I’VE got an excellent idea for making easy money. It came to me when I went to the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead in London last week to have a blood test, for reasons not worth mentioning, you’d only be interested.
It was first thing in the morning, but the blood room was already chocka, all seats taken.
I couldn’t believe it. The clinics had hardly started yet, so where had they all come from?
The system is you take a numbered ticket from a machine on the wall, then sit down, watching the numbers clicking away. Quite exciting really, if you don’t have much fun in your life. Unlike the lottery, your number always comes up.
That’s the theory. My number was 37. I sat for an hour, during which time the numbers had moved from 16-18. Bloody hell, I’m going to be here all morning. I thought the machine had stuck, but then I slowly began to realise that now the clinics had opened, people were arriving with a blood-test form marked Urgent, and jumping the queue, without needing to take a number.
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Oh God. People like me, wanting a routine blood test, could be here for the rest of our lives. (Okay, it’s for my arthritis. I’m on a strong drug called methotrexate which requires a blood test every three months.)
There were now people standing at the back of the room, down the corridor, probably out into the street, the posho Hampstead types shouting and complaining, threatening all sorts, while the immigrants were sitting silent, resigned.
I turned to an old man beside me and saw that he was clutching number 23.
“I’ll give you £5 for it,” I whispered. He didn’t reply. “£10?” I said. He just smiled. “Okay, what’s your best price?” “It’s free,” he said . “You don’t have to pay.”
I know that, dum dum. I’m offering you money, for a free ticket.
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I looked round, for other people with lowish numbers. There were by now around 100 people, just in the room. If I stood up, made a public announcement, surely one of them would sell me their number?
It might of course cause chaos, if other people started outbidding me. Some of the poshos looked pretty affluent, especially one particular woman with a pinstripe suit and very loud voice.
I’ve gone through life unable to wait. My wife loves queues. Seven hours for Tutankhamun back in 1972 that was one of her best days ever. She still smiles at the memory.
I don’t do shop queues, walking out if there’s more than two people ahead, or traffic queues, reversing and going down a one-way street. I work on the principle that one way, road closed, no entry, sold out, applies to other people not me. Which is handy.
After another half hour, with the numbers only up to 19, I decided I would be willing to pay as much as £20 for a low ticket. My time is jolly valuable, oh yes. After all, I can easily earn more than £20 in an hour with all my little jobs. I do a column on football for the New Statesman, which I know you never miss, but I look upon that as a bit like charity work.
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Then I thought it would be a bit embarrassing, standing up and shouting, so I left, throwing my ticket away.
What a mistake. I could have gone back later and sold it. So that’s when I thought of this great idea.
On my morning walks from now on, I’ll pop into the Royal Free blood clinic really early, take a pile of low tickets from the machine, come home, do a morning’s work, then go back and sell the tickets to the screaming, wailing hordes. It’ll be cash in hand.
It might earn me more than writing for the New Statesman.