THE PENALTY
The queue pares down to a fat guy, a junkie and an old man. Then me.
The fat guy is up now. He hopes he weighs enough to pop him over the benefits line. He tells the advisor he got sacked from his previous for health reasons and has a doctor’s note about chronic obesity. The assessor wants to know exactly how fat, so he waddles over to the scales at the end. The needle rockets round the dial, wobbling on thirty stone, two pounds. He’s done it! He waves his signed form like a flag on the way out.
“That’s how you do it, boys!” he says.
The junkie on the spice programme catches my eye. “How’s that fair? Fat twat!”
“Back of the line, you!’ shouts the police commander, prompting his Doberman, which had been licking crumbs off the floor, to snarl. “No profanity!”
The junkie mumbles something rude and sullenly walks to the back of the queue, which must by now be wrapping itself around the building.
It’s the old man’s turn. He is oblivious that each footslide knocks dandruff from his cloudy hair onto the shoulders of his charity shop jacket, and that red plastic folder tucked under his arm containing a hand-written résumé is one of the back to school ones. He passes his
