Tricking a Badger

I stood at the bus stop and awaited the number thirty seven to the town centre.  The weather had taken a turn for the worse and I planned to visit the woollen mill and select a new scarf and, with luck, a matching pair of gloves.  Presently the bus arrived, I paid my fifty pence fare and sat down near the front next to a surly looking badger.

"Do you mind?" I asked.

"Free country aint it?" he sneered, glancing at me for a second before turning his attention back to The Racing Post.

Slightly amused that neither one of us had answered the other's question, I sat down and busied myself with a pile of receipts in my pocket.  As coincidence may have it, I had spent the previous afternoon at the bookmaker's, unsuccessfully might I add.  Through five races I had failed to back the winner once.

In the first race, I misplaced my trust in Gorbachev Raindance, an admittedly rather long shot at 33-1.  The silly beast tossed his rider off some time after the fourth fence and spent the remainder of the race darting obliquely around the other runners and riders.  I had similar luck with Ponsonby's Choice, Silver Streaker and the unlikely sounding Do a Toilet in the second, third and fourth races and the name of the three-legged mule I backed in the fifth had escaped me completely.  Leaving the bookmaker's that day, I vowed never to return.

I was aware of the badger casting glances to his left at me from behind his newspaper.  Twice I believed I heard the rogue snort in derision as I leafed through my aberrations.  I glared him one of my disapproving glares and he sniffed and turned back to his paper.  Presently I came to the final receipt in my pocket.  The badger, who still could not keep himself from looking at my affairs, suddenly spoke.

"You not cashed that one in, mate?  That one there?  Johnny Machine in the fifth?" he gruffly questioned.

I looked at the ticket.  It had become rather crumpled in my pocket, but the words Johnny Machine  and the number 5 were clearly visible.  So was the number one hundred and the number three.  The badger licked his lips.

"Look mate, looks to me like you've backed that outsider from yesterday that came in at an 'undred to one.  Yet you've not cashed it in.  You're sitting on a golden ticket there, mate.  Three quid at a hundred to one?  Cor, that's a small fortune that is!"

The badger's little legs were shaking with excitement as he dangled them over the bus seat.

"A small fortune you say?" I said.  "But I've already decided never to visit a bookmaker's again.  I'll tell you what, why don't I sell this ticket to you?"

"Fifty quid." snapped the badger.

"I'd rather hoped for one hundred," I replied.  "But, ok, you have it for fifty pounds."

The badger handed over five ten pound notes, took the ticket and jumped off the bus at the next stop, heading in the direction of the bookmaker's.  He did not know that, in my line of work, I supply public houses with prophylactic dispensers and that the crude "ticket" he had just bought was no more than a receipt for one hundred packs of three for the fifth dispenser of the city's largest, and seediest, night club.