I was only trying to help, but it seemed that the Library staff have their own peculiar system for putting the books in order. Why this doesn’t take into account aesthetic considerations I cannot understand. You don’t want everything all higgledy-piggledy. I got two shelves arranged with the books decreasing in size from right to left, just as I like it, before they insisted that I leave, or they’d call the police.
So there I was in the Market Place with several hours to kill before I could go home. It was just after eleven and I was due back at 5.27, because it was the 27th of May. No,no, I don’t have to wait until midnight to go home in December, it doesn’t work like that. After July it goes back an hour each month until January. So the latest I have to stay out is 7.31 at the end of July.
Well, I’d got to use the afternoon productively. I was considering offering my book arranging skills to one of the charity shops, when I happened to see a parking warden writing out a ticket for one of those huge 4×4 pickup trucks outside the Three Tuns. I was interested to see that, when she’d got the little square plastic envelope all ready to stick on the windscreen, she took out a 6-inch ruler and placed the bottom corner of the envelope at exactly the length of the ruler from the bottom and the side of the windscreen. She took care to line up the yellow and black notice with the edge and bottom of the screen. Now there’s someone who takes pride in their work, I thought, as she smoothed the wrinkles out of the plastic before stepping back to check that all was done properly.
Whether her satisfied smile arose more from her pleasure in her neat work, or from imposing a minimum £40 penalty on a thoughtless motorist, I couldn’t tell. But myself, I certainly enjoyed both equally and so I decided to accompany her around the town until a quarter past five.
I kept my distance, not wanting to interfere with the proper exercise of her duties, and was rewarded with the application of two more tickets before we got to the end of Station Approach. After that, there was a whole hour without any infractions which I suppose reflected well on peoples’ behaviour, but obviously was a bit boring. By then we had come to the public toilets beside the entrance to the park, and I was surprised to see her go round behind them and disappear into a big green container. I crept up to it and realised that it was the wardens’ office or mess-room. It appeared that she had gone in for lunch. So I sat on a park bench nearby and kept a look-out for her. I took off my haversack and got my own lunch out of the front pocket, a lovely big sausage roll and two cheese triangles. As usual I made the second triangle last as long as possible by making each bite just half of what was left, until it got too molecularly small and messy to carry on.
Luckily I’d just finished picking up all the crumbs from my sausage roll and rolling the silver paper into eight equally-sized balls when the warden re-emerged, and off we went again. It wasn’t long before more excitement came along, in Rectory Road. I was most impressed with the way she dealt with a delivery van driver who ran down a garden path to reason, plead and argue with her in turn before resorting to furious abuse. All the while she kept tapping away at her hand-held computer and I could tell that every swear word was being recorded there. I wondered if she had a prepared list to select them from, like those special tills they have in pubs, that have a key for each type of drink.
Luckily he didn’t go as far as physically assaulting her, but as soon as she’d finished placing the ticket on his windscreen, he tore it off, threw it to the ground and jumped up and down on it, barking like a dog. I wanted to laugh, but took my lead from the warden, who maintained a stony face as she took a photograph of the offender and then turned on her heel and walked on.
What a woman! I was forming a plan to ask her if she’d like to join me for a trip on the Sainsbury’s free bus one day. Their café does an excellent pot of tea and scone for £1.20 – each, of course, but I’d be prepared to treat her. I’d take along my notebook with a view to showing her some of my lists.
Along Marlborough Terrace, a car drew up on the double yellow lines and a tall fellow rushed into one of the little cottages. The warden peered into the car window and passed on by. In a few steps I reached the spot and could see, as she clearly had, a sign lying on the front passenger seat, saying ‘Doctor on call’. Then I looked up to see her coming back towards me. As I stepped aside to let her pass she got out her computer and started writing a ticket. She looked over her glasses at me. “If he’d put the sign in the windscreen, I might have overlooked it,” she said, “but left on the seat like that – he leaves me no choice.” She seemed to be challenging me to disagree. As if! Surely she was inviting me to get acquainted.
“Even if he had put it in the windscreen,” I said, “it would have had to be in the corner nearest the pavement and clearly visible to your good self from that vantage point. Am I right?”
“Absolutely correct. Have you done this job yourself?”
“No, but I take a great interest.”
She gave me a very encouraging nod.
She didn’t seem surprised that I stood there watching her work, or that I walked right behind her when she moved off. It was like we were friends already. Never mind tea at Sainsbury’s and my lists – I’d invite her back to my place to see my albums of Princess Anne photos and cuttings.
“Here’s another one,” she said. She was treating me as a colleague, a trainee. “Can you see? It’s in a parking space, OK, and it’s got a valid disk on view. So what’s wrong?” “Well…… can I borrow your ruler?” That was evidently a good answer. She raised her eyebrows delightfully, produced the ruler with a flourish and passed it ceremoniously to me.
“Yes, as I thought. Overlapping into the next space by over four inches – I should say, ten centimetres.”
“Excellent!” She began to wield her computer.
As she looked down at the number plate, so did I, and a shock went right through me.
“Hold on a minute!” I said. “This is something else!”
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“You see that number? That’s one of the most interesting numbers I’ve ever seen.”
“Interesting? How?”
“If you multiply it by itself reversed, and then multiply the answer by itself reversed, you get 987654321. See?”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said, and continued making out the penalty.
“You can’t give it a ticket. It’s not right. It’s too special.”
She hesitated, her fingers hovering over the keypad. “That’s not an acceptable excuse for illegal parking. For all I know, lots of cars have special numbers. Where would we be if we had to let them all off?”
“Not this special. This is very special. And none of the other numbers you’ve had today were at all remarkable. Since 11.03, anyway.”
Her sudden frown showed me that I’d said too much. “I thought there was something funny about you. You’ve been following me around, haven’t you?” She looked me up and down critically and the way her eyes lingered, I felt that she was disapproving of my Lycra leggings.
My vision faded of a pleasant evening leafing together through the photo albums, leading to sex, with Princess Anne creasing and crackling beneath our entwined bodies. Faded almost to extinction.
Then I watched her defiantly sticking the ticket on that poor car. After that, I wouldn’t have touched her with a bargepole anyway.
A pity, though. She definitely had qualities. If I could find out her name some time, I’d grudgingly add her to my list of Possible but Unlikelys.
It was 3.04 pm. Plenty of time to get down to Sainsbury’s car park and do a stint of monitoring what people were putting into the recycling bins. I’ve seen them before now, slipping clear glass jam-jars into the green bottle bank.