When I was 19 and having relief-managed almost every E. Coomes betting shop from Peckham to Mile End, I was finally given my own shop. It was a cosy little number in a small parade of shops on the Sidcup bypass, and during the week I was a one-man band – I took the bets, settled the bets, and did the pay-out. And it wasn't open until 11am. Saturdays I was gifted a counter-hand but I used to let her go home mid-afternoon before I poisoned her cuppa. It must have been the quietest shop in the company (they had over 100 branches ) and of the 300 odd slips we took a day, 277 of them were mine. I mastered the art of altering my hand-writing from bet to bet, using all sorts of tactics from capital letters to swirly strokes, giant numbers and tiny digits . There were only a handful of regulars in that quiet neck of the woods. A trio of old boys hit me every morning with their any-to-come perm patents, which I pleaded they'd all settle themselves (because I couldn't ), and it worked like a dream. They'll all be dead now, of course. During racing hours the day wasn't the same unless Sue or Chris swanned in. Sue was a blonde-haired temptress who looked like she should be chained to a rock in a Rembrandt. She offered to ‘drop me home’ one evening that I politely declined. I'd seen her old man. His name was Nathan or something like that. He was one of those guys that thinks they’re being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. Chris was a goofy, heavy set young man that still lived at home with his mum and was clearly punting with his giro. He was a dog punter and if his hound was in front he would face the TV screen head-on with an unflinching stare. However, when his pick didn't lead, Chris would angle his head and torso to a varying degree of acuteness in order to trick his brain that his greyhound was, in fact, in front. One Saturday morning one of his dogs was so far behind he could have broken the Trinidad and Tobago Limbo record . It was a quiet afternoon when he appeared. There was a manager's monitor in every shop and it flashed Red if there was a security alert, be it a robbery or more likely a ‘slow count’ from the Green Baize Gang. I barely took any notice of these, being in such a quiet shop, but I glanced up at the capital letters: PENCIL MAN IS IN THE ELTHAM AREA PLEASE BEWARE. HE IS BLACK AND VERY TALL No explanation of why he's called the Pencil Man, unless it was just the tallness. Three seconds later the door opened and a seven-foot black man was in the house. The shop was totally deserted and he looked around at the CCTV then approached me. He peeled off a betting slip, dived into his top pocket and out came the pencil. Right in front of my eyes he penned his masterpiece. It was a dog race going off in two minutes’ time. The time of the race was clear on his slip, but the rest was a mess. All six numbers were semi-visible but there were arrows pointing everywhere, more stars than Galileo's notepad. He handed over forty pence . ‘What do you call that. Pencil Man?’ I said ‘Combo, boss.’ I told him the piece of paper he'd just handed me didn't belong in a betting shop, it should be hung in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The Pencil Man peered at me quizzically, gave the Perspex screen a farewell headbutt and walked out of the shop.
DoubleSpeak 