I had a funny feeling in my water last week. I just knew it was going to be a fantastic EuroMillions result for someone – either that or the return of that nasty bladder infection. Yet somehow I seem to always forget the draw is on Friday and not Saturday, like the National Lottery, so I did not invest.
Not to worry; I now have a new system. So I’ll just keep working until the next big jackpot and then bingo – or should I say Lotto.
This system is unbeatable. I will go by what I know are already lucky numbers. The lucky numbers on Friday were 9, 30, 35, 39 and 46, with lucky stars 6 and 8. The odds of those numbers coming up were 76,275,360 to one. So they are lucky. The secret is to identify the lucky ones and just keep using them. See? I’m not that daft.
Oh, hold on. It says in the paper that the odds of the same numbers coming up again are 76,275,360 by 76,275,360. My head hurts. Bang goes another theory. Any other tips, preferably from lottery winners, gratefully received.
One group that will be winning very little cash for the foreseeable future are those hard-pressed souls in the islands’ construction sector. After years of humming and hawing, our council’s school building arm has got its finger out and got a schools building programme in hand. That is why our great seat of learning, the Nicolson Institute, now looks like a scruffy building site. Because it is.
Great chance for local building trades to cash in on all this work? You would think so. After a great deal of head scratching, they have awarded the work to a firm which has great faith in local workers – as long as they are Irish. They are open about it. They will tell anyone they prefer the Irish work ethic. More brickies from Bangor and carpenters from Kilkenny are on the way.
Other councils boast that whatever the rules about getting value for money, they are able to agree with their contractors about hiring local sub-contractors and workers. Did somebody here forget that clause? Wait for the official denials.
It can be dangerous to forget vital information such as wearing a seatbelt or a crash helmet – and where you left a large rock.
I mention the rock because of poor Chris Murray, the rescue hero who used to have a big chopper to play with until he retired from the coastguard helicopter service. Maybe I have given the poor fellow a red face before, but, after I heard what happened on Friday evening, I can’t help myself.
If it means I have to buy him a dramette or two, so be it.
He was, a little bird tells me, fixing a post on which to attach his satellite dish. Being the big, brawny fellow that he is, he just picked up a rock so big that it would take several ordinary guys to even lift it and walloped the wooden stake into the ground.
Thump, thump, thump. Job done, Chris then rested the rock on top of the post and had a wee sit-down to get his breath back. Soon, it was time to make sure the post wouldn’t become shoogly in the Newmarket gales, so he hammered a wedge of wood into the soil to keep it firmly upright. The man is such a professional.
Unfortunately, he was so busy pounding the wedge into the ground at the foot of the post that he must have forgotten there was a great big ollack still perched atop it. His banging dislodged the rock and it fell off.
This is when it all got somewhat painful. The rock’s plunge to earth was broken by an obstacle – the bare head of Chris, who was crouched there still banging away at his wedge.
Knocked senseless, the intrepid former airman who just a few years ago was splogged up like a dog’s dinner at Buckingham Palace to receive his Queen’s Gallantry Medal, lay there with a faceful of mud and a wooden wedge embedded in his nose.
He saw stars, stripes, moons, suns and whatever else goes round your head when you have had a good bucket.
If only he had been wearing a bone dome, as the rescue crews call the solid helmet that he wore as a winchman.
Maybe you should ask the coastguard if they have a spare one for when you finish the job, Chris. Glad to hear you’re feeling better.
Like I felt better when I saw wee Hannah Miley, from Inverurie, swimming the 400 metres effortlessly to grab Scotland’s second Commonwealth Games gold medal. Fantastic to watch.
Sadly, my own efforts to snatch a few golds at the Olympics this week have come unstuck. It looks like I’m not going to be able to get to the Whisky Olympics in Caithness. Too many obstacles, work commitments, stroppy wife – you know how it is.
It will look as if I backed out of my showdowns with the various people who have given me all kinds of earache for some of the things I have written here.
So, sadly, Mary Gillies, of Inverness, Annie “Some people in the Free Church (Continuing) are quite nice”, Pollokshaws, and Don Mackay, of Wick, will all be deprived of their chance to make it up to me with generous quantities of official Mod drams.
I can wait, though. Next year it’s Stornoway. Book your tickets now.
