The ticket with no number

An original literary non-fiction-style account of helping at a small charity tombola.

By noon, the tombola table looked more respectable than it had when we arrived. Someone had covered the trestles with a white cloth. The tins and bottles stood in rows, their numbered tickets turned outwards. My job was to unfold the tickets people drew from the bucket. I flattened each one carefully, although most customers could read it perfectly well without my help.

A boy won a bottle of furniture polish. He held it away from his jacket while his grandmother laughed. She offered to swap it for the biscuits she had won, but he refused. He had bought the ticket himself, he said. He wanted to carry his own prize. She put the biscuits in her bag and let him.

A man bought six tickets and won nothing. He began explaining the odds to the woman behind him. She listened until it was her turn, bought one ticket and also won nothing. She said that the school roof would not care which of them had been unlucky. He bought another ticket, then thought better of adding to his explanation.

Near closing time, a woman asked whether the knitted rabbit was still available. It had been donated without a number. We could not quietly give it a winning ticket after people had already played. My colleague suggested saving it for another event. The woman asked if she could leave a donation and take it instead, provided the organiser agreed.

The organiser wrote the amount in the book and took the rabbit off the table. I began packing the remaining prizes. Across the field, the boy was still carrying the polish upright in both hands, as carefully as if it might spill through the lid.

What do you learn about the different reasons people value taking part in the tombola?