“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
― William Shakespeare,
The day started off with some fantastic weather, misty frosty sunshine which rolled off of the flooded fields and lakes beautifully. I snapped a brief image here and there on my way to work and felt renewed by the break in the rain and the warmth of the sunshine. Unfortunately, it was slightly dampened by how the rest of the morning chose to pan out.
In my line of work, we have extra support when we have a tricky or violent client in the form of a fellow colleague to visit alongside us. We’re constantly on the look out for anything going wrong or any suspicious behaviour. With the more serious clients, we learn to know where the nearest exit is and physical ticks that warn that perhaps danger is imminent. So it’s quite surprising, even shocking, and definitely ironic, when the dangerous times come not in the form of a client, but in the form of a stranger on the street.
I was basically threatened for parking on a public road, where there were no restrictions, disabled bays or marked parking bays to concern myself with. As the police have since told me, I had as much right to park there as anybody else. Yet an older man took it upon himself to use both his car and his language to threaten me as I walked over to my workplace. I was told that when I returned to my car, he would kill me.
I can understand if somebody gets frustrated about a lack of parking in their area, but since I wasn’t using any residential parking bays, I was within my right to be where I was. And yet somebody thought it necessary not only to shout and curse, (which is the reaction of many when frustrated!) but also to make a threat, however empty, against my life. So much so that I had to get a work colleague (thank you) to walk with me back to my car just in case.
I suppose I’m so surprised, because I’m often a bit too trusting. I saw a man in a car that looked like he was lost, in his late sixties, and simply thought he wanted directions. Instead he somehow thought he had the ability to instill fear and wipe away someone’s ‘good’ day. All because of a parking space. There are bigger things going on in this world, if people are going to dwell on such little ones then too much energy and time will be wasted.
Kathryn Dawson Photography 