Another Day in the Office

Wednesday in the office. Just eaten an awesome lunch of beef curry from the amazing lunch place across the street – situated at the start of Broadwick street and called Wheat, I tend to eat here 2 or 3 times a week which is of course far too many. The portions are always huge, and the curry usually hot and spicy. But the thing is... the thing is, it’s soo good. There’s nothing worse then splashing out £5 for a lunch that barely fills the hunger hole. I used to have that problem a far bit when working in Farringdon. But now I’m based in Soho, lunchtimes are a different kettle of fish – great buzz, endless maze of interesting streets, and some great food spots. On my way back I was feeling lucky, so decided to buy a scratch card to spring on Sam, the other half of the business I work for.

Sam's eyes lit up, and he rubbed his hands together at the site of the blue National Lottery “connect 4” scratch card, top price £4,444. Sam is something of a pro when it comes to making a bob or two from games of luck, and I had high hopes for his nimble fingers as they professionally glided across the correct areas on the scratch card, not breaking stride to read rules or instructions. But alas, all his training and preparation didn’t help in this case, as the card revealed no win this time.

We continued on with the afternoon, playing with our business forecast sheet, and kicking our web designers to get on with their jobs. Just another day in the office.

A Tricky Angle

It was Tuesday evening. I had arranged to meet Rachael, an old work colleague for drinks in Farringdon. I was already hungry and thinking about dinner, so I made a mental note to suggest we find a place to eat pretty sharpish after our first drink. We met at a pre-agreed spot, said hello, and started to stroll towards somewhere that had seats, drinks, and a cosy atmosphere. The pub we found almost had one and a half of those three requirements, but not wanting to be fussy we battled through and I bought a round of coca colas – this was a Tuesday night after all, and I was still slightly struggling after a heavy weekend on the booze.

Rachael is a mathematics graduate from Cambridge. This obviously means she is sharp, and constantly makes me feel a bit thick when talking numbers. A perfect scratcher I thought to myself. Perhaps she could use her brain to configure three matching numerical amounts under the film of plastic that hides the potential fortune of a scratch card player. Perhaps not.

I like to provide a penny along with the card of dreams. I passed the card and the penny to her, she took the goods off of me and began the process of removing the concealing material on the front of the card with the small bronzed coin. Without a horizontal surface to lean on, she chose the nearby wall of the pub we were standing outside of, which I considered to be quite a tricky angle. But tricky angles aside, she scratched away and we both looked on with interest to see if she was a winner of cash.

This time it was not to be. We threw the loosing scratch card into our used coke class, and headed off to a near by Italian for Olives and Pizza.

The First Scratch

The first scratching took place on a Saturday in Camden Town, on the roof terrace of a cocktail bar. I was playing chess with the lovely Camille, a hairdresser working in Mayfair and originally from France. Camille has a soft French accent, and is partial to a few afternoon drinks along with a few rollies (Golden Virginia tobacco, silver papers and menthol filters). We were drinking mojitos, it was 4pm and the sun was just breaking out of the slightly overcast English sky. The conditions were perfect.
 

In my wallet I had it stored – the bright yellow £1 National Lottery scratch card with a top prize of £100,000. I had purchased said scratch card a few days previously from a newsagent in Soho, and was waiting for my first victim/potential winner. About half way through our third drink I posed the suggestion – “Camille, have you ever played a scratch card before?”. She innocently looked up from her chess move (my bishop was eyeing up her Queen), and looked vaguely interested but also slightly confused. I simply took out my wallet and threw the yellow card of potential fortune down in front of her.

“How do I play?” she asked. Immediately it indicated her naivety to scratch cards in general, and I was pleased that my first scratcher was also a first scratcher herself. I explained the rules (just match 3 amounts to win that amount), she laughed and took a coin from her wallet. “Ok, sounds easy!”.

She was a ‘take it all off in one go’ type girl and after about 6 seconds the grey latex covering had been completely removed by her 1p coin. Staring back at us where nine numbers. This one was a close one, a teaser – there were two fifties, and two one hundred thousands. But alas, there was not three matching numbers and as such, Camille was not a winner.

We continued on with our chess (she beat me three times in a row) and continued on with the cocktails. It was a great afternoon, but no winnings to be had this time.