Midweek madness

I am officially losing the plot.  Seriously.  Midlife madness maybe? 

The week started off well.  Popped over to Chelmsford on Monday to look for ideas for birthday gifts for my husband - had a successful trip and was home in time to look after Leo while his mummy went for her monitoring at the hospital.

Tuesday I agreed to go with Leo and his mummy to the hospital as Leo had an appointment at the allergy clinic.  Parking is a nightmare at the hospital, and worse at the moment as they have building works going on which are taking up some spaces there.  So the plan was that I would drive and if we couldn't find anywhere on site to park I would drop them off and then drive into town to park in the shopping centre car park.  No parking places at the hospital so we implemented Plan B.  I parked the car and rushed back to the hospital to meet up with them.  We ended up being there quite a while as the consultant ran some skin prick tests which needed 15 minutes to develop and then a second consultation.  We left the hospital and walked to the shopping centre.

We got back to the car and I realised that the parking exit fee machine was on a different level to that which I was parked on.  I left Rachel to strap Leo in the car seat and put the buggy in the boot of the car while I went up to the next level to pay the exit fee.  So far so good.

The machine rejected the ticket that was issued when I arrived.  I thought maybe I'd put it in upside down so turned it over and tried again.  Still got an error message and the machine returned the ticket.  Tried inserting it again - machine rejected it.  How frustrating.  So I pressed the intercom button to speak to someone somewhere in the depths of the car park and the guy asked me what time I arrived.  I looked at the ticket and said 09.32.  He told me to insert £1 payment and then he did something that made the machine issue me an exit ticket and all was well.  

But something was niggling at the back of my mind.  The ticket I had been issued on arrival didn't look quite like the one on the instruction details on the machine, it had no black strip down the back of it.  Obviously it had been misprinted when it was issued.  

We got home and still something was puzzling me.  And then I realised what an idiotic thing I had done.  Oh the embarrassment.  You see, I couldn't have arrived at 09.32 because Leo's appointment was at 10.20 and we didn't leave home until about 9.35. And the reason I had parked on my own was because by 10.15 we were still looking for a space in the hospital car park.  I couldn't have been issued a ticket at 09.32.  No, the reason the machine rejected my ticket was because ...

... it was the one that was issued by the car park in Chelmsford the day before.

We've all heard of baby brain haven't we?  Well, let me tell you that it would appear that Nanny brain is a thing too!