Seeing the bright yellow parking ticket on the windscreen of my car came as a shock: I had been violated, surely?

I had sorted the whole thing out on the app, so what was this?

Knowing they rarely get it wrong, I feverishly checked my phone and realised, with a mix of rage and regret, that the instructions had changed.

Previously, you just typed in your car registration and the ticket was valid until you left, or the two-hour limit ran out.

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Now, confusingly, you had to select a time: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes etc.

And if you didn’t put in a time, it picked the shortest one for you. So, unbeknownst to me, I had been illegally parked after 15 minutes.

Just to remind you, I had been battling through traffic all day on a miserable, rainy, pre-Christmas shopping trip to Belfast, and this felt like a final dagger in my heart.

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