A photo once arrived at my columnist's desk showing a man squatting cross-legged on the pavement, holding a letter and trying in vain to reach the slot in an Australia Post mailbox. An accompanying note explained that he was an English tourist who could not understand why Australians were, as mandated by an adjacent "No Standing" sign, banned from posting letters from the vertical position.

Some time later another chap sent a photo of himself trying to ride a bicycle while hanging upside down from the saddle. He said he was just following the instruction beside this rural motorway: "Cyclists use left shoulder". It did indeed seem a tall order, even for a contortionist.

Swift and merciless: The grey ghosts will catch you out. Credit:Andrew De La Rue

Welcome to the daffy world of road signs. Many are the mysteries. For example, just up from the Celtic Club in Queen Street is a pole with a cluster of parking signs that must have been installed by the leprechauns. One sign reads: "1P METER 7.30am to 7.30pmMon-Sat". All motorists would appreciate the quiet triumph I felt when arriving at the Celtic at 6.25 one recent evening to find a vacant spot in this 1P zone. One simply had to feed in an outrageous $5.50 for the hour and, bingo, the car should have been sitting pretty for the night. The joy was slightly dented by the fact that I had only three $2 coins so I would be donating 50¢ to the council piggybank but nevertheless ...

I fed the meter then started to walk off but – wiser through past experience – decided to double-check those parking restrictions. Hang on, there was another sign underneath that I had not noticed. "P METER 7.30pm to 8.30pm Mon-Sat". What tomfoolery was this? The one-hour parking zone did indeed cease at 7.30 but then, it seems, the zone switched to unlimited P zone (effectively, also a metered hour) that kick-started it again to 8.30pm. There seemed no conceivable reason why the first sign just did not denote one-hour parking 7.30am to 8.30pm. Unless (surely not) it was a revenue-raiser to catch poor mugs who missed Sign No. 2. But more on that in a moment.