NINE PENCE

Outside Sprinters unlocking my bike when a man I’d heard ask someone up the road something, I imagined for money, and saw out of the corner of my eye, approached me.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Have you got nine pence you can give me? The idiot in there’s put his prices up...well he’s not an idiot, they’re his prices but he’s put them up and I haven’t got enough.’
‘Nine pence, you say?’ I said as I put my hand in my pocket took out my change, sifted through it, picked up three coins and gave them to him.
‘Ar, thanks mate, thanks,’ he said and went into Ashley News.