Strange things started happening in our estate. People started waking up to find envelopes stuffed with money on their doormats with a message ‘ENJOY’.
Ours wasn’t a posh estate but a bog standard council estate, lots people elderly or unemployed families living on the breadline. So any money was a godsend to most of them.
Continue readingMr Smith of the local newsagents sells hundreds of lottery tickets every week. It was on one particular week that he happened to sell to a few big winners one of which was me. I Veronica. I put my ticket in a coat pocket and for a few weeks I forgot about it. On the particular week in question Veronica had so much on that she was rushing everywhere and she had no chance to check her ticket until on the news it said that fifty million had not been claimed. She had no idea that her ticket was the remaining ticket, she could not believe her eyes when she heard about the unclaimed money. The big question was what had she done with the ticket as she had moved it several times since that fateful day? Veronica searched all the usual places she put things but the ticket was not there.
Veronica needed to find the ticket fast and soon or she would not be able to obtain the vast fortune she deserved and it would not be fair on the others who shared her ticket they would want their cut.
Continue readingIt was the day I bought a lottery ticket. It was a problem because I was in a coffee shop and I had no change. So I said to the lady, ‘If I give you a lottery ticket, I will come back with the change.’
She said, ‘If you win, you pay me then.
‘No,’ I said, ‘because if I win, you can have half because I’m paying you for my coffee with a ticket, so you own that for the moment.’ I went and got money, I paid her for the coffee, and I had the ticket back.
She said, ‘So if you win, do I still get half?’
Continue readingThe alarm sounded and Lisa’s hand shot out of bed to silence it. Why, she pondered, did people use the snooze button? An ex had argued about this, at some length, in fact more than one ex. The shower was hot and acoustically kind. Downstairs she made toast and coffee, black, the stronger the better. This was the cause of another disagreement. But, honestly, how was she to know other people didn’t take it that way?
She wrote her Morning Pages. There were now over 100 notebooks stacked on her shelves, containing streams of consciousness. This also seemed to be a major topic for discussion.
Continue readingIt was the whoop of joy that sent a perplexed and curious Celia trotting down to the living room. Julia was in high spirts, maybe her son had proposed, maybe her daughter was finally pregnant.
But as Julia leapt around the room Celica heard the TV throb with the bombastic hum of the national lottery. She then saw the jackpot numbers flash on screen and spied the grubby ticket clenched in Julia’s fist.
Continue readingHe’d told them no publicity. But the news had leaked out. Leaked? Gushed more like it. Three phone calls this morning. ‘My wife needs a lung transplant and fifty thousand will enable her to…’ ‘Our donkey sanctuary desperately wants funding to the tune of…’ ‘Good morning Mr York, I’m calling on behalf of the local women’s refuge and if you can find your way to donating…’
How long before they began calling round? And if he opened the door, how many would put a foot between door and doorstep and craftily intrude into the house, one pace at a time along the hall, until daily callers were lasering walls and nooks, and shining searchlights into hollows and corners?
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