Operation Model Search

Dr Who?

No sooner have Albert Einstein's theories concerning the space time continuum been called into question, than ground-breaking time travel is now been rendered possible here in Petersfield.

When we recall famous scientific ventures we more often think of CERN's Large Hadron Collider or the launch site at Cape Canaveral, but this week it is Petersfield's Rams Walk that has made the headlines.

On Saturday morning an experiment conducted under the codename ‘Model Search’, saw 18 volunteers strut up and down Rams Walk and systematically travel forwards and backwards in time.

The 'singularity' that facilitates the ability to travel in time, and so reduce the need for lengthy stays in Petersfield’s increasingly expensive car parks, lies directly beneath the Waitrose clock.

Why not try this out for yourself? As you approach the clock from The Square, make a note of the time and walk in the direction of the Waitrose car park. Once you have passed under the clock, glance back over your shoulder at the clock and you will see that you have travelled back in time by 1 hours and 11 minutes.

Any concerns can be easily mitigated by walking back under the clock in the other direction and completely reversing the effect.

Trudy Wormhole, a spokesperson for Model Search said: “We were pushed into this by yet another increase in the car park fee. Now, if you are staying in town for more than two of our normal Earth hours, or if you are late returning to your car, you can avoid receiving a fine simply by passing under the Waitrose clock!

“In fact if you are staying for less than 1 hour and 11 minutes, you can avoid paying anything at all, by getting to your vehicle in time to stop yourself spending a pound on a ticket…”

Speaking on behalf of Waitrose, Pat Hay-Foygraz, said: “I really don’t know what to say, but I can confirm we are promoting two meals for £10 at the moment.”

We asked David Tennant, once famous starey-eyed time-traveller what he thought of the situation, he told Newswire: “Two meals for a tenner sounds alright to me.”

All change to no change

Petersfield parking tokens

East Hampshire District Council (EHDC) has announced that it expects to earn an extra 30 pence per day when the increased car park tolls take effect on October 1.

The minimum price is set to rise from 90p to £1, in Petersfield’s largest two car parks* but the reality is that most paying car park users shove a pound coin in the slot anyway.

Waitrose shopper May Dermunny said: “I really can’t be bothered to scratch around for change and always pop a pound coin in the machine.”

Bell Hill old-timer Arthur Wrytiz chimed in: “The Waitrose car park takes small change right down to a 5p piece, but I find it takes me ages to feed a number of coins into the machine, especially when it spits half of them back out again.”

Ray Kittin, manager of EHDC’s ‘Unwanted Gold’ campaign, explained: “First of all we want to make it quite clear that we are only raising the prices to improve the parking experience for all Petersfield residents.

“We all know what it’s like to stand in the cold when an annoying old duffer is struggling with his or her small change, or some inconsiderate yummy mummy is taking the opportunity to show her precious Hermione how to feed small coins into the machine.

“From October, not only will the price of a two-hour stay rise from 90p to £1 but also only pound coins will be accepted. Actually that’s not strictly true, two pound coins will also be accepted, but no change given. And that’s in the 50 per cent of machines that are actually in working order at any given time.

“While we accept that we will not make much profit from this increase, with most people already paying a pound, the small profits we do make should pay for the new signage and adaptations to the machines by 2043.”

*The calculation of which are Petersfield’s largest car parks does not include the town itself, which is to all intents and purposes one big car park these days.

You Cant be serious

 Somebody should be thrown through the arched window...

The rationale behind the new monstrosity in Petersfield has been defended in an effort to calm irate townsfolk. 

Beside Petersfield’s central car park, in a corner previously occupied by quaint old shops, rises an incongruous brick edifice, details of which have been largely kept a secret from the public. 

Newswire can reveal that the design of the building is loosely based upon a combination of a Swiss chalet and, curiously, a design from the old BBC favourite, Play School . 

The architect, Swiss born Emma Entahl told journalists: “I visited Petersfield during the winter and noticed how this car park was like a scene in Switzerland , sheet ice, with piles of snow all around, like a black run at Gstaad. When asked to give my thoughts on this new build, I thought a chalet would be the perfect design.

“I was however conscious of the need to incorporate something very English into the blueprint and, after some research, decided upon the old children’s favourite Play School . You know with Brian Cant and Floella Benjamin.

 Fewer windows than the new build

“I feel the chalet style blends seamlessly with its surroundings whilst there is the subtle nod towards English eccentricity with the inclusion of a round window, an arched window, a square window, and also because I had some spare wall space... a triangular window.”

