The office of Procedure and Parking Administration (PAPA) is, as everybody knows, the most important division in local government. No municipal business of any kind can possibly be done at any time without PAPA's written consent, and all its decisions must be discussed, minuted at a quorum legally competent to regulate such matters, referred upwards for a committee benediction, transmitted downwards for execution, slipped past the Mayor, run up the figurative flagpole, assigned a priority number, lost, found again within the eight-week target period, checked for compliance with Health and Safety, reconciled with existing policy, filed at departmental level, filed again in the Central Registry, copied to the Press Office and finally entered into the computer in such as manner as not to conflict with the Data Protection Act.

PAPA has its fingers in the largest pie and the smallest municipal tartlet. If the Town Hall caught fire, nobody would dare to leave the building until PAPA had designated the exits. Presiding like a stern pontiff over legions of staff, PAPA has engraved in granite over every office door the words: 'Do it by the Book' and underneath, in smaller script, the words 'PAPA is watching you'. Woe betide any public servant hoping for some kind of reward for exceptional merit, as such an expectation contains within it the dangerous notion that people might also be punished for demerit. Doing no more and no less than the specified procedure is safest all round. Anybody cutting corners soon finds PAPA's élite commando of parking wardens, trained in Tae-Kwondo and selected for their lack of ordinary human emotion, having a quiet but italic word in the old shell-like.

The exact location of PAPA is secret. However, despite burly receptionists sending people off on fruitless rambles to distant annexes, some unusually determined citizens get through. Armed with ungrammatical letters and ill completed forms (invariably the wrong ones), they wander the building, drifting for hours down long corridors, stopping clerks at random with bewildered questions, bleating about grievances, and generally throwing grit into the smooth meshing of departmental gears.

Many of the council's own employees whisper of PAPA in tones of awe, for it is the ultimate arbiter of the one and only way things - if they simply cannot be postponed - should be done. Only the privileged work there, and they are members of families who have proved their discretion over three generations of working for the Borough - even in the outpost of Church Street where the workers are so desperate that they have been known to talk to themselves in order to have a decent conversation.

Rufus Clamp is one of the few. Council work is in his blood, for was not his great- great grandfather none other than the legendary Mr Tite Barnacle whose identity was so shamelessly appropriated by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit?

Dickens is, in Mr Clamp's estimation, an overrated writer, who at his best created some droll caricatures and at his most nauseous invented women so icky and sweet that Mr Clamp likens the experience to biting upon a toffee with teeth in need of fillings. Bravely he had once expressed this view in a memo to the chair of the Literature Committee; the resulting battle lines ebbed and flowed for ten years and only ended when his enemy unexpectedly died in the company of a trainee librarian in the F section of the archives.

For Rufus, procedure is not merely a matter of efficiency, though to describe such an aspiration as 'mere' would be alien to every fibre in his being. No, for him the rules are the last rampart of the castle of civilization, the Inner Keep standing against the hordes.
In a world of crumbling values and growing uncertainty, the only compass is the Book. It is the organising principle of the universe itself.

Thus it is that Mr Clamp finds himself in his office with two chairs, a steel desk, four pencils (HB, council issue, freshly sharpened, parallel to left edge of blotter), on the walls posters of the Mayor and Enver Hoxha, five square metres of beige carpet - and, to his dismay, a member of the public.

'Mr Cratchit', says Clamp, 'you have done well to get this far. Is your complaint concerning ullage or boscage, or something of the sort?' 'Indeed not', says Cratchit. 'As I have explained five times to your colleagues, I wish to transfer my parking permit to a new car, as my old one finally died of MOT infarction.'

'Hmm. Do you possess the old permit?'

'I do.'

'And have you filled in form X/193/2005/a2 - in black ink - and are you in possession of the ten pound transfer fee, proof of identity, proof of address, a valid council tax receipt, proof of ownership of the vehicle in question and a DNA sample of your grandmother?'

'All of the above. Even my passport. I have lived at the same address for twenty years. 

But your colleagues will not accept the receipt from the garage as proof that the car is mine.'

'They are right. Only the log book will suffice.'

'But I have sent that to DVLA to record the change of ownership. I have now used up my temporary permits. Yesterday I got two parking tickets that I cannot afford to pay. Surely you do not imagine I would apply for a permit for a stolen car?'

'Mr Cratchit, it is not my job to imagine. There is a procedure.'

'But can you not make an exception in this case?' 

'Mr Cratchit, I am appalled! What would happen if everybody argued thus? The abyss would open beneath our feet.'

'But my son, vertically challenged Tim, is so upset that he sits in the window crying in fear
that my parking tickets will be sold to a firm of frightening bailiffs.'

'Ahha, may I take it that vertically challenged Tim is in receipt of Incapacity Benefit?'

'Yes indeed.'

'And are you his registered driver?'

'I am. Mr Clamp, my spirits are rising.' 

'Well they might. Fill in waiver form X/765/IB/2005/b3 and you need not renew your permit at all.'

'Mr Clamp, you are a gentleman. I shall never be unkind about local government again.'

 'However, you will need proof of ownership - and we can only accept a log book. Oh dear. Please do not weep, Mr Cratchit..'

Nick Webb's Dictionary of Bullshit has just been published (see page 25). He lives in Stoke Newington.

Next Page