Thank heavens for poor people

by John Passmore

This really is getting out of hand. Once again I prepared 100 cards.

Given the list of things to do today, there was no real prospect of handing out anything more than the usual 50 but it just shows you how habits are formed...

And once you have that weight of cards in your pocket, they seem to draw attention to themselves.

So I made a small detour to the playground: "I see you have children. I'm going to give you one of these. We have four and we found it was brilliant..."

I had one person ask me what it was all about before the dog found a gap in the fence and we had to leave...

Back home our wonderful handyman turned up to trim the bottom of the bathroom door. He works for £10 an hour and he's my constant reminder of Chris Williams' dictum: "Poor people spend time to save money. Rich people spend money to save time."

And no, the handyman doesn't want to be a rich person. Thank heavens for that - if it wasn't for guys like him the whole system would fall apart.

While all this was going on, the Parcel Force delivery man arrived with the new consignment of DVDs. Was he interested in an extra income to bolt onto what he was doing already? Quite honestly I doubted it but I told him anyway because telling people makes you rich and famous. He, on the other hand, would rather deliver parcels.

And thank heavens for him too - otherwise how would we get our DVD's?

But the way this system works is that eventually you will run into someone who would like to make the transition from being a poor person to being a rich person. Someone, for instance, like the young man handing out chocolates in Ipswich Town centre. I had dashed in after my clarinet lesson to go to Debenhams and there he was dressed up in a chefs outfit and doing a roaring trade (well you do if the chocolates are free).

Oddly enough it was his friend I started talking to. He had seemed to show more interest. But then young Dean chipped in: "I'd go for that. You mean you get paid every month - again and again?"

You could almost see the lightbulb clicking on. Some people just get it right away.

I'd have liked to have stayed chatting for longer. I'd have liked to pop into Burger King for a Martini (don't you love that sentence?) But I had to deliver my son's application for the school concert band tour of Tuscany before 4.15.

It meant that at the end of the day I had said my piece to six people but I still had about 40 cards left. Ah well...

And then, at six O'clock, I looked around the house and found it was empty.

This never happens. But Tamsin is organised and there's always an explanation on the kitchen calendar: Sure enough Owen was at a party in the middle of nowhere and I didn't have to go and find him until nine O'clock - and the others had gone to a drumming workshop and a show called "Cacophony" at the theatre.

Allowing an hour to fix myself dinner, I had 45 minutes with nothing to do! I grabbed the cards and headed for people.

In fact I lost ten minutes running into a friend at the bowling alley. She was a long-time customer and this was her mother - how do you do - and mother was already a customer in Hampshire...

By the time I hit Tesco's I had only 30 minutes left. There was a slight urge to go berserk but that would draw attention.

So I wandered aimlessly, looking for likely people: "Hi, I see you have children..." and "Look, we seem to be the same sort of age, I'm going to give you one of these..." and even "Um, this is a complete whim but you never know. Have a look at this..."

And there were a couple of men in suits, so they got: "You look successful. I'm always looking for successful people..."

By the time I ended up at the exit I'd given out all but half a dozen of the cards and four DVDs.

And then, as I headed for the exit, past all those people at the end of the checkouts, I had a brainwave: Every two paces, there was someone with a trolley full of bags. So I popped cards into bags: "One for you... one for you... one for you."

"Oh thank you...yes thanks...oh, right..."

Job done.