A Kings Langley old-age pensioner has painted his own double yellow lines where he thinks they ought to be – outside his home in the Nap – in a desperate bid to outwit inconsiderate car parkers.

Says 75-year-old Mr Bertram Garrard, a retired paper merchant: “We’ve been trying since 1966, to get something done. People park right in front of our steps, preventing us from getting in or out of our own house.

“We had to have our bottom step replaced by the council after cars broke up our previous step. I’ve written 15 letters to the parish council, the former Hemel Hempstead Rural Council and the county council, and have a great stack of correspondence but nothing has been done, except the recent painting of white lines in front of our garage entrance.”

Mr Garrard continues: “The police are sympathetic but say there is not much they can do. They can only tow a car away if it is causing an obstruction to other traffic not if it is obstructing our access, so I decided to paint my own yellow lines outside. They are painted on my bottom step, on my own property.”

 But at meeting of the parish council on Friday, councillors disagreed. “It is painted on our property,” one councillor said.

At the meeting Mr D. Farndon said members of the public had been complaining about the yellow lines. He said: “They are not lawful.”

[From the Watford Observer of April 12, 1974]