Over the next few weeks on the blog, I’m delving into the seven short stories and novellas contained within my recently released Love and Other Punishments dystopian sci-fi anthology.
This week: The Traffic Warden
Do you know anyone who is a traffic warden? Or anyone who will admit to being one? Some years ago, I had a highly amusing speculative conversation at my former workplace, with colleagues who proposed wildly imaginative theories about whether traffic wardens were genetically engineered, or androids, or even aliens, since no one knew or knew of anyone who knew a traffic warden. Are those in this much-loathed profession cloaked in a veil of secrecy? Could someone you know secretly be a traffic warden?
When I contributed to this debate with my own darkly absurd theory on the origins of traffic wardens, it was suggested to me that I turn this into a short story. I did, never intending it for publication. It was meant as mere blackly comic whimsy and a joke for my colleagues (who all read the story). However, it did take some inspiration from genuine traffic warden behaviour I’d witnessed.
For example, I have seen traffic wardens lurking in wait for persecuted parents trying to drop their children at school having parked in a perfectly safe fashion (but on double yellow lines) and running to slap tickets on their cars for the few seconds whilst they are escorting the children inside. These parents really did have nowhere else to park, and once the council added the double yellow lines (I suspect not for safety reasons, but to raise cash), these parents were rather stuffed. Many of them were forced to add parking fines into their monthly budgeting (as was reported in a news broadcast at the time).
On another occasion, I’ll never forget the diabolical behaviour I witnessed from traffic wardens outside Kings Cross station in London, as they circled parked cars like vultures, awaiting the seconds to tick down to 7am when parking restrictions came into force. I daresay they are paid on commission, which encourages this lunacy. One particularly overzealous warden placed a ticket on a parked car at 6:57am, just as the owner came to collect it. A furious argument ensued, in which all manner of officious nonsense about not being able to withdraw the ticket once it had been issued was spouted, that the time on the ticket read 7:01am, and that if the car owner wanted to lodge a protest and argue the toss, he’d have to go through official channels. I was so incensed at this traffic warden’s bureaucratic cruelty that I offered to be a witness if required, as I had seen the car owner return to his vehicle before 7am, as I had done.
I’d even heard on the news (though not personally witnessed) how another driver had purchased a permit to park in a restricted space, clearly displayed it in his windscreen, only for a traffic warden to ticket him anyway, as overnight frost had covered the car windows. In such circumstances, traffic wardens damn well ought to give the benefit of the doubt, but of course, that would require a scenario in which they aren’t operating due to hypnotic conditioning and brainwashing, as per my short story.
The Traffic Warden is very short and intended as little more than a palate cleanser between Bleed with Me and the next novella in the volume, Sweet Dreams. Because it is so slight and whimsical, I almost didn’t include it. But on reflection, I decided it was needed to provide a brief chuckle after the melancholia of Bleed with Me, and before the dark mystery at the heart of Sweet Dreams.
To order a copy of the Love and Other Punishments anthology, click here (for Amazon in the US), or here (for Amazon in the UK). Digital versions are also available from Smashwords (and their various outlets) here.
Simon Dillon Books 
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