Another dream in tatters

I went to the bookie's today to collect my winnings. Let me backtrack...

A few weeks ago I decided to improve my income by trying to bet on the Irish lottery results.This is legal, with fixed odds on winnings. I chose the bookie with the best odds in my town, and bought a book on how to do it, because I'm a nerd!

Various strategies were tried, following the book's suggestions. Nothing actually yielded results, though some came close. I gave up for a while. Then I decided to try placing a couple of bets before I went away.

In this instance, I did actually have a minor win. Two of my numbers came up, and I was expecting to collect 30 pounds, because the odds are fixed at sixty to one, and my stake was 50p.

However, when I turned up today, the man at the counter said, Oh it's you! He handed over my winnings of £4.07 and proceeded to tell me that I'd been 'under staking my bets'. Apparently I should have only chosen two numbers on the slip, not two numbers out of six possibles. That was my mistake. ( I think the book was wrong! )

The guy told me he'd been wanting to explain, to stop me being a wastrel, but said I was always too quick in my exit. To be fair, I'd only ever been in there twice, at lunchtime, thus in a hurry.
Another guy joined in. I was quite touched by their solicitude, as well as embarrassed. I felt that if smoking was still a thing in the bookie's, and if I still smoked, I'd have sat down and had a fag with them. I never knew that a bookie would care that I was throwing my money away!

I hasten to add that I've only spent about £20 altogether on bets, so far, so I'm not in danger of gambling addiction. Not yet. But I haven't recouped my losses, either.

The odd thing is that I've accidentally got onto a Facebook thread about a school reunion in London, which I'm not going to because it's an older crowd, not my era, but the people on it seem to be talking about jetting in from Belgium, Ireland, etc, and generally giving the impression of having high powered jobs and living life in the fast lane. They don't know what they're missing, not living and betting in Stroud and going to classes in Stonehouse!