The building will be home to a new furniture store with affordable accommodation in the roof space.

On a more positive note, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which has recently declared words such as 'aerodrome' and 'charabanc' as extinct, told Newswire that this building has singularly rescued the word 'carbuncle' from archival.

Cake Walk

 An example of a “Cake Walk” taking in three broken

ticket machines and a walk back to the car. 

Petersfield supermarket Tesco is today launching “Cake Walk”, an initiative that could see many of its car-driving customers lose some weight.

“Cake Walk” will see many customers complete some valuable exercise in the open air before heading into the store.

Jean Eyus, a Tesco spokesman, said: “The plan is simple: by only ever having one car-park ticket machine working at any given time, customers will be forced to walk around the car park trying to purchase their ticket before they can come into the store.

“Once they have bought their ticket they need to walk back to their car and all this adds up to healthy exercise.

“The walking doesn’t end there; we are also hiding our trolleys, you know those handy sized ones that all our customers like to use. We have started to leave these jammed in the broken plastic shelters around the car park and customers will have to walk back out into the car park to get a trolley.

“We estimate that an average customer will have to walk about half a mile before actually making it into the store, whereas some customers might actually walk nearer to a mile before starting their shopping experience.

“The weight problem for all lardies out there has been exacerbated by the fact that nobody feels safe eating cucumber any more thanks to the Germans.

“This is traditionally the season when everybody manages to lose a little bit of weight, but those who might otherwise have eaten healthily will now see this as an excuse to revert to their winter staple of pork pies and chocolate.

“Many of our customers have asked why we don’t put a clearly visible sign up over each ticket machine that isn’t working, so customers know to head to another machine. Hopefully this explains our reasoning.”

Happy Clampers

Trick or treat
 

The landlord of the White Hart has experienced an extraordinary turn of fortune since closing down the establishment, with profits soaring to the highest level in the pub's history.

With overheads cut to a minimum, landlord Max Prophet barely has time to count the cash these days as income from his " Petersfield Park and Fine" scheme comes pouring in.

Prophet said: "We all know the High Street can get really clogged up with cars and so we provide an alternative option to those wanting to park near the centre of town.

"We guarantee that if you park at the White Hart, you will not be asked if you want your car washed and you will be safe from old ladies swinging open their car doors.

"Our rates are not the cheapest in town, but we are still attracting many more customers than we ever thought possible, each of them looking for the perfect spot to park.

"We even got our parking supervisor to dress up for Halloween. It's always nice to give something back to the community. Ivan fitted his costume beautifully, and I'm sure he brought smiles to the faces of many people over the weekend as he growled at them asking for their £215 parking fine.

"This has been such a tremendous success; you should see what we have planned for Christmas.”

Crime hot spot

Shiny squad cars and lots of blue police tape

A large area of Petersfield town centre was cordoned off yesterday as police were called in to deal with a suspect package.

Staff from all the shops in Rams Walk could be seen sunbathing for hours after Police got to use hundreds of metres of their blue and white “POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS” tape around Waitrose car park and a section of the High Street.

We spoke to PC Bob Bee, in charge at the scene, who said: “We can’t believe it. This sort of thing never happens in Petersfield. Our role here normally comprises driving around the back streets, turning a blind eye to ever-worsening parking crimes, but this was extraordinary.

“It’s a Sunday morning so we’re all on double time, and we get to stand around for three hours in the glorious sunshine, giving it the old “Move along now, nothing to see here”.

“Some of my colleagues have never had the chance to say that and it’s another cliché to tick off the list.”

We asked PC Bee about the list and he told us that they all police officers have a standard wish list of sayings including “You’re nicked my old beauty”, “evening all”, “book him Danno” and “follow that car”.

“It’s a bit like playing snooker on the motorway, you know, where we book a red car then a coloured car, then another red and so on; comparing breaks when we get back to the station. I once scored 76.”

PC Bee also said an unexpected bonus was that the police left the scene with shiny clean cars.

“The Poles were kicking their heels and after a few questions about tax and transparent accounting, they agreed to clean our cars for nothing.”

The car park was evacuated shortly after 8.10am when the package was discovered. The police line was set up and the MOD bomb disposal team called in to deal with the situation.

Store managers at one of the posh supermarkets were concerned about damage that might be caused to the building if the package did explode.

Concern was largely alleviated when the man who collects the trolleys arrived for work and could be sent in to move the package to the middle of the car park.

A police spokesman later confirmed: “The IED turned out to be a sun-dried tomato and organic hummus sandwich on bruschetta which reacted badly to the unexpected heatwave and started to smoke.

