People who don't pay for their parking really wind me up

I have been seeing Sidney again every week since the Covid-19 restrictions eased. After meeting in a coffee shop for a while we have a new meeting place – outside on a lovely street.
I make sure I get there early as I don’t want Sidney to worry if he arrives and can’t see me so I have a bit of quiet time to people watch. Well, car and driver watch really.
Parking at one particular car park is expensive compared with other car parks in the town, with costs starting at £1.50 for up to 30 minutes, then £2.20 up to an hour and £3.50 for two hours (which is the maximum length of stay – no return for four hours!). However, it is convenient for me.
What has shocked me over the last few months is the number of people who park and don’t pay.
Many are popping in to deliver or collect something from an establishment in the vicinity area and are away from their cars for, say, five minutes. They obviously feel it is worth taking the chance of getting a ticket rather than paying £1.50.
But the majority of non-payers stay in their space for much longer, often being away for anything up to half an hour.
So it was, with a sense of smugness, that I spotted the parking warden one day last month checking the cars. It was the first time in a while and I reckon he filled his boots.
I do, of course, have some sympathy for the non-payers. £1.50 for a two minute stop to deliver a letter works out at a rate of £45 an hour.
So why doesn’t the council introduce a 10-minute free parking option? Drivers would still need to get a ticket to display in their car – this would give the warden an exact arrival time.
And it would stop me, who ALWAYS pays for his parking no matter how long the visit is, from getting so wound up. It’s not good for someone of my age.

Messi earnings seem a little obscene to me

Back in 2017 in this excellent blog (?) I mentioned a (then) well known professional footballer.
“Poor old Wayne Rooney,” I wrote, “having to take such a heavy hit in his family’s income. His £160,000-a-week deal at new club Everton is just over half his Man. United wages. I look forward to seeing the long-lens shots of Colleen at the local food bank in due course.”
Obviously those photos of Coleen never appeared anywhere as, somehow, she managed to feed the family on that massively-reduced income.
I’d spoken with Mil (my Mother-In-Law) a few years previously when Rooney’s salary increased to £100,000 a week. “That’s a good wage,” she said. “£100,000 a year.”
When I pointed out it was A WEEK she was, to say the least, incredulous.
Unfortunately I could not update her with Rooney’s salary in 2017 as she had passed away just a month earlier but I know she would have found it unbelievable.
I mention all this because I am intrigued about what she would have made of the Lionel Messi move in August from his boyhood club Barcelona to PSG in France.
Messi is apparently taking home around £650,000 a week – that’s £94,000 a day, £3,900 per hour, £65 per minute or just a smidgeon over £1 per second. These are all rough estimates, of course!
On top of that, Messi also pocketed a £22.5 million signing on fee.
Is it just me or this all just a little obscene?