THE TRAFFIC WARDENS' ARMS Part 6 (of 7)

Prior to going to bed, Sharon was cleaning her window and saw Gulliver’s shambling form as he rounded the corner, clearly the worse for wear. She regarded his dishevelled appearance with disgust and a total absence of sympathy, despite his painful limp and bloodied face. A fighting drunk, no doubt she thought. One of those inebriate traffic wardens she assumed, closing her curtains with a disgusted sweep.

In the brain of a glue-sniffer on the estate, a Norwegian escapee from a Knut Hamsun novel attempted to board a nonexistent train stuck in the closed wig tunnel. It was imperative for this refugee from Scandinavian literature to reach the town centre for a giraffe-neck-width-guessing competition. Bursting blood vessels drowned misfiring synapses in the solvent abuser’s brain. His death would be reported in the local paper along with other facts the public had a right to know and wrap their chips with.

Kids on the Kafka estate made a nuisance of themselves by jamming parking meters with chewing gum. The Kafka estate’s Neighbourhood Watch committee held a meeting in the community centre to discuss a possible course of action. The packed meeting was attended by significant numbers of traffic wardens who, perhaps justifiably, felt personally aggrieved by the troublesome juveniles. The meeting was so full, in fact, that only the width of a skinny giraffe’s neck separated the people discussing the problem. Minutes were taken by the Neighbourhood Watch secretary, Beryl Imposé, as various motions were proposed and seconded. An application to the Ku-Klux-Klan was suggested and action was planned, but none was taken. Many residents blamed the recent closure of the wig tunnel for the crime wave currently afflicting them. The closed tunnel seemed the focus for would-be troublemakers, who gathered in sinister mobs that cast eerie shadows at night. Some people suggested the formation of a vigilante patrol to combat these wayward miscreants, but others murmured dissent as the laborious meeting staggered, inconclusively, to a close. Further meetings were arranged to discuss the possibility of future meetings aimed at addressing the issue. People left the meeting in disorganised groups nervously attaching themselves to parties of uniformed traffic wardens, whose vocal support for extreme right-wing policies on crime and punishment lent credibility to their slightly military bearing.
Things on the estate weren’t all bad, however, as ‘car-washing Sundays’ successfully proved, when the estate’s two Skodas got their weekly wash. The cars were owned by two wealthy shopkeepers, who’d each regularly won £10 on the lottery.
Gulliver felt too hung-over to go and watch, this Sunday, staying in cautiously nibbling jelly instead. However, Sharon saw the first rinse of the light grey Skoda in Kerb Street that was owned by Mr. Jones B. He whistled along to pop music on the radio as he proudly washed and polished his car, feeling dominant and masculine, swishing a hose in front of more than a hundred spectators. Some of the crowd were cheering, the teenage sisters from the next street made him flush with their wolf-whistles and the suggestive remarks they made when he bent over the bonnet, revealing the curvature of his arse to his neighbours on the grass.
‘Jonesy, Jonesy!’ the crowd began to chant, confusing him as he dried his car.
Don’t they know who I am? He asked himself. I’m Jones B.
On the far side of the estate, his rival, Jones A was playing to the crowd who’d gathered to watch him wash in Faeces Street. He hadn’t a care in the world, but Jones B, wiping sweat from his face, realised that despite his car ownership he was just another Jones to the crowd. Ironically, he couldn’t keep up with them. He sighed bitterly as a bird flying overhead spoiled his work with a dropping placed with, it seemed, malicious precision.
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