Dishonest Paying Machine in Hynes' Car-Park

During the week I went into town and parked in a car-park I'll never return to (well, except if they pay me for it of course, that's how shallow I am!).

The first thing that struck me at first upon entering the Hynes car-park in Galway, was that, even though we are in a country where we are supposed to drive on the left (except if you're very drunk, but then you shouldn't be driving; do the Galway taxi-drivers a favour and hire their services instead), as soon as you get into it, you have to drive on the right side!

And if that's not crazy enough, they also have dishonest pay-machines: this is a car park where you get a ticket from a machine so that the gates will let you in and then you have to keep the ticket with you and pay at a vending-machine-lookalike machine. When I put my ticket in there to pay the due fee (a steep €4.40 because my car stayed there between 1 and 2 hours), I was relieved to see that my purse contained the right change; so I put in my 2 €2 coins and 4 10cent coins but then, I noticed that the cheeky machine was asking me for a further €2! I was sure that I put 2 €2 coins in there and I didn't have enough coins anymore to make up the remaining €2 so I pressed the cancel button, half hoping that the machine would give me back my €4.40 but it only gave me €2.40!

I didn't really have time to call for help as I had to get home in time to eat my lunch and pick up the kids from school so, prepared to take my loss, I put in a ten euro note in there, as it was one of those machines that make change (a bit like Obama, ha ha!).

You will never guess what change the machine gave me back: €6.40! Now, if I'm not mistaken, 10 - 4.40 = 5.60 and not 6.60. I counted my change twice as I was very puzzled, then I took my ticket back and ran, thinking there must be something wrong about the way this machine was programmed. Perhaps the person who programmed/installed it was just very drunk (well, this is Ireland after all!), unless it's a secret measure taken by the Irish Government to try and fill the hole in the public finances.

I will probably never know (unless someone in the Hynes public car-park in Galway reads this and decides to sue me for diffamation or something, but that's very unlikely as they are probably just too drunk to read anything, with St Patrick's Day coming up on Tuesday and all!).

Anyway, my loss was now only €1 so I guess I'll just not give any spare change to any of those annoying charities always begging in the streets of Galway (I never do anyway!). Talking about which, some guy giving out Curly Whirlies accosted me in the street to give me a business card about some church and the second time I passed him, he was giving out lollipops (I had sort of expected to get another Curly Whirly instead), so maybe my trip to town only costed me the fare of the car-park after all (plus the stuff I bought, but that's not your business, as I don't have anything weird or funny to write about that: naa-na-na-na-naa!)

I'm too busy (or too lazy) to write more than once a week at the moment so in case I don't see you before Tuesday (which is very likely!), Hpappy Sanit Ptraick's Dya!

PS. Spelling mistakes are voluntary, it's for the Irish Leprechauns who are going to be too drunk to read correctly-spelled words.