"I remember the scratch cards that you used to get in the newspaper. The day before newspaper would have a sheet of bingo numbers in it and then the next day you would have to buy the paper and you would get the scratch card out of it.
My mum didn’t gamble, but she would say to me, you can have the bingo scratch cards and I would scratch it all off. It was just to keep me distracted whilst she was making my dinner or something. So, I’d be sitting scratching away at them and I’d get the paper every week and I’d try and see if I could win the bingo in the paper. I was still in primary school at this time. I remember being angry because I never won - not once!
I love scratch cards. I think it was because of scratching them as a kid. I don't even care what the scratch card is. I like scratching it all off and putting the dirt to the side and putting the card down - it's the whole process I enjoy.
I broke up with my partner because of scratch cards. I wasn’t present in the relationship and I was lying about what I was spending my money on and how I had money. When we broke up, I was homeless again and back in and out of hostels. At that time, when I was homeless, I got my biggest-ever scratch card win, I bought it from the shop across the road from Central Station. To be honest, it didn’t help me because when I won, I thought, right, when I get paid I need to spend at least ten to twenty quid on scratch cards cause I’ll surely be able to turn that into fifty or a hundred quid. Nope. No, you don’t. You just lose ten or twenty quid."