EMISSIONS/Kilian Doyle: Allow me to let you lovely people in on a little secret. Surprising though it may seem, I wasn't always an eminent columnist with an adoring readership of 17 people (parents and extended family). No, I had my wilderness years too.
I've done some truly chronic jobs in my time, from lowly lounge boy to building site labourer to working in the kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants. I've broken my back and battered my brain to earn my meagre crust.
Some I enjoyed, most I hated, while others left me primed to buy a semi-automatic machine gun, climb onto the roof of a tall building and spray vengeance on my tormentors.
The most mind-numbing of all was car park attendant in a bleak north London suburb. Sitting there in a damp, rickety hut with battered kettle, chipped mug, filthy fridge and 14-inch telly - which I'm still convinced my employers had programmed to automatically break down when something worth watching came on - it was hard to imagine a life less fulfilling. (I had a degree in philosophy, fer chrissakes! On second thoughts . . . )
It was genuinely shocking to experience the utter contempt in which customers held me, their dismissive attitudes, their barely-suppressed urge to thump me for telling them the park was full. "Nerve of that geezer!" they'd mutter, giving me the finger as they drove off to abuse someone else a mile down Barnet High Street. "Loser!"
I could see their point. It's as if they knew I was getting £3.17 per hour (£3.67 at weekends and after 9 p.m. - it wasn't all bad). If I could put up with that, they must have reasoned, I could put up with a bit of verbal abuse from my betters. It never seemed to dawn on them the risk they were taking in entrusting me with their vehicular pride and joys.
Me - bitter, twisted, invariably drunk or hungover and borderline psychotic at the best of times. Calling me Paddy all the time didn't help their cases either.
Little did they realise my job wasn't all randomly blocking spaces with traffic cones and sniggering when the machine swallowed their £50 notes. I risked life, limb and liberty in protecting their cars from the local teenage delinquents who had nothing better to do on Friday nights than torment me. I also had undergone first aid training for their safety, although it was needed only once, when some clown in an Escort ran over my foot. And I forget how many people I helped find their car when they couldn't work out where they'd left it. And I was the moron?
So, have a heart. Car parks are necessary evils. Hating attendants with their pettiness and "You can't park here, bud!" power-tripping, however understandable, will lead nowhere. Just ask yourself, why are they like this? Are you completely free of blame? Can we not all learn to live together, man?
Remember, in new concretised secular Ireland, the car is God and car parks are His cathedrals. You wouldn't abuse a Bishop, would you?