Tell Tale: Stories

The Car Park Attendant

It would never have happened if his uncle Bert hadn’t taken him to the zoo.

Joe Simpson wanted to play football for Manchester United, and when he was selected to captain Barnsford Secondary Modern, he was confident it could only be a matter of time before United’s chief scout would be standing on the touchline demanding to know his name. But by the time Joe walked onto the pitch for the last match of the season, not even the Barnsford Rovers coach had bothered to come and watch him, so with only one GCE (maths), he was at a bit of a loss to know what he was going to do for the rest of his life.

“You could always join Dad as a council car park attendant,” suggested his mum. “At least the pay’s steady.”

“You must be joking,” said Joe.

It only took a month and seven job interviews for Joe to discover it was the council car park, or stacking shelves at the local supermarket. Joe was just about to sign on the dole and join what his dad called “the great unwashed” when he was offered a job at the Co-op.

Joe lasted ten days as a shelf stacker before he was shown the door, and he had to admit to his mum that perhaps it hadn’t helped when he put two hundred cans of Whiskas next to the prime cuts of beef.

“A vacancy’s come up at Lakeside Drive car park,” his father told him, “and if you want, lad, I could have a word with boss.”

“I’ll do it for a couple of weeks,” said Joe, “while I look for a real job.”

Joe wouldn’t admit to his father that he rather enjoyed being a car park attendant. He was out in the open air, meeting people and chatting to customers while working out how much to charge them once they’d told him how long they wanted to park; something his dad had never got the hang of, but then he hadn’t got an GCE in maths.

Joe quickly got to know several of the regulars, and the cars they drove. His favorite was Mr. Mason, who turned up in a different vehicle every day, which puzzled Joe, until his dad told him he was a second-hand car dealer, and he probably liked to know what he was selling.

“Your dad’s right,” Mr. Mason told him. “But it’s even more important to know what you’re buying. Why don’t you come over to the showroom sometime, and I’ll show you what I mean?”

The next time Joe had a day off, he decided to take up Mr. Mason’s offer and visit the car showroom. It was love at first sight when he saw the Jaguar XK120 in racing green, and second sight when he saw the boss’s bookkeeper in dashing red, but neither was available for a council car park attendant. Not least because Molly Stokes had seven GCEs and had also taken a bookkeeping course at Barnsford Polytechnic.

From that day on, Joe found any excuse to visit Mr. Mason, not to see the latest models, but to talk to the first girl he didn’t think was soppy. Molly finally gave in and agreed to go to the cinema with him to see John Wayne in The Quiet Man, not Molly’s first choice. The following week they went to see Spencer Tracy in Pat and Mike, her choice, and Joe accepted that was how it was going to be for the rest of their lives.

A year later, Joe proposed to Molly on bended knee, and even bought an engagement ring from H. Samuel, which he’d spent two weeks’ salary on. But she turned him down. Not because she didn’t want to marry Joe, but she wouldn’t consider marriage until they could afford a place of their own.

“But if we get married,” said Joe, “we can put our name down for a council house, and not have to go on living with my parents.” Molly didn’t want to live in a council house.

And then the worst thing that could happen, happened. Joe got the sack.

“It ain’t that you’re no good at the job, lad,” said the supervisor, “but bosses at council want cutbacks, so it’s last in, first out, and as you’ve only been with us for a couple of years, I’ll have to let you go. Sorry about that.”

Just when Joe thought it couldn’t get any worse, Molly announced she was pregnant.

They were married a month later, his dad having told him in no uncertain terms, “There’s never been a bastard in our family, and we won’t be startin’ now.”

Once the banns had been read, the wedding was held three weeks later at St. Mary the Immaculate parish church, with a reception afterward at the King’s Arms across the road. No expense spared. The girls drank Babycham, while the lads downed pints of Barnsford bitter and cleared the pub out of crisps and pork pies. Everyone had a good time. But when the newly married couple woke up in Mr. Simpson’s spare room the following morning, Joe was still on the dole, and Molly was still pregnant, and they didn’t have enough money for a honeymoon, even a weekend in Blackpool.

That was when their uncle Bert, without intending to, changed their whole lives.

Uncle Bert worked at Barnsford Zoo, where he cleaned out Big Boris’s cage, the lion folks came to see from all over the county. It was at his wedding bash over a pint of bitter that Bert told Joe a job might be coming up at the zoo, and if he popped in on Monday, he’d introduce him to the manager, Mr. Turner.

