Friday 1st August, 2003 – Live a Lotto

I got a B in GCSE maths. I state this fact, not to boast, and rub your noses in my success, but to show that I am not the innumerate dullard that yesterday’s entry might have made me seem. I am well aware that the fact that I am yet to win the National Lottery (or Lotto – because by throwing away £2 a week, I am experiencing the heady thrill of gambling, and thus ‘living a Lotto’) is not even slightly inexplicable. It is very explicable indeed. It can be explict by comparing the number of times I have played the Lottery – I would guess at around 100 to 150 – to the odds of winning – which are something like 70 million to one. Only a quick glance at my GCSE revision notes tells me that I still have to play approximately 70 million more times to mathematically guarantee a win.

‘Why not simply win the lottery about 7 or 8 times, and then plough your winnings back into buying further Lottery tickets?’ I hear you ask. But no. Think about it – it is because winning the Lottery is so very difficult in the first place that I need the 70 million quid. So winning it 7 times is very unlikely indeed, and would sort of preclude the need to play again, even once, except for the sake of experiencing the adrenalin rush that ‘living a Lotto’ provides. See?

Clearly further thought is required. As I was leafing through my GCSE notes, I wondered whether any of the strange, complex formulae and graphs that I so easily mastered (a ‘B’ grade signifying an overall mark of 70% plus) could help me in my quest to outwit Billy Connolly and his vile Lotto goons. Alas, more than an hour of intensive study, involving Venn diagrams, prime numbers, times tables and more came to nought.

In my frustration, I even began to wonder why it was that I have become so obsessed with winning the Lottery. It occurred to me that perhaps my pre-occupation with instant wealth is unhealthy, and might be hindering my professional and even my social development. That maybe the Camelot board of directors laugh at people like me, who spend the few precious hours that they aren’t slumped in front of the TV, allowing whatever super-cheap reality swill is on to wash over them like a loathsome tide of raw sewage, dreaming about what they would spend their Lottery winnings on, when they could be taking positive steps toward a better, more fulfilling life that isn’t so entirely dominated by the desire and acquisition of worthless status symbols.

What a complete waste of time that was. Precious time that I could have spent re-checking my notes to see if there was anything that might point toward the possibility of time travel, so as to re-create Biff Tannen’s path to riches in Back to The Future 2. I wouldn’t use my money for evil like Biff though – I’d just have a really nice house, and a smart car, and I’d drive my car past Adrian Martin’s house, and I’d beep the horn, and he’d come out, and only have enough time to say “Whaaa…?” before I spin my wheels and hurl great clods of soil from his lawn into his astonished face, leaving him to reflect on what might have been, perhaps wishing that he hadn’t cheated when we had that fight in his front garden all those years ago, by having his best mate whack me over the head with a bag of marbles, when I was on top of him, and utterly in control, and he’d probably go straight inside, picking grass from between his tears and weep bitter tears of envy and regret.

So fingers crossed for tomorrow then!