legends · 4 min read ·
Parking Charge Notice
A private parking officer is issued a penalty for failing to attend his own car.
**PENALTY CHARGE NOTICE — Cross Street Car Park, Level 3.**
*Vehicle: silver hatchback. Contravention: parked outside a marked bay. Time observed: 22:14.*
*Issued by: Enforcement Officer 4471.*
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I'm not a bad person, whatever you've heard. I work for a private company, and I patrol car parks, and I put tickets on cars that are in the wrong. I have a hand-held machine with a camera, and a hi-vis, and a notebook, and a skin as thick as a boot. People shout. People threaten to kill me. I take it. It's a job, and the job is to make people park properly.
Cross Street is a multi-storey, six levels, concrete, with the smell of a cold engine. Open until midnight. I'd been working it for two years. I knew every pillar.
On a Thursday in November, doing the last sweep, I found a silver hatchback on Level 3, across two bays. The tyres were flat. The windscreen was thick with dust. A tax disc, expired in 2003. I walked round it. I typed the registration into the machine. The machine said: VEHICLE NOT FOUND.
I took the photographs. I put the ticket under the wiper. I noted the time. I went on.
Next evening the hatchback was in the same place. The ticket was gone. In its place, tucked neatly under the wiper, there was a second ticket. A penalty notice, the same format as mine. It was printed, on the company's stock, with the company's logo. It was addressed to me.
*PENALTY CHARGE NOTICE. Officer 4471. Contravention: Failure to attend. Time observed: 22:14.*
I looked at the clock. 22:14.
"Very funny," I said to the empty level, and I took the ticket off the car, folded it, and put it in the bin.
On Saturday, I found another. Under my own windscreen wiper, in the staff bay on Level 1. *Contravention: Failure to attend. Time observed: 22:14.* And on Sunday, on the door of my flat. And on Monday in the post, with a stamp. I rang my manager. He said he'd had no such thing printed. I said they were on company paper. He said, "Mate, you're tired."
I was. I'd been sleeping badly. I began to dream of the car. In the dream I walked round it, in the dust, and looked into the windows. In the front passenger seat was a coat. A man's coat, neatly folded. On the dashboard, a parking permit, expired, with a name and a number. The number was mine.
The Wednesday after, I took a torch to the hatchback and looked in at the permit. It was exactly as in the dream. A white card with a red stripe. *Permit holder: Officer 4471.* It had a photograph in the corner, a young man, thin, dark-haired.
It was a picture of me at twenty-two.
I stood in the concrete half-light with the torch and I tried the door. It was unlocked. It opened with the faint clunk of a door that has been waiting. Inside the car the air was cold, and still, and smelled of me. The seat was set for my height. On the passenger seat was the folded coat, and I knew it was mine, the green one that I had lost in 2008.
I understand now what the notices were for. Failure to attend. Time observed: 22:14. Each one was an appointment. For each night of two years, I had been walking past this car, issuing tickets, doing my rounds, and every night, at 22:14, I had been late. The car wasn't parked wrongly. It was parked correctly. It had been parked for me.
I have the final notice here. It came this morning.
*FINAL NOTICE. The vehicle is to be removed from the premises. Failure to comply will result in the vehicle being clamped.*
I went up to Level 3 at ten o'clock. The hatchback was waiting. This time there was a yellow clamp on the front wheel, a heavy yellow thing, and on the windscreen, a ticket in my own handwriting. It said: *Driver to be present.*
I am writing this in the car, in the driver's seat. It is 22:11. I have my coat on. I have the engine off. The clamp is still on the wheel. I'm told it can only be released by the officer who put it on.