Monday 21 October 2024
Sunday 13 October 2024
Monday 23 September 2024
Friday 9 August 2024
Saturday 27 July 2024
Sunday 26 May 2024
Saturday 25 May 2024
LUCKY STRIKE
Quite some time ago I was seen being interviewed on Sky News because I’d just made a bet with high street bookmaker William Hill claiming that I would be struck by lightning before I ever won the lottery. They accepted my bet and if this ever happens and I survive, I’ll collect ten grand.
Any dairy farmer will tell you
the same thing that it would not be considered strange or unusual in
any way, if, following a heavy thunderstorm, a cow audit with a head-count would reveal a cow deficit.
With almost constant life-long exposure to the elements, overall
body mass surface area and their not so clever concept of safety in numbers by
everyone bunching together under the same tree, it only requires a single
bolt of lightning to wipe out any number of cows in a single strike,
leaving the farmer presumably to just write them off as spoiled goods like a
shop-keeper might do if he came across a damaged nectarine.
No chance then of my bet
being accepted had I been a cow and presumably I suppose I’d be wasting my
time shopping around for a long term life cover plan with benefits. Because
even if I did tick all the right boxes to most of the questions put
to me by the insurance underwriter – when it got to the one where he said ‘when
grazing, where would you usually go to seek refuge and shelter during an
unexpected thunderstorm?', If I replied ‘under a tree’, I think he’ll just deny my any cover whatsoever.
Further questions would
inevitably raise issues pertaining to the high methane content that cows
are known to produce with implications directly related to an incident reported
last year in the UK when a coach full of foreign tourists supposedly witnessed
a cow suddenly burst into flames and explode.
I hope that any of you who read
this, won't misinterpret my ramblings and presume that I have some kind of
twisted issue with cows, because in actual fact I empathise and have a great
fondness with cows believing them to be underrated and misunderstood. I just can’t help it when every
time the meteorological office issue a warning forecasting heavy rain and
thunder, there's always a diminutive part of me that wishes I could
become a cow just for a few hours, because I genuinely believe it would
improve my chance of being struck with a bolt of lightning and winning the ten thousand pounds.
The only bit that scares is not being able to change back into myself again and remaining as a
cow for the rest of my life.
Collecting my winnings and enjoying
the money of course, is wholly dependent on whether or not I become one of
the two thousand or so people who are killed globally by lightning each year.
This necessitates my coming into contact with lightning for an astonishingly
and inconceivable brief duration, just short enough for me
to sustain no more than superficial burns with standard
blistering and scattered areas of melted body hair - but not long enough that
the soles on my shoes start smoking.
It’s estimated that the Earth’s
surface is struck by lightning around 100 times a second or over 8 million
times each day, so the actual real odds of anyone of us getting struck is
around 1 in 600,000. Compare this to the absurd odds of winning the lottery
jackpot at 1 in 14,000,000 and you can maybe understand my reasoning but also
understand quite clearly why William Hill limited my bet to no more than £10 at
1000 to 1. It took William Hill a several days to consider the
mathematical probabilities before getting back to me and accepting my proposal.
This subject does naturally pop up
during conversation now and again creating some interest and the response is
always usually the same starting with perhaps disbelief and then amusement,
generally then followed by a few wise cracks or silly remarks with implications
that I’m probably some kind of crank. But more commonly what
people always end up asking is what made me bother to go ahead and proceed to
actually make the bet when the general rule is that a daft idea is by its very
nature destined to go no further.
I remember I got exactly the same
reaction when I once painted the entire exterior of my house in tangerine
orange colour paint and people called me barmy. Then again when a newspaper
printed a letter I had wrote condemning the high expectations of today’s youth
and suggesting that Santa Clause be killed off in a freak accident . . . I was
labelled then by some readers as a complete crackpot and so you can imagine the
response from the customers when I had a pub in London some years ago and I woke
up one morning and discovered a crop circle shaven into the back of my head . .
. so there’s no point wasting more time going into the specifics of every other
time I’ve been labelled a fruit-cake and the reasons why, because it would just
simply take me too long.
But I do wonder how it's possible
that there can be so many people out there apparently devoid of any sense of
fun whatsoever and are so quick to label others as complete idiots or
completely off their rockers?
Are people for some unknown reason
losing their primary sense of fun, imagination and recklessness that they
surely must have had and used during their childhood, leaving their lives as
bland and as colourless as the magnolia coloured paint throughout their homes?
I recall when you could look into
the minds of others and see all the colours of an English summer garden but so
very often today all you find is an empty backyard with perhaps if you’re very
lucky, a hanging basket. Those memorable moments when just the exchange of a
few simple words with a complete stranger during an unexpected fleeting
encounter could leave you almost invigorated and in an odd sort of way feeling
rather good about yourself, have become somewhat infrequent.
That same magical and colourful
imagination that once accompanied me throughout my childhood remains pretty
much in-tact and is used probably on a daily basis operating safety from inside somewhere deep inside my head. It
is probably my favourite place to go and spend time, a retreat, often serene
and very unique with no boundaries and where nonsense is manufactured
and foolish ideas are stored. A place where cows can relax
and where colours never fade.