The Day Michael Out‑Drove Authority in a High‑Vis Jacket
Every neighbourhood has one: the small man with a small uniform and a large sense of destiny. They know who parks where, who visits whom, who puts their bins out late. They thrive on being the unofficial sheriff of a place that never asked for one. The “local intelligence officer” vibe.
In our case, he came equipped with a high‑vis jacket, a lollipop stick, and the unmistakable air of someone who believed he was the last line of defence between civilisation and chaos. He was the school crossing patrol man — a role that attracts, with uncanny precision, a certain universal human type or personality, the “small man with a big stick”. The sort who enjoys the tiny taste of power that comes from stopping traffic with a stick. The sort who watches everything, knows everything, and reports everything.
A frustrated policeman in a fluorescent tabard.
Many years ago, I worked as a driver in school transport, and I would bring my small van home each day and park it near my house.
Now, one morning, I had parked my school van directly in front of my garage. Not ideal, but sometimes there was no other space left on the street. When I came out to go back to work on the pm shift, I found the van completely boxed in — inches to spare at the front, inches at the back. A tight squeeze, but not impossible.
Naturally, the patrol man had noticed. Naturally, he came striding over, eager to preside over the situation.
He surveyed the scene with the solemnity of a magistrate and delivered his verdict, complete with a smirk:
“You’ll never get out of there.”
That was the moment. The gauntlet thrown. The challenge issued.
And something in me — perhaps the part inherited from my Father, who had a quiet way of dealing with overbearing people — thought:
Oh yes I will.
So I set to work. Slowly, carefully, inch by inch, I eased the van out of that impossible space. A little forward, a little back, a slight angle, a correction, another inch. It was a manoeuvre that required patience, calm, and the kind of spatial awareness you only develop after years of driving a school van through tight Devon lanes.
And then — like Houdini slipping out of chains — I was free.
I drove past him smiling. He didn’t know where to look.
A few days later, perhaps still smarting from the blow to his authority, he turned up at my door with a tin of black paint-the colour of municipal warning signs- and a placard. Without asking, he offered to paint my garage door — the very one I had blocked that morning.
I said yes, of course. Why not? Let him perform his little act of penance.
He painted the entire door black, then affixed a bold yellow sign that simply barked:
KEEP CLEAR
No “please”. No “thank you”. Just the command — the pure essence of his personality distilled into two words.
A friend later asked if I’d given him a bottle of wine for his trouble. I said no. For someone else, perhaps — but not for a man who needed reminding that authority is not the same as wisdom.
The sign is still there today, though the surrounding paint is starting to peel. Every time I see it, I remember that morning — the quiet triumph, the look on his face, and the small, satisfying victory of showing that modesty and skill can outshine bluster any day.
A tiny parable of human nature, played out on a suburban driveway.
