Parking is a nightmare for people living in Portsmouth | Verity Lush

But when we were in the city, we were lucky enough to live in a property that had a garage.

Fortunately, our neighbours where we lived were respectful of the parking space and the white line we paid for that signified to drivers that they should not park there.

However, even though parking was not hugely limited in our particular Pompey road, other people would park outside of said garage all the time – even when there were plenty of other spaces.

Once, somebody left their car there for an entire week, and if that is not a definition of inconsiderate, then I don’t know what is.

In our new home, all neighbours are similarly respectful of parking spaces, and it’s an unspoken acceptance that folk park outside of their own house.

There’s a high level of consideration for others, which is exactly what one wishes for in those we live nearest to.

Isn’t it funny how incredibly possessive we can become of a parking space?

In the grand scheme of life, it’s small fry.

But there are some people who are regimental in their protection of their space – even when, actually, it’s not ‘theirs’.

It’s just a space on the road.

A man once actually ran out of his house and told me I could not park outside of it.

I really feel for people who live in certain streets in Pompey.

I have known friends who’ve had to park several blocks from their own front door just because they’ve been out for the evening and every single space has gone by the time they return.

They’ve trudged back in the dark and that, if you are female especially, is just not pleasant.

Small fry it may be, but it’s all about convenience isn’t it?

And convenience itself is one of those little things that makes life just that bit easier.

There has been one upside to the threat of coronavirus…

It was my husband’s 40th birthday this week and our girls and I had planned a surprise night away in Brighton.

It was booked long ago, it’s an area that we all love, and it’s not too far in the car.

My children therefore were horrified upon hearing that a certain virus had made it’s biggest UK impact thus far over there in East Sussex.

Frankly, you could put money on it that wherever we’d booked, it would have become the corona capital of the country posthaste.

Given some sensible, non-Daily Mail, adult perspective, the kids calmed down considerably, but the positive upside is that they have become fastidious hand-washers. Let maternal joy be uncontained!

Sycophantic public bleating will get us women nowhere

It seems incredibly sad that it takes a death such as that of Caroline Flack, to induce a tidal wave of niceties across social media.

How long will it last?

Women posting on websites about how we all need to ‘fix each other’s crowns’ is laughable. We all know that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Sycophantic bleating in public about how wonderful we all are, is going to solve nothing when, in private we moan about one another. But private is better than public. It’s a disappointing quirk of human nature that gossip and sarcasm are things the majority of us enjoy to one extent or another. We self-propagate this daily and, sadly, always will.