I HAVE only once bought a lottery ticket, it was a few years ago and it was the first time the jackpot reached the £3 million mark. Needless to say, I didn't win it, but I came within a whisker of doing so. The woman down the road won it outright. So it passed my front gate - but unfortunately kept going. That's how close I was to getting my hands on the loot. It couldn't have gone to a nicer woman, though. I miss seeing her walking with her big alsatian every day as she has since moved to a bigger house. She might as well enjoy her money.
However, to be honest, I never thought I would win. I don't get carried away with all that advertising hype on the radio ("Who knows, it could be YOU..."). No, it most certainly could not be me. Nor do I, accept that philosophy of "Somebody has to win if you're not in, baby, you can't win." I accept that somebody has to win, but what I want to make clear is it is not going to be me. I don't possess that kind of casual luck.
I remember being at a dress dance. There were 12 of us at the table and there were loads of spot prizes. People were running up and down all night to the bandstand collecting their gifts. Eleven out of the 12 at our table won. Who was the one who didn't win? Come on, guess.
A simple plan
When I was 14 (not today or yesterday), I decided I was going to have the winner of the Grand National. I would be able to tell all my buddies that I had backed the winner. They would all be impressed with my ingenuity. My plan was simple - it couldn't fail - I put a shilling win on the first 10 favourites. For an outlay of 10 shillings I couldn't go wrong (or so I thought). Even to this day, decades later, I can't believe not one of those 10 horses were even placed, never mind coming in first. So much for the newspaper tipsters.
So, since the National Lottery started - it must be about eight years ago - it has only got £1 out of me. At least I can't be accused of contributing to the improvement of any golf club or political slush fund.
The point I want to make is that "lucky" people win lottery prizes. The rest of us just make up the funding. I have this theory that some people are born lucky and others unlucky. The rest - the majority - just get on with it, happy to have good health. Napoleon Bonaparte, a clever operator in his day, used to ask aspiring generals: "Are you lucky?"
You only have to look around you will see the same people winning all the time. There is one fellow I know who, if he enters a raffle, the rest can forget about it they haven't a chance. He is one of those people who wins holidays, televisions, video recorders, Christmas hampers - just about everything.
Expectations
And there are loads of these people around. I was listening to a radio show one morning (I think it was Gaybo) and he asked those people who had won an exceptional amount of prizes to ring in. Well, it proved my theory. "Yes, Gay, I won three holidays, two television sets and a car last year," said one. A few others were in the same league. Now, that can't be coincidence. That person is lucky. There is such a thing as a lucky person. They just go on winning. They expect to win and they do, and they are not surprised when they win. The rest of the population "hope" to win but don't. They are not surprised when they lose.
Okay, I know what you are going to say, but I don't agree with you. You are going to say: "But these people enter everything, they buy tickets for every raffle, they are gamblers".
Not so. I know lots of people who spend their lives buying tickets and backing horses, but they never get beyond first base. They take second place to the lucky people breed.
Just as there are lucky people, there are also unfortunates who are born unlucky - these are the people who generally find that if something can go wrong, it will. A kind of Sod's law. But, again, you can see it quite clearly. Why do some families have more than their share of bad luck - deaths, sickness, setbacks, tragedy. It never happens to somebody else, it happens to them.
Scientific research
I suppose you think all this is bunkum. Well, we will soon know whether it is or not. Scientific research is being earned out into the matter. Recently, a two year study of the psychology of good and bad luck began at the University of Hertfordshire. A range of tests are being carried out on volunteers, beginning with a questionnaire asking what they perceive to be their own luck "quota". They are then tested against random events like how often they correctly predict the outcome of the toss of a coin. A test, using extra sensory perception in which the subjects have to guess the shape of a drawing hidden in an envelope, shows, tentatively, that "lucky" people do better.
The research, which is being carried out by Richard Wiseman, a senior lecturer, is trying to establish whether some people actually do have better luck than others, and to what extent "lucky" people are simply those who selectively remember the good things that happen to them.
One of the women taking part, during an 18 month period, lost her mother, both sets of grandparents, a cousin and two aunts. Her house caught fire twice and just before she got married the church burned down. She has had numerous car accidents. Almost everything she buys is faulty. It's hard to beat that for bad luck.
However, it depends on how you look at life. Another subject fell down the stairs and broke his leg. Bad luck? Not at all. He believed he was lucky because he could just as easily have broken his neck.
Personally, I believe that you make your own luck and there is no point in looking for favours from life. Naturally, I would like to think I could pick up a million or so from the lottery, but I know that will never happen. So I remain one of those who is happy to have good health.
Now, that's what I call real luck.