On Monday morning, Joe put on a clean shirt and a pair of neatly pressed trousers, and borrowed one of his father’s two ties. He was on the top deck of a double-decker bus on his way to the zoo, when he first spotted the piece of land in the distance. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. When he got off the bus, he didn’t head straight for the nearest turnstile, but walked in the opposite direction.

Joe stood and stared at a large plot of waste land that must have had a hundred vehicles parked on it. He spent the day watching as cars, vans, even coaches came and went, filling any space that was available with no rhyme or reason, some of the drivers not even visiting the zoo. An idea was beginning to form in his mind, and by the end of the day, Joe’s only thought was, could he get away with it?

“So did Mr. Turner offer you the job?” asked Molly when Joe arrived back just in time for tea.

“I never saw Mr. Turner,” Joe admitted. “Something came up.”

“What came up?” demanded Molly.

Joe buttoned his lip when his dad strolled in, and it wasn’t until they climbed into bed later that night that he told Molly how he’d spent his day, and then shared his big idea with her.

“You’re daft as a pumpkin, Joe Simpson. That’s council land, and you’d be done for trespassing, and what’s more I’ll prove it, then you won’t have to waste any more time and can go and get that job at the zoo before someone else grabs it.”

Molly spent the following morning at Barnsford Town Hall, where she visited the estates department, and got chatting to a young man who, after checking several ordnance survey maps, couldn’t be sure who did own the land, the council or the zoo. Molly still wasn’t convinced. But at least she now considered it a risk worth taking.

Joe took the bus to the zoo every day for the next week, where he made notes of how many people parked on the land, and roughly how long they spent visiting the zoo. He waited until they closed for the night and the last car had departed, before he paced out the boundaries. He wrote in his little book: 226 paces by 172.

The following day, he returned to his old stomping ground on Lakeside Drive, explaining that he needed a word with his old man. But once he got there, he measured a council parking space, this time not in paces, but in feet with an old school ruler: 18 ft. by 9 ft. for cars and vans, 40 ft. by 11 ft. for coaches. His dad couldn’t make head nor tail of what the lad was up to.

Joe spent the weekend trying to calculate how many cars could be parked on the zoo site. After he double-checked his figures, he decided there was enough room for 114 cars and 5 coaches. When Molly returned from work that night, he showed her his planned layout for the car park. She was impressed, but remained skeptical.

“You’ll never get away with it!” she said.

“Maybe not, but as no one else is offering me a job, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. “So what are you going to do next?”

“I’m going to learn how to paint a parking space in the dark.”

“Then you’ll need a torch, and a pot of white emulsion,” said Molly, “not to mention a brush, a bucket of water, and a broom to clear the space, as well as some string and nails to mark out a straight line even before you can start thinking about painting anything. And by the way, Joe, while you’re at it, I’d recommend you start by trying to paint four straight lines in the light.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in my plan?” said Joe.

“I don’t, but if you’re going to give it a go, at least do the job properly.”

Joe visited every paint merchant in the town, while Molly went off to work at Mason’s. After a day of comparing prices, Joe came to the conclusion he could only afford to buy six tins of white paint if he was still going to have enough money left over to get all the other bits and pieces Molly had insisted on.

“I can get the string, nails, a hammer, and a large broom from Mason’s,” said Molly when she arrived home after work that evening. “So you can cross them off your list.”

“But what about the bucket?”

“Well, borrow Mr. Mason’s fire bucket, and then you can fill it up in the public toilet outside the zoo.” Joe nodded. “Next thing you’ll have to do is a dry run,” said Molly.

“A dry run?”

“Yes, you’ll need to find a derelict council site and practice painting one space, until you’ve got the hang of it.”

When Molly went to work the next day, Joe headed off to an old bomb site on the outskirts of town, and painted his first car parking space. Not as easy as he had thought it would be. However, by the end of the week, he could complete one in forty minutes that wasn’t half bad. The only problem was that he ran out of paint, and although he had nearly perfected his technique, Molly had to sacrifice a week’s wages so he could replenish his stocks. By early December, he was ready to move onto the site.

“Our next problem,” said Molly, “is finding a time when you can paint the parking spots while no one else is around to see what you’re up to.”

“I’ve already worked that one out,” said Joe. “This year Christmas Day falls on a Friday, so no one will be visiting the site on the Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and even bank holiday Monday, when the zoo will still be closed. So I could probably paint a hundred spaces in that time.”

