Lucky1

The inscription scribbled in blue biro said: ‘bad luck follows you around until it nails you’. I couldn’t really read the writing. But it looked a lot like mine. It was like one of those Zen Koans. And sometimes they make sense, because there was no toilet roll, and I was trying to pick apart one of the floor tiles so that I could wipe my arse, but I couldn’t because I bite my nails, even though I know I shouldn’t, because it’s a filthy habit. Finally, I picked apart a bit near the toilet-pan; the marshland of the public toilet, where queer- guys that need to hide in a cubicle, to do a standy-up-pee, hit when they’re not peeing on their shoes.

I couldn’t help thinking, whoever did the flooring did a right good job. I could hardly get the tile up. It was a toss up between using the shiny black side with floor glue, and what looked like grey silicon, or the pishy-hairy bit, that looked like road kill. I decided the best bet, in the bookies, was to cover both sides.

I leaned over and wrote a message, in bookie pen biro, for anyone else in the same contemplative position: ‘Don’t back perfection, the odds aren’t any better than 66 6000/1’. Toilet cubicles are like cosmic notice boards, and I like to think I’m leaving messages for the shit-house posterity of the next sitting.

The Guy’s toilets don’t usually have soap, but they do have water, and paper towels fanned out on the floor. Maggie the cleaner is the equivalent of a bookies runner. She runs in-flings paper towels on the floor-and runs out. I don’t blame her. The feed pipe for the urinals is temperamental, which means that it never works. Some of the pee has been lying pooled in the bottom so long it’s went clear as moonshine and the smell of it grips your throat, like an angry bear. But the best part of the toilet architecture is the hole in the floor. It gives overflowing pee a wiener’s chance, but it’s tilted and crooked and runs into a hole. I wouldn’t put any money on anyone knowing where it goes.

But I don’t go into bookies to sit around enjoying myself. I go in there to sort out the good guys from the bad guys; to give me something I can hang onto; a name, like ‘The Nag’s Head’. It doesn’t matter which race. It could be the 2.20 at Cheltenham, or the 4.40 at York. A voice, like The Angel Gabriel whispers to me from on high, ‘get your money on it, kid’. And I smile, because it’s a sign. I can’t lose.

The only thing worse than losing is winning; watching ‘The Nag’s Head,’ on screen, kicking out at the last fence, flashing past the winning post, so that you can almost read it’s lips saying ‘you should have put your money on me’. And you know you should have, you should have, but you couldn’t. All you had went on that last race and that miserable bastard fell with a furlong to go, but he was never going to win. Even though, deep down, you knew it. You couldn’t help yourself. You had to find out if it was going to be as bad as you thought it was, until the vast expanse of the grey sky is filled with the blue of broken bookies slips and it’s time to go home. But sometimes, sometimes, the claustrophobia, and the grief of the bets that are already used up, becomes unshackled, and the sun shines.

‘That’s a winner,’ Gypsy Gordy, sidles up to you and tells you out of the far side of his mouth, just out of hearing range.

It doesn’t need five people to tell you you’ve picked a winner, but sometimes it feels backslapping better that way. So that by the time you’ve turned around and asked the Gypsy what he said, he’s smiling into his little moustache; you’re smiling; the horse it already in the paddock and the lucky bastard has picked another winner. The Gypsy seems to know in advance that your horse is going to win. And he doesn’t really want anything for himself. He’s just glad your horse won. And it’s probably better if he hangs about, just in case, for the next race.

The counter-staff see him as a bad bet. But The Gypsy is one of the good guys. He’s got a few problems, but I’ve got problems. Everybody has problems. In fact, I’ve been complaining a lot recently. It started with that book Flowers in the Attic.

The book had been sitting in my living room looking at me for a couple of days. I tried to ignore it, but it just kept looking.

‘That’s it,’ I said to Cassie, I’m taking it back.

Cassie knew me enough to know that I couldn’t be dissuaded. It was the same with War and Peace. I’d started it when I first met her. She reminded me of one of the characters, a princess or something, but I could never remember any of their names. I was determined to finish it, sure that nobody else, apart from Tolstoy, had ever read it in its entirety. It was the Neil Armstrong of books, the one that separated the educated from the uneducated. It was still sitting, waiting for me to finish it. And as soon as I got a bit more time I would. But it was classy, it didn’t look straight at you. It kinda looked the other way and let you decide.

Flowers in the Attic deserved a good kicking. ‘That’s it I’m taking it back.’ Cassie didn’t hear me, or she was ignoring me. She never seemed to listen and I had to slam the door to make her.

I took my time, walking down by the canal, avoiding the bookies, and the winos, and ducks quacking and mooching for blue bread. I was quietly determined to make things better.

I’d got Flowers in the Attic out of R.S.McColls down at the start of the shoppie. I got all of my books out of there. I just followed the wide shouldered kind of Green Cross Code that former Mr Universe used on those adverts: ‘Think!’ ‘Stop!’ ‘Use Your Eyes and Ears!’ ‘Wait Until It’s Safe! ‘Look and Listen!’ ‘Stick the Book in Your Inside Pocket!’ I’d watched an old woman about 90, that could have been my mother, pulling a tartan trolley along and, in slow motion, flinging in the books she wanted. Some people did pay for books at Xmas time, but that was just panic buying.

I felt more nervous about returning the book, rather than taking it out on long loan. But I had defaced it. I’d written in red ink: ‘This is a book for perverts and paedophiles and is crap anyway,’ on the opening chapter. There were another 12 copies on the shelf. I liberated three, to bring back later.

I wasn’t daft. I knew that they would be looking out for me at the Virginia Adams section in the future. But, luckily, years of watching The Val Doonican show allowed me to blend in anywhere.