I'M USUALLY very careful about making any racket that could disturb my neighbours but on Thursday I broke my rule.

I'd been driving home in a bit of a fluster. Long day, long week, not much sleep and, sad as it might seem, a bit miffed at having missed EastEnders.

All I wanted to do was get home, park the car and collapse through my front door onto the sofa with my cat, rabbit and a glass of wine. But, as I pulled up outside my house, I realised things were never going to be the same again.

It's the little things in life you take for granted - such as being able to park near your home - that mean so much to you once they've gone.

For where just the night before I'd left my car in a perfectly legal space, the beautiful plain black tar had been menacingly covered in double yellow lines.

Ihave to admit my first thought was that they must have been the work of a friend joking around. You see, my mates have taken great pleasure in winding me up about all things local authority-related, since they discovered the council was taking action against me for my seemingly dangerous garden wall.

Closer inspection, however, revealed these were the real thing - entirely blocking out five parking spaces on the corner where I live and at least another five at every junction up the road.

At that point, I got out of my car and yelled. Not just any yell but a long, loud Victor Meldrew-type yell, dotted with several expletives, that resulted in more than a few twitching curtains.

Ineedn't have felt guilty about my outburst though. When I finally collapsed indoors, having dumped the car more than a block away, it was a scenario that I heard repeating itself over and over again.

Car pulls up, driver spots lines, stops and swears, crunches gears, drives round and round searching for space, then eventually gives up and leaves car on double yellow lines, having one final rant as they lock the door.

What the neighbours I have spoken to since Yellow Thursday cannot understand is why the lines have been put there in the first place.

The only warning most people had seen was a no parking sign erected hastily the day before but as the last time one of those signs appeared it was just so dropped kerbs could be put on the corners, nobody had taken much notice.

What's more, we live in one of the widest streets in the area which, until now, had never suffered from parking problems.

Ihave nothing against stretching my legs. But since the lines appeared I've got more than a little cheesed off hiking to and from my car in the dark and unpacking a boot-load of shopping at the weekend. It required about as much effort as an aerobics routine.

I'm also worried abuut the car alarm. After six break-ins I reluctantly had an alarm fitted - reluctant because I know the disturbance they cause when they go off for no good reason.

Now, with my car parked some distance away, I'll have no way of knowing if it's making a racket.

Still, at least Poets Corner now has another reason for its name. You'd be amazed at the number of people I've heard loudly quoting imaginative verse since those lines appeared.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.