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.