Though not a great fan of the megastore and shopping mall (uurgh - Americanism alert!) I am now back in full-time work at a business park miles from any convenient small corner shop, and would starve to death unless I call in at Tesco just at the end of the road on my way back from work.

Tesco, to their credit, have disabled parking spaces just opposite the main entrance. Less creditably, they have arranged the traffic flow so that the halt, lame and crippled must negotiate a maelstrom of vehicles all fighting to be closest to the main entrance, or be the first to leave. Not that it matters. Unless the disabled all drive 4x4 turbo-charged armoured personnel carriers or red BMW sports cars these days, then I suspect those spaces are occupied by the callous instead. Tesco show little interest in patrolling these spaces, or indeed the teenagers using skateboards so as to create moving hazards for traffic, or the shopping trolleys which form impromptu slalom courses for vehicles and pedestrians alike.

There is a memorable police tale in the UK. A vehicle cannot be towed away, no matter how negligently or dangerously parked, if it contains an infant or an animal. One company car (it is sometimes very difficult to prosecute these, as it is easy to baffle authority as to who exactly was driving or in charge at any point) was regularly parked on a double yellow line ("No parking here at all. At all"), with a large doberman in the back. The police eventually forced a window open sufficiently to allow them to feed the animal, with a whole bar of Ex-Lax chocolate.