BETTING SHOPS ..................

were a place i spent a lot of my childhood as the shop my dad owned was a family run affair , mum was the cashier , dad was the settler and my grandad was the boardman on saturdays i was the knockout kid putting a red pen through the losing selections , win or lose there was always a genial atmosphere in the shop , i dont go into them much these days but this morning i needed to get on a selection given out by isiris last night i had managed £115 @ 7/1 last night and needed another £285 at the price , you have a 15 minute window of opportunity or so i thought to get bag a price thats under pressure usually a pricewise selection for a limited sum of £25/£50 . So off i went this morning to get my post and have a look at the opening times , thats something else that has changed as 2/3 of the shops locally to me open @ 9am and i found out in conversation that a corals opens @ 8.30am , well i nabbed my paper and it was 8.30 am i thought id grab a bacon roll have a cuppa and read the paper , got to the shop readies in hand but the shop was locked after 5 mins i got in looked up at the screen and the horse was 6/1 from 7/1 there were a couple of oriental girls behind the counter so i asked the girls what happened to the 7/1 they shrugged their shoulders and carried on chatting in mandarin or whatever is their native language , it was obvious i was not going to get anywhere here , so i crossed over to the hills shop , whilst on my journey i made some calls but all the 7/1 seemed to have gone so it was the 13/2 with hills i got £50 @ 13/2 so now i needed £235 , i gave the cashier my slip who made the call to liabilities , the girl was sitting on her twirly chair she wasn,t the tallest of girls and she suddenly stood up looked me up n down and told the person i was well built (how polite of her) it would have been funny is she had told them i was fat !! just over 6ft had spiky hair .......... i popped up i know i need a shave and that i had a bacon roll for breakfast !!!! to her credit she started to laugh , the bet was allowed to be accepted ........... am i supposed to say thank you very much ??? is that the done thing these days ? so my bet of £235 @ 13/2 was on , she let me know that if the bet was successful she would have to give me a code name ,this was like mission impossible .......... i did say dirkdiggler but she didnt understand , i left the shop at just before 9.30am the 3 roulette machines had players on them though ............................