Calamitous

Tim and I drive to the airport so that he can fly off and join Mum in France.
We arrive, take a ticket from the machine, which gives you precisely ten free minutes - is it me or is that not a wee bit on the stingy side?
East Midlands Airport does everything in its power to ensure you will end up paying for your parking, yes, you get ten free minutes - but it then forbids you from stopping almost anywhere but a designated space, all costing precious minutes. Now it's not that I'm especially tight with money, it's just that if I'm going to take out a mortgage, I'd prefer it to be for a house, not for parking in their car park.
Eventually we find somewhere to stop, Tim unloads his things and heads off to the departures whilst I head to the exit, still with five minutes to spare. I get to the exit, wind down the window (grateful to be in their car which has windows that wind down unlike my own lovely vehicle). Ticket in hand, I stick my arm through the window and aim for the slot. I'm not sure if the car rolled or if the wind caught the ticket but suddenly it was gone.
I flung the car into reverse, leapt out (ripping my skirt in the process - naturally) and was faced with about two dozen identical tickets littering the floor.
Excellent.
I made sure that the rip to the back of my skirt wasn't causing any kind of indecent exposure, crouched down and started rifling through the tickets. I won't even try to describe the looks I got from the passing cars because I'm sure they're quite easy to imagine. Finally I found one, with today's date and the approximate time we arrived. I ran back to the car, hopped in, drove back up to the exit, inserted the ticket without incident and the display read 'this ticket has already been used for exit'.
Shit!
I reversed again, jumped out (without further tearing to my skirt) and started searching again. Found another and repeated the process.
You know what they say about third time lucky?
Ha! Second time lucky for moi!

Oh yes, the barrier lifted, the display told me to drive safely and I was free.
Ah the thrill of the open road.

I'm really quite pleased that the next airport trip is to Stansted.