Yesterday, Darling Wifey had a lovely day out in Edinburgh visiting a dear friend and her gorgeous new baby. She came home with a couple of new books and? several experimental photographs on her new camera.

And I had agreed to collect her from the railway station at 6:47. But her train was late. So I had to spend half an hour waiting, with Little Nutter and Tiny Flirt, at the station. Thankfully we were in the car, although there is no designated disability space in the station drop-off zone.

Although the station porter had different ideas.? He knocked on my window and announced, without any courtesy whatsover, that if I didn’t move my car (which was in the designated waiting area!) then the British Transport Police would prosecute me.

I explained that I was waiting for someone whose train was late. He replied by pointing to the CCTV camera and telling me that I had better move or else. I asked him where I could wait in the car, and he directed me to the car parkround the corner. I tried? to explain that this would mean having to handle a train-obsessed? Autistic six-year-old on a railway platform – probably the single most dangerous thing imaginable – but he wasn’t interested, and walked off.

So I put the Disabled Parking Permit on the dashboard and refused to budge. When he returned, I countered his threat of a parking ticket with a threat of a private prosecution, with a press release, for disability discrimination. Then the cheeky bastard actually had the nerve to accuse me of misusing? someone else’s? Blue Badge.

Thankfully, Little Nutter’s photo is on the back, and he could clearly see on the tax disc that the car was a registered “Disability” vehicle. One short conversation about the legal principle of “reasonable allowance” later and I was given permission to park on the end of the platform, next to the Transport Police cars.

I console myself with this thought; miserable little Hitlers with their hats and radios are best kept in car parks and security cabins, where they can’t do any real damage and their thirst for power is ably quenched by the occasional opportunity to piss people off. Heaven help us if they ever achieved real power.