On Friday we had tickets to see The Full Monty at York Grand Opera House.

Unfortunately, we did not get to see the show that we were looking forward to, because of an insufficiency of parking places in that part of York. We weren’t helped either by a fireman who was part of an exercise around the Castle Car park who told us there were “plenty of places”. There weren’t. We had a strange sense of déjà vu driving around in circles around the car park in company with many others, realising the ice rink wasn’t helping our woes.

The St George’s Field car park was closed because of the flooding, so after some more fruitless searching we reluctantly decided to go home. I wonder how many other would-be patrons missed the show.

Please don’t suggest we should get the bus, because I well remember standing shivering opposite the Theatre Royal on more than one occasion after theatre-going waiting for a bus that didn’t arrive.

We have lived in Haxby for 26 years and have found the transport situation to be the biggest drawback to living in the vicinity of what is mainly a lovely city. Unfortunately, York is a medieval city trying too hard to be a modern one, when it has neither the infrastructure nor the space to provide it to become one.

Joan Strong, Thornhills, Haxby, York.