“It was taken into custody and, er… disposed of safely,” he said, wiping his chin.

Not just any climbdown

Flight of fancy? - S&M’s shortlived helipad

Posh supermarket S&M have been forced to make an embarrassing turnaround after their implementation of prohibitive parking charges at their Petersfield branch.

In an effort to diffuse the situation, S&M spokesperson Claire Duncan-Biscuit said: “There is no blame culture here at S&M, but it’s all the signwriters’ fault, the signs should never have read £10 - this was a typo."

New signage is now in place stating that the car park still costs £2 for an hour, but that this is refundable after a minimum in-store spend of £5, not £10 as originally intended.

However, despite Duncan-Biscuit blaming the £10 charge on the signwriter, we have evidence that the £10 charge was completely intentional, and that S&M’s original plans simply backfired.

One disgruntled employee, Michelle Festacker said: “The intention was always to clear the car park, and this worked perfectly. We were then going to have a helicopter pad, as I believe you originally reported. But, S&M couldn’t get agreement from the Civil Aviation Authority to have helicopters land at the site and that has forced this massive turnaround."

We put this to Duncan-Biscuit and she was very defensive.

“Nonsense, as I said it was an unfortunate error, and that has now been rectified," she insisted.

“We are now concentrating our efforts to stop all the chavvy parents parking here both in the morning when they drop off their oik kids and later in the day when they want to go to the 99p shop.

“We feel that a £2 fee should deter this type of character; surely they’d rather spend this kind of money on a bottle of Stella or cider."

Car park attendant Ray Gunn has been forced to hand back the table tennis bats that he was going to use to guide in the helicopters, and is once again focusing on what he calls “the criminals who park here illegally”.

Gunn added: “I can’t wait to get back to normal. At the moment word hasn’t got around and so the car park is still empty. S&M is reluctant to advertise the reduction because it looks pretty bad. They are hoping the news will spread on the grapevine.

“I rely on there being a certain number of cars in the car park for me to hide behind. Until things pick up, there is not much chance of me racking up any decent fines.”

Simply outrageous

Coming to a car park near you from Monday

S&M has announced it is to start charging customers to use its Petersfield car park from Monday, February 22.

The cheapest car park in town, will, over the course of Sunday night, become the most expensive, with customers having to fork out £2 for the first hour and £4 for stays of up to 90 minutes.

In a carefully worded announcement S&M is at pains to point out that this should not affect any of its real customers because the £2 is refundable once any customer spends £10 or more in the store.

The introduction of this system would cause outrage among the customers of many stores, but of course at S&M £10 is pretty much a minimum spend.

We sent our reluctant ace reporter to buy his lunch there today; he came back to HQ with a free-range ham sandwich on pumpkin-seeded malted brown bread, a bottle of old-fashioned lemonade and lime, and a bag of hand-crafted cheddar and chive crisps with a hint of oregano - the cost was £23.12.

We spoke to Claire Duncan-Biscuit who clarified the reasoning behind the change.

She said: “You need to understand that our target customer is aged over 80 with poor eyesight.

“Our customers like to be able to park without any regard for the guide lines that map out the parking bays and they like to have enough room to get in and out of their cars with ease.

“From our studies we estimate that from Monday our car park should be at least 80 per cent empty, giving our loyal customers as much room as they need to swing their car doors open.

“I would also like to reassure our loyal customers that Ray Gunn, our enforcement officer will be on duty to keep the car park clear of 99p Shop oiks. This is not just any car park; this is an S&M car park.”

This is a bold move at a time when car parking in the town centre has never been cheaper. Any visitor to Petersfield knows you can now park anywhere for as long as you like for free.

Petersfield enters the record books

Petersfield has entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the first time – as the world’s largest active car park.

Delighted councillors have been patting themselves on the back upon hearing the news, which follows their failure to recruit another traffic warden for the town.

One said: “This really puts Petersfield on the map – the only problem being that when people visit they won’t be able to get into the town because of the number of cars blocking the roads.”

A spokesman for the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed Petersfield’s entry.

He said: “There are larger car park areas in the world - such as those at Disney in Florida -but many of them allocate ‘live’ areas meaning they’re not always in use.

“But it appears that any area in Petersfield is currently open to use as a car parking space. It’s an innovative scheme which is sure to bring the town to people’s attention, particularly when there’s an emergency and the fire brigade and ambulances can’t get through.”

News of the town’s status has already attracted celebrity interest with Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes confirming he is planning to put together a team to make it through the town on a market day.