When I drive to work (which is more often that I should do) I park my car in a “park at your own risk” carpark. It’s a dirt clearing with no designated parking spaces, but people just know the rules. “Park at your own risk” means that you have to arrive to the carpark really early (it’s jammed full by 8:30 am) and if you park in a certain place (the middle of the clearing) you’ll be “parked in” and won’t be able to exit the carpark before 5:00 pm. It’s an unwritten rule, but one everyone accepts and plans for. If you are going to be there all day, park in the middle and leave the outside parks for people who have to leave earlier. And even though some people park haphazardly, there must always be space for people to get in an out. None of these rules allow for the moron who parked his (I’m assuming he’s male, but accept that “he” could have been a female moron - a moronette, if you will?) car in the middle of the carpark, effectively blocking the exit for everyone. And he did this before I arrived at 7:45 am (I know - what the hell was I doing at work at 7:45 am!?!?! I’ve no idea!).  There were plenty of parks for him at that time but no, he had to park in the middle of the bloody thoroughfare. So I left a note on his windscreen congratulating him on his moronic prowess. And I wasn’t the first one to do so. I wondered if, when I returned to my car that afternoon the car would still be there and the windscreen would be full of notes condemning his sanity. The car was there, but there were still just the two notes (and both equally scathing).

It wasn’t until around 10:00 am that I wondered if the moron had done this as part of a pathetic April Fools’ Day joke. And I only thought this because a colleague who has a black telephone was treated to vegemite all over the earpiece. No, I didn’t do it!! She spent the rest of the morning working out how to get back at the culprit, finally giving up and resolving to exact her revenge in a few day’s time. I told her the cutoff for payback was 12:00 pm, but she didn’t believe me. More fool her…

This all reminds me of the coolest April Fools’ prank I experienced. I was a kid in Canberra and one morning the local radio station claimed that the keys to the music library had been lost and nobody could get into the room to find any decent music. The only music that was left out of the library, and hence all they played all morning was this. There were people calling in offering to lend the station their own music.  Because, try getting that out of your head after you’ve heard it, and only it, all morning.