“I think a dozen would be quite enough to start with,” said Molly. “Let’s make sure your big idea works before we spend any more money than necessary. Don’t forget that Mr. Mason started his business with six cars, and now he’s got a showroom with over a hundred in the forecourt, as well as a Jaguar dealership.”

Joe reluctantly agreed, and began to prepare himself for the big day.

Joe couldn’t get to sleep on Christmas Eve, and was up the following morning even before Molly had woken. He put on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and his old school gym shoes. He crept downstairs and collected an ancient pram from the shed at the bottom of the garden, which Molly had filled the night before with everything he would need.

He pushed the pram all the way to the zoo, and spent the next few hours sweeping the ground and clearing it of leaves, dirt, and dust. Once he was satisfied that the site had been properly prepared, he measured out his first parking space with the help of a tape measure borrowed from his mum’s sewing basket. He then knocked nails into the four corners, to which he attached a length of string. He stood back and admired the canvas on which the artist was about to work.

It was just after ten by the time Joe had completed his first parking space, and he was exhausted. He hid the pram in a clump of trees, and somehow still found enough energy to run all the way home. He arrived back even before his father had got up, and only his mother asked how he got white paint on his jeans.

“My fault,” said Molly, without explanation.

After Christmas lunch, Joe waited for everyone to settle in front of the television, or fall asleep, before he once again set off for the zoo. By the time the streetlights came on at four o’clock, he’d completed two more spaces. On Boxing Day, another four, and by five o’clock on December 27 all twelve spaces were finished and ready for occupation. He hoped they’d all be dry by the time he returned the following morning.

Barnsford Zoo opened its doors to the public at ten o’clock on Tuesday morning, but business was slow. Joe stood on the corner of the site and watched at a distance. Whenever a car appeared, it immediately drove into one of his neatly painted spaces, now dry, which at least gave him a degree of confidence. He carried out the same routine for the next three days, and discovered the pattern didn’t vary. But then, the British are a nation who believe in queues, and behaving in an orderly fashion.

On December 31 and January 1 and 2, Joe went back to work, and he and Molly celebrated the New Year having painted twenty parking spaces.

“Quite enough,” declared Molly, “because you’ve still got to find out if the public will wear it.”

Joe rose at six o’clock the next morning, put on his old council parking attendant’s uniform, and collected one of his father’s discarded ticket collecting machines from the shed.

He took a bus to the site, and was standing on the parking lot long before the zoo opened for business. He patrolled his twenty spaces like a lion protecting its cubs, and when his first potential customer appeared, he walked tentatively over to a man who had parked in one of the spaces.

“Good morning, sir,” said Joe. “That will be two shillings.” If the man had told him to bugger off, he would have done just that, but he meekly handed over a florin.

“Thank you, sir,” said Joe, issuing him with a ticket before touching his peaked cap. His first customer.

By the end of the day, he’d had fourteen customers, and collected one pound and eight shillings, more than he earned in a week working for the council. By the end of the first week, he’d pocketed £31, and took Molly out for a drink at the pub, where they shared a Scotch egg.

Joe wanted to splash out and go to the Swan, where you could get a three-course meal and a half bottle of wine for £3, but Molly wouldn’t hear of it, saying, “It will only make folks suspicious, and give the game away.” She even introduced him to the words “cash flow.”

On the Monday, when the zoo was closed, Joe could have taken a day off, but instead, he labored away, painting another six spaces, and as each day passed, the rectangles increased along with his income, causing him to grow more and more confident. However, it was on the Tuesday of the third week that he saw Mr. Turner, the zoo manager, heading toward him and assumed the game was up.

“Morning, Mr....?”

“Joe,” he said.

“Could we have a private word, Joe?”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Turner.”

“When I’ve parked here in the past,” said the zoo manager, “I’ve never had to pay.”

“And you won’t have to in the future, Mr. Turner,” said Joe.

“But now the council’s taken over the site, surely I’ll be expected—”

“You won’t be expected to pay a penny, Mr. Turner. In fact I’m going to allocate you your own private space, that no one else will be able to park in.”

“Won’t the council kick up a fuss?”

“I won’t say anything if you don’t,” said Joe, touching his nose.

“That’s good of you, Joe,” said Turner. “Let me know if I can ever do anything for you.”

