For the last few years, parking in Brighton and Hove has proved a nightmare – to the point where it fuelled my urge to spend time in the backwoods of Andalusia, where the locals can’t execute a reverse parking manoeuvre to save their lives (or their clutches) and some of the streets are designed for mules, not Transporter vans. But at least there aren’t wardens wandering around waiting for long-suffering motorists to remain stationery on the ‘wrong’ spot for too long so they can slap a little something on the windscreen.

I moved to Brighton in 1998 and I remember the halcyon era when parking on the seafront in Kemp Town was free. And parking on Sundays used to be free.

Furthermore, if you couldn’t find a legal parking bay on a residential street after 6pm and needed to park nearby, you could get away with occupying certain double yellow lines overnight as long as you moved your vehicle by 8am.

Then pay meters appeared on the seafront and visitors could no longer park for free, even on a Sunday, and the wardens started doing their dastardly deeds at night. Like the opposite of Robin Hood, taking from the poor motorists and giving it to NCP.

A friend received a penalty charge notice (PCN) in a residential Kemp Town street at 11pm. Warning bells were ringing.

The wardens became over-keen: tickets were handed out like confetti and Brighton earned the dubious distinction of issuing the most parking tickets in the UK back in 2003. Despite it being difficult to find a policeman when required - even in the vicinity of the police station on St James Street - the wardens were seen everywhere.

I remember one particularly stern warden telling me that I couldn’t run into the local Happy Shopper to grab some bread rolls or he would ticket me. I went home empty-handed, minus my snack, thinking that the neighbourhood was changing for the worse: we’d always been able to pause outside the shops and the chippy without risking a £30 fine.

Then there was the onset of the wheel clamping brigade. On a notable occasion, when I’d just given birth to my first son in 2006, his father drove to St James Street to buy me a Thai curry I had requested. At the time, I didn’t realise the spicy ingredients would give my breastfeeding baby colic. But that wasn’t the only problem.

After living in Spain for several years, the father of my children underestimated the zeal of Brighton’s parking enforcement brigade. An unexpected wheel clamp led to the curry for the new Mum costing over £200. Ouch! Whatever must first-time visitors to Brighton think when this sort of thing happens to them?

Brighton Parking Services usually has an ulterior motive for its actions, which revolve around making loadsamoney while being seen to do everyone a favour. And, now, the latest ‘parking palaver’ is taking place in Preston Park. The council has created a Zone A parking scheme, while extending Zone J to cover streets that were previously toll-free.

The residents of the newly restricted areas - who must now fork out £106 a year for permits to park from 8am to 5pm Monday to Sunday, or use the pay meters – are, of course, benefiting from the scheme. How, you may ask? Well, the scheme means that pesky commuters will be discouraged from occupying the parking bays around Preston Park station and, better still, pay meters will prevent travellers from locating their large and cumbersome live-in vehicles in the streets concerned.

The moving on of travellers was a popular enticement, it seems. Furthermore, the residents of some streets were persuaded to vote for the scheme with the idea that if they abstained, they would be inundated with “overspill” vehicles from streets that adopted it first.

Predictably, the vehicles owned by motorists who can’t pay / won’t pay – whether they’re commuting daily to London for the daily grind or getting stoned in a Transit van – have, indeed, shifted into neighbouring roads. But the council carried out “lots of consultation” for the scheme before implementing it, so that’s OK.

Trying to park in Brighton and Hove is tiresome at the best of times. Even thinking about it can induce feelings of exhaustion. I’ve attracted a fair few penalty fines over the years and have successfully appealed against several. It’s always worth a try, rather than taking your PCN sitting down.

Don’t you just love the way that PCNs in Brighton, as well as in various other cities, are administered by The Parking Shop. What’s that all about?

It sounds almost desirable: a shop, where you buy things. “I’ll have two of your finest Penalty Charge Notices please, sir. Can I order some for my family and friends? We’d like some for Christmas.” Hmm. It doesn’t sit well with me – trying to dress up “a privately owned business (with) a full service solution for processing parking permits, scratchcards and statutory parking enforcement documents” as a civilised retail outlet.

It’s hardly surprising that the “parking solutions” drive motorists who have to live with the “out of the box” (sic) approach to the growing problem of ‘so many vehicles, so little space’ barking mad.