TANTRUM

‘Got any spare change, mate?’ he said. ‘I need something to eat.’
I’d just crossed Stokes Croft on my way to leave a copy of the SC at the top of the steps the drinkers often sit and shout at passers-by when they’re able to see beyond their self-referential limits, when interrupted.
‘Yes,’ I said, stopping, taking change from the left back pocket of my jeans. ‘There you go,’ giving him a pound fifty.
‘Thanks mate,’ he said and we began to go our separate and opposite ways.
‘I might as well throw this away,’ he said, voice raised, and I heard the coins hit the ground. One, the pound coin, rolled long enough for me to see it come to rest in the road a metre or so from the pavement on which the fifty pence piece now lay.
‘What the fuck you doing?’ I said.
‘What’s the fucking point?’ said the man, his face more red than when we first met. ‘I’ve been asking for change for an hour and a half and that’s all I’ve got…’
I walked past him to pick up first the fifty then the pound coin the traffic narrowly missed.
‘You ask me for help and I give you some and then you,’ I said warming to my theme, ‘basically tell me to fuck off by throwing it down like a child having a fucking tantrum.’