Joe selected the space directly opposite the entrance to the zoo and spent the rest of the day carefully painting the words ZOO MANAGER ONLY.

When Molly left her job at Mason’s to have the baby, Joe suggested she handle the cash and keep the books.

Molly also opened a bank account with Barclays, and paid in just over £20 a week, the average wage for a council parking attendant, and placed the rest of the cash under a floorboard in their bedroom.

Although Molly kept the books in apple pie order, even she had to take some time off when Joe Junior was born. His birth only gave the proud father the incentive to paint even more spaces, and within a year, all 120 slots were in place, with a special area reserved for coaches.

When the time came for Molly to return to work, she didn’t go back to Mason’s, but joined Joe officially as his bookkeeper and secretary. She paid herself £25 a week. However, it didn’t help the cash flow problem, as they had to take up more and more floorboards, but she was already working on how to deal with that particular problem.

It was Molly who suggested that the time had come for them to take a trip to Macclesfield.

“Macclesfield wouldn’t be my first choice for a holiday,” said Joe.

“We’re not going on holiday,” said Molly, “just a day trip. If you look at your father’s latest ticket machine, you’ll see who the manufacturer is, and I think it’s time we paid them a visit.”

As the zoo was always closed on a Monday, Molly borrowed a van from Mr. Mason and the three of them set off for Macclesfield. The showroom turned out to be a treasure trove of uniforms, machines, and all the other accessories any self-respecting car park attendant needed to do his job. Joe ended up acquiring two outfits (summer and winter) with ZOO printed on the shoulder, the latest collecting machine, a peaked cap, and a small enamel badge that announced SUPERVISOR, which he couldn’t resist, although Molly wasn’t at all sure about it. Her only acquisitions were a large bookkeeper’s ledger and a filing cabinet.

It was on the way back to Barnsford that Molly dropped two bombshells. “I’m pregnant again,” she said, “but at least the council have finally offered us a house.”

“But I thought you didn’t want to live in a council house, and in any case we’ve got enough cash to put down a deposit on a bungalow on the Woolwich estate,” said Joe.

“Can’t risk it,” said Molly. “If we did that, folks might start gossiping and wonder how you earned that sort of money as a car park attendant, and don’t forget, most people think I’m still out of work.”

“But what’s the point of making all this money, if we can’t enjoy it?” demanded Joe.

“Don’t worry yourself. I have plans for that too.”

Six months later, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, Joe Jr., and Janet moved into their council house on the Keir Hardie estate. While folks might have thought their new neighbors were living in a council house, if they’d ever been invited inside they would have discovered the Simpsons weren’t doing their shopping at the Co-op, but then they never were invited inside.

And as well as tufted carpets, a space-age kitchen, a large-screen TV, and a three-piece suite that wasn’t bought on the never-never, they still had a cash flow problem. But Joe felt confident Molly would come up with a solution.

“We won’t be going to Blackpool for our summer holiday this year,” she announced over breakfast one morning.

“Then where are we going, Mum?” demanded Joe Jr.

“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” said Molly. “We’re going to Majorca.”

Joe wanted to ask “Where’s that?” but was rescued by Janet, who asked the same question.

“It’s an island in the Mediterranean, which not many people from Barnsford will have heard of, and are even more unlikely to visit,” which seemed to silence all three of them.

Joe and Molly always took their holiday in the zoo’s quietest fortnight of the year, and as the day approached, the children became more and more excited, because it would be their first trip on a plane. Joe’s and Molly’s too, come to that, but they didn’t mention it.

To do Joe justice, it was his idea to employ a bright university student, preferably an immigrant, to cover for him whenever he was away on holiday. He always paid the lad in cash, and although he didn’t make much of a profit during that fortnight, the regulars were kept happy, and there were never any questions about why the car park wasn’t manned.

“And if anyone asks where I am,” said Joe, “just tell them I’m on holiday with the family in Blackpool.”

Once the family arrived in Majorca, Molly didn’t waste any time. While Joe took the children to the beach, she visited every estate agent in Palma. When they got back on the plane a fortnight later, Joe had put on half a stone, the children were nut brown, and Molly had put down a deposit on a front-line plot in Puerto de Pollença, overlooking the sea.

The estate agent made no comment when she signed the contract and handed over the £5,000 deposit in cash. By the time they’d visited Majorca six times, the land belonged to them.

