clamps. We decide that we can get them off and start to jack the cars up and get on with it, but our Environmentalist is concerned as to the legality of all this. This bloody liberal or, as he prefers to be called, 'The Practical One' was suggesting more restraint than the rest of us were advocating when the bloke from the wheel clamp company came back in his poxy little van and parked it behind the car nearest the exit and blocked him in.

Hmmmm. We had a small huddle and thought about it all. The bloke in the van seemed to be completely confused. He had arrived to see 5 big lads taking wheel clamps off cars, yet we were calm, relaxed, completely ignoring him and not doing what I imagine he expected - running over and abusing him. He immediately called (or faked calling) for back-up from the Police, so I wandered off a bit and called them myself and asked a few questions that they tried not to answer

"If we take this clamp off and not damage it, are we in the clear?"
"Is it an offence to remove a non-police issued clamp?"
"Why would the clamping guy call you lot (the police), what offence would we be committing?"

It transpired, through my tying the woman up to stating her point more clearly than she wanted to, that the only reason that he could have called the Police was if there was a "Civil disturbance", i.e. if we started a fight with him trying to take the clamp off. That was, we decided, as good as saying - "Go for your life, boys. Take it off, he's got nothing on us". Basically, we had as much legal right to remove the clamp as the guy did to put it on - there's nothing he can do as long as nothing was damaged. This does NOT count for a police clamp, for reference. Tampering with one of those is a criminal offence.

So. We took them off.

We jacked the car up, let the tyre down, and two of us pulled the clamp across while the third undid the wheel nuts one at a time, physically holding the car to stop it falling off the jack when we took the handbrake off to turn the wheel to access the next nut. After we got the technique on the first car, we got the second clamp off in about half the time - about 5 minutes. We then pushed the wheel through the clamp with our knees and put it on the pavement. Whilst we had done all the removal, the bloke in the van had retired to the end of the street to prevent our escape. HA! Right!

One of us went up to him, and explained that "We would be leaving soon, and did he want to pick up his clamps?" He was ok, actually. As long as we hadn't damaged them, he didn't care, really. Good job too. He was only bluffing about blocking us, although we had sneakily booked a taxi for one of the houses our side of where he had parked to make him move out of the way for it.. We were then going to stand either side of his van to prevent him moving back until we had got past. Genius, eh?

Although sadly unnecessary. He was really cool about it, I get the impression he wasn't expecting such a complete lack of drama and such effortless removal. All's well that ends well. We then drove off feeling pretty damn pleased with ourselves, and only had to pump up two tyres in the morning. A small price to pay for sticking two fingers up at "The Man". Not to forget saving ourselves £150 of fines...

posted by Brock @ Monday, January 17, 2005