Seline's Little Flutter

My name’s Seline, that’s Seline Allbright, and I’ve decided I’m going to win the lottery. I mean I need a new coat to make up for the one the monkey did its business on and new coats are expensive because I’d like a nice one not one of those cheap things from Lidl. Is it Lidl I mean? Well one of those cheapy shops anyway. So if I won the lottery I’d have lots of money to buy a coat and maybe have enough left over to go on holiday to one of those erotic places like Greece or Cyprus or maybe even Brighton.

I told Senga about my grand plan. Senga, she’s my best friend and she said that I would have to buy a ticket. She was right of course. She’s always right. She reads books and knows things about stuff that people like you and me have never heard off like space stuff and recipes for playdough. So I always listen to her. Mind she’s not always right, she did once tell me our local councillor was a vegetarian and I know for a fact that he’s married with three kids but I didn’t like to contravene her.

“Are you sure about this, Seline?” she said. “You know what it says in the bible about gambling don’t you?”
I said I didn’t and she said neither did she actually so it was probably OK. I mean someone always wins so it’s not a gamble is it?
Mind I don’t want to win millions. I wouldn’t know what to do with millions. I only want enough for a coat and maybe a holiday. Two holidays. I’d take Senga of course. She was really pleased when I said I’d take her on holiday and she went to the travel agent and brought back this big armful of brochures and started talking about where we would go. She put on her funny face when I said I’d have to win the lottery first.

They say money changes people but I’m not so sure. “Money won’t change you Seline, a bloody earthquake wouldn’t change you,” Senga said. I thought that was nice of her. So they are wrong about money. Mind they’re wrong about lots of things. They told Mam she’d die if she didn’t give up those big black cigars of hers so she did and she went and died anyway just to spite them.
Senga told me I could get a ticket in the newsagent round the corner, “Oh and bring me back an ounce of shag while you’re there luv,” she said. She has this big curvy pipe that her Uncle Roddy used to smoke before they took him away. “It’s all I’ve got left of him,” she once said to me, “that and his old breeks, and you can’t smoke them.”

I popped round at lunchtime to the newsagent and they were closed for lunch. You don’t find many places closed for lunch nowadays do you? No one has time to eat lunch, they’re all too busy doing stuff. So how come everyone’s getting fat? It meant I had to go to the big newsagent down High St, you know the one, next to Jenkins the butcher. He calls himself a family butcher. I think that’s funny, you know, like he butchers families and puts them in steak pies and other meat products. Like that Sweeny Todd fella’ I read about. I don’t mean butchering families is funny, just the idea of him calling himself a family butcher and not doing that. If I ever pass there with Senga I always point that out. She doesn’t laugh, she doesn’t seem to get the joke no matter how much I explain it. It’s not that she doesn’t have a sense of humour, she laughs at lots of things, even some things that aren’t funny but she doesn’t seem to get the family butcher joke, mind Mr Jenkins didn’t get it either when I pointed it out to him.

So anyway I went into the newsagent. There was a queue at the desk so I had a browse around first. It’s a big shop and they sell all sorts there. I love liquorice so I wasn’t going home without a packet. They also have loads of books and magazines and DVDs and those computer game things that everybody plays. Some of them look really good but I’d have to buy a computer first for to play it. You stick a disc in one of the slots and then do stuff with your keys and mice. Senga says it’s not my scene but I’m going to try it sometime.

A woman standing beside me gave me a funny look and moved away. I must have been talking to myself. I know I do that sometimes but I just can’t help it. I blame living alone or maybe its something in the water.
By the time I’d wandered round the shop a bit the queue had gone down some, in fact there weren’t hardly anyone in the shop.
“Can I help you?” The assistant was only a young girl. She was smiling but looked a bit jumpy, perhaps it was her first day and only the day before this day she’d been in school sitting behind a cosy desk and now she was cast out to face the world alone, and bring home enough money to keep her aged mother and disabled father from the workhouse. She’d be an only child too and wouldn’t have any brothers or sisters to help with this task.

“Can I help you?” She wasn’t smiling now.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” She really sounded like she was working under strain.
“Oh contrayer,” I said. “If there is anything I can do for you, you only have to say. I would be happy to help.”
“We shut at 5.30,” she said.
I looked at my watch. “It’s only 1.30 now.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“Ah you mean it’s going to be a long afternoon for you.”
“Some are longer than others. Look did you come into the shop to buy anything?”
“Of course I did, luv.” She was acting a little silly now, why else would I go into a shop for heavens sake. “I’ll have these Allsorts and I was looking for one of them lottery tickets.”
“At last,” she said.
“Yes... at last.” This conversation was getting a bit odd for me but she was the only assistant serving. I’d seen one of the others slipping through a door at the back.

There was a long pause. “So how many tickets would you like then?” she said at last.
“Oh just the one, luv. I only need enough for a coat and a wee bit over maybe. I’m not greedy. I wouldn’t know what to do with a lot of money.”
“You want one ticket because you don’t want to win too much?” She was taking a close look at the ceiling. Probably checking to see if the cleaners had done their job.
“There’s a spiders web in the corner,” I said. I’d seen it earlier on when I was walking round the shop. “And I’m not too sure about your windows.”
She was staring at me with one of those looks that people get before they’re seasick
“OK OK one ticket,” she said and she moved over to her big machine. “Do you have numbers?”
Numbers? What was the blessed woman talking about? Numbers of what? She might have meant anything. I was getting just a bit worried about her. And then I thought maybe she was foreign and didn’t understand me, mind she didn’t have an accent.

“I don’t quite understand you,” I said. “Are you from Poland? I can speak slower.”
“Lucky dip then,” was all she said.
I really didn’t know what to say to that but at long last she pressed buttons on her machine and out popped my ticket.
“That’ll be two pounds altogether.” She whacked the ticket down on the counter so hard that two Quality Street triangles fell off their display.
I opened my purse and then I remembered. “Oh and I need some shag,” I said.

She stared at me again and her face went all red like a baby plum tomato from Morocco that they sell in packets in the supermarket.
“Please, do you have any shag?” I looked past her and I could only see cigarettes. “Just an ounce. My friend has a pipe.”
“Yes, I’m sure he does,” she said. She had moved as far away from the counter as she could and was waving at a big man by the door.
He came over and they whispered to each other so that I couldn’t hear which was very bad mannered of them. Manners maketh the man stroke woman I always say. Then the woman put her hand up to her mouth and stared at me again. I thought she was going to be sick. They both came over.
I had a quick rummage in my handbag. “I’ve got a plastic bag here luv, only it’s not very big. How sick are you?”

They both looked at each other. “I’m sorry madam,” said the man, “but we don’t sell pipe tobacco. There’s no demand for it.”
I thought of telling him there was and I had but I gave up, put my money on the counter and took my ticket. I wasn’t going back to that shop, they were seriously loony.

When I got home there was a letter for me, and do you know what? My premium bond had come up, fifty pounds, so I can get my coat now. I don’t need their silly lottery ticket. Senga said I should take it back to the shop for a refund and then she said she was just kidding but you know it’s a good idea, I might just do that.