Exemplary parking in Coalisland

A much-respected Coalisland psychic has been rubbished after she predicted live on Radio Ulster that a red-haired man driving a 1991 white Datsun Sunny will receive a parking ticket in the town some time in February 2015.

Madame McAliskey (66), who accurately predicted in 1978 that snooker player Dennis Taylor would win something at some time, somewhere in the world, after 1979, made the startling claim after it was revealed that not one parking ticket had been issued in the town since the first cars arrived in 1921.

Shop owner Frank McCabe described the scene in the town after Madame McAliskey’s wild proclamation on air:

“Well, three fellas outside the undertakers laughed so hard they were taken to Craigavon Hospital with mild respiratory failure. Another girl, one of the Gervins, ended up giving birth on the spot from the giggling, two months early. To be honest I thought she was pulling Wendy Austin’s leg but it seems not. That’s her finished anyway. She was living off that Taylor prediction too long I thought, so she was.”

Local resident and avid scooter-spotter Bosco Kelly added:

“I remember my oul fella saying years ago that a travelling Yankee preacher away back in the 40s was so taken by the local women that, as a parting gift, he cursed all traffic wardens who would ever set foot in the town for 100 years. Going by that reckoning, Madame McAliskey is 30 years too soon. She’s some clift thon. Imagine believing that woman from now on.”

Meanwhile, the Coalisland Traffic Committee have confirmed that the yellow lines in the town are not yellow at all but ‘mustard’ on some roads and ‘vanilla’ on others, making it illegal anyway to dish out parking fines. They blame acid rain or “maybe lignite or something”.