Molly then set about looking for a local architect. She chose a German, much to Joe’s disapproval, who also didn’t raise an eyebrow when his quarterly payments were made in cash.

A year later, a JCB rolled onto the site, and the builder licked his lips when rolls of twenty-pound notes changed hands on a regular basis, even if the project manager found Molly a bit of a handful.

So while Joe and Molly continued to live a frugal existence in Barnsford, with Joe’s only extravagance a season ticket for Barnsford Rovers, who still languished in the bottom half of the third division, Molly did allow herself the occasional visit to The Smoke to see the latest musical and have an Indian curry at Veeraswamy. But they always traveled back to Barnsford second class in case anyone spotted them. However, during the summer holidays, the family could always be found residing in their luxury villa overlooking the sea in the Bay of Pollença.

When Joe’s father retired at the age of sixty, Joe sent his mum and dad for a cruise on the QE2, explaining that they’d had a little win on the Premium Bonds. And two years later, when the zoo had an appeal for a new elephant house, the manager (Joe’s fifth) was delighted when they received an anonymous donation of £10,000, but was just a little surprised that it arrived in a large brown paper bag.

Joe was particularly proud when Joe Jr. was offered a place at Leeds University to study law, another first for the Simpson family, but Janet trumped her brother two years later when she won a scholarship to read English at Durham.

“What are we going to do when the time comes for us to retire?” asked Joe, aware that Molly would have already given the problem some considerable thought.

“We’ll go and live in Majorca and, to quote the good Lord, enjoy the fruits of our labor.”

“But what about my car park?”

“You can leave someone else to worry about that.”

Being a conventional sort of chap, Joe also retired on his sixtieth birthday, and after handing back the keys of their council house, he and Molly packed up everything they needed (very little), and headed for the airport with two one-way tickets.

It wasn’t long before Joe became a vice president of Real Mallorca, who were at least in the top half of the second division, and deputy chairman of the local Rotary Club, while Molly became honorary treasurer of the residents’ association.

Joe Jr. was now a practicing barrister on the northern circuit, while Janet taught English at Roundhay grammar school. They both paid regular visits to their parents in Majorca, accompanied by Charlie, Rachel, and Joe very Jr., who Joe and Molly adored.

“Have you seen what they’ve done with my car park?” said Joe one evening, after reading his weekly copy of the Yorkshire Post. “Daft pillocks,” he said as he continued to read the article.

On January 2, the new manager of the zoo, a Mr. Braithwaite, called the estates department at Barnsford City Council, to ask when Joe Simpson’s replacement would be reporting for work.

“Who’s Joe Simpson?” the estates manager asked.

“He’s the man who ran the car park opposite the zoo. Has done for the past forty years. We even gave him a farewell party.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the estates manager, “I always assumed you owned the land.”

“But we thought you did!” said Braithwaite.

“Daft pillocks,” repeated Joe as he put down his paper and joined Molly in the kitchen. “If manager ’ad bin half awake, he’d ’ave kept his mouth shut, and only the zoo would have benefited,” he told his wife, “which is what I’d always wanted. But no, he had to consult council chairman, Alderman Appleyard, who thought they should take legal advice, which has ended up with a lengthy court battle between Barnsford City Council and the zoo. Result? Both sides lost out, while weeds are sprouting up all over my car park.”

Three years later a judge finally ruled that the council should take charge of the car park, but any profits were to be divided equally between the two. A typical British compromise, where only the lawyers benefit, was Joe’s opinion when he read the latest news coming out of Yorkshire.

“I’m only surprised,” said Molly, “that they’ve not come after us.”

“No chance,” said Joe. “I reckon that’d make council look like a bunch of wallies. No, least said, soonest mended. And you can be sure of one thing, no one will stand up and take responsibility. Don’t forget, that lot will be coming up for reelection in May, so mum’s the word.”

When I last had dinner with Joe and Molly in Pollença, I couldn’t resist asking him how much he thought he’d made over the years, as a car park attendant.

“Supervisor,” he corrected me, not answering my question.

“Three million, four hundred and twenty-two thousand, three hundred and nineteen pounds,” replied Molly.

“That sounds ’bout right,” said Joe, “but next time you’re in Barnsford, Jeff lad, take a look at the zoo’s new aquarium. Summat the missus and I are right chuffed about!”

Joe and Molly Simpson are buried next to each other in the churchyard of St. Mary the Immaculate in Barnsford. Something else Molly insisted on.