Yet another Wishlist Note

I want to

• Lose more weight
• Get fit enough to stay fit
• Keep the weight off
• Keep my hair on
• Get out more
• See more of the friends I already have
• Make some new friends
• Not live in fear of poverty and deprivation
• Write stories and books and get them published
• Learn to draw and paint again

You'll notice I haven't said that I want to win the lottery. Apart from the odd daydream, I don't want to win an obscene amount. I don't want to be filthy-rich, I'm happy being slightly-grubby-poor. I already know that if I were to win such a large amount I would become a hoarder, pre-occupied with defending my trove against robbers and cadgers and con-men. Do you see how invidious wealth is? I'm contemplating becoming the monster sleeping on his pile of gold even before I've got the treasure. The Ring-cycle was right; whoever steals the gold from the light of the world and buries it away is cursed to be unhappy forever. (See 'Das Rheingold', for those of you who're wondering what I'm on about).

I know this about myself, because I sat down once and wrote down what happened to me after I won 5 million pounds on the lottery. I was brutally frank about how I would react to different situations. As I considered what I would do with the money, where I would move to, whether I would tell all or some or nobody at all, I began to realise that my motives behind all the decisions I penned were greedy and secretive. I saw that I would become obsessed with protecting the money from thieves and con-men and government tax regimes. I would end up a miser, always scuttling off down a long dark corridor past security devices to check once again that the fortune was secure, that no cunning thief had made off with 'my precious' pile. The shock of discovering that I had such motives inside me made me delete the story from the computer before I had reached the inevitable conclusion, where I spent the remaining money on a team of lawyers to fight the team of lawyers that my seperating partner had hired to claim her rightful half-and-more that she felt entitled to. Only the memory of it remains.

And I don't buy lottery tickets anymore. But I do pick up copper and silver coins in the car-parks, and I do still think 'See a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck'.

Better to be happy with a picked-up penny found than a fantasy fortune.