Perfectly legal parking

My husband managed to fix N's car on Saturday. We invited her to come for lunch and collect it. Since she's found herself a new home to move into next weekend, it seemed like a good idea to move a bit of something from her house at the same time (she lives a ten-minute walk from the nearest car-parking space.) So we set off with a couple of bags of books for a mutual friend. Of course the bags got heavier as the walk went on, and we were glad to get to my car. By then we really didn't fancy walking any further, so we braved the one way system round the roadworks in Santa Cruz to get to our friend's house.

Hallelujah, there was a parking space nearby, on the wide pavement outside the old theatre.

So we took the books in and had a cup of tea and a chat, and as we left a woman going past said to the street in general (facing away from us), "They ought to give you a dirty great fine for parking there!"

This surprised me. I said, "There's no yellow line and we had a lot of weight to carry."

She didn't turn around. She just said something I couldn't catch and marched off.

I looked again in case I'd missed something. No yellow line, no parking restriction signs. It was a perfectly legal parking space.

Charming.