#What A Night!

It may be early January ’08, not late December, back in ’63, but what a night. Maybe I’m getting old, but I question the merit of entertaining between the hours of 11.30pm and somewhere in the region of 3am, when you live in a terraced house with paper-thin walls. I’m trying my very best to get plenty of rest and get myself pulled together, but struggle when inconsiderate people nearby have what sounded like a step aerobics session for elephants in the middle of the night! I blame my upbringing (again – sorry, mam). When I was little, if we made the slightest noise after about 8pm, we were told, “Shush, there’s babies sleeping!” I still care that there’s babies sleeping, even now, so do try to limit my noise (and that of my dogs) but others don’t care if they wake the poor little tots! Rant over and back to the original topic for this post.

Yesterday, once again, I didn’t win the lottery and questioned the sense in buying a ticket when I have little money to spare. The conclusion I came to was this: for £1, not only are you buyng the slimmest of chances that “It could be you”, you are buying seven days’ worth of something I hadn’t realised you could buy: hope. For seven days, you can imagine what you would do if you won; who you’d give money to; if it would change your life. So, as my two numbers came up yesterday, I was briefly disappointed, but then started the whole imaginary lottery winning experience again prior to next Saturday’s draw! £1 well spent.

I do have a point to this post. Last time I blogged, I mentioned the cost of entering the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance. I underestimated this as, due to fatigue, I seem to have lost my basic grasp of maths. 6 books would be equal to £54 and the postage around £9, so the total was over £60. Then, I realised that 6 books (the last of my own copies – now I don’t even own a copy of my own book) and the associated postal costs would give me several months’ worth of hope and day-dreaming. Suddenly, it didn’t seem such a big deal. I know that, deep down, I have no chance of even being shortlisted, but thanks to my over-active imagination, at least I can dream about what it must be like to go to an Awards ceremony. As Dale Winton says on his lottery show (which I also tried to enter last year), “You’ve got to be in it to win it!” So, I’m in it…providing the Royal Mail have actually delivered my books in time. I’ll never know. We can only hope.

Sorry if this post didn’t make sense. I’m very tired, due to my neighbours, who don’t care if the 33 year-old baby was sleeping!