To bet, perchance to win

You can't always get what you want.

I can confirm that this is true. I can never get what I want. Maybe this is down in part to my fanciful nature; in an age of jet aircraft I wanted to fly a biplane. While other engineers studied the turbocharger and its application to transport I wondered if it would be possible to modify steam engines to have a small nuclear reactor in place of the firebox. I wanted to design a human-powered spaceship using the principle of ion ejection at relatively low voltages in vacuum.

But if you try sometimes, you can get what you need.

Indeed? (Raises a quizzical eyebrow). I have my doubts. If I have everything I need, why do I still want for more? Perhaps if I knew what I needed, I might be happy with what I've got. But it seems to me that you never quite get what you need. There's always that feeling at the time when you come to pay the bills and settle the accounts that some of the debt will have to be put off till next month. You rank them in order: this one will repossess the house if I don't pay, this one will take me to court, these will cut off the power. I live my life under threat of retribution.

The last few days have seen the autumn weather arrive and play havoc with my plans for getting gardening work completed on the days I had scheduled each for. I have missed out one of my regular customers for two Mondays in succession now because of heavy rain, and as I sit here tapping at the keyboard the fog outside has only just cleared away. If only those who send me bills could also be put back until the weather clears.

But back to the getting what I need thought. It is now cold and wet. I need to be able to get warm and dry at the end of each day in the damp and drizzle. I need fuel. The costs of fuel are soaring. Even coal, which at first thought you would think would not be affected by the current surge in oil and gas prices, is going up. The reason is that it is hewn from the seam, brought to the surface, and delivered to depots and doors by vehicles which will only run on oil. The bottled gas which I use in a catalytic heater for quick warmth has also gone up, and although much of it comes from the Brownsea Island field and is therefore supposedly unaffected by hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or tense standoffs with Iran, it again is raised and delivered by energy derived from oil.

Of course, as a side effect of my garden clearance, I do get a lot of wood and bark shreddings. This would appear to fill my needs for fuel, and in a small way, it does. But what I actually get is green wood, recently cut, that cannot be burnt immediately; it has to be stacked and allowed to dry. Once again the carrot which is dangled is not quite close enough to be eaten completely, and I keep trotting on after the remaining stub, hoping it will droop just that fraction more so that I can reach it. Paranoia begins to creep in as the doubts about the carrot supply grow and rumours of who's pulling the strings abound.

"Doctor, Doctor, I think I'm a puppet."
"Why is that?"
"I have this terrible pain in my arse."

I wonder if I am an experimental subject in a psychology research program? The behavioural aspects of hope and optimism considered in the context of both negative and positive reinforcement stimuli. At what point will my cheerful optimism turn into dour pessimism? Years of being a freelance worker have lead me to believe that a maxim of "Hope for the best but plan for the worst" is the only way to live. Sitting down and reviewing the past few years has shown me, however, that when you are on the downside of life, you never quite manage to break even in the short term. The same review, though, also shows me that if you look at events with a window greater than a few days, something does always seem to turn up. The doldrums are not infinite, and the wind doesn't lie low for ever.

So I live in hope. Not, I trust, like Hitler in his bunker, waiting for the Wonder Weapons to spring their surprise, or for one of his generals to achieve the impossible victory. My mental picture of that man's last few weeks is of an evil Billy Bunter waiting for the postal order to arrive, or for his numbers to come up. It takes me back to my last spell in the slough of despond, when out of a desire to generate some hope at least, I wrote some programs to try and predict which numbers might be drawn twice a week. I didn't win, but I did get back into software contracting for one last time. I cannot hope to win the lottery. If I were to win, I am sure it would be in a time when I was not desperate for money. To those that have, shall be given, and from those that have not, shall be taken away.

If there is one thing that I have noticed emerging during the last few years that I hate, it is the rise of luck as a lifestyle. We are being persuaded to abandon the Victorian ethos of hard work and study as the path to a bright future in favour of picking a celebrity to follow and a set of numbers to hope for. We have television channels full of repeats of old shows and stories of other peoples' luck with auctions and house makeovers. The last days of the Roman Empire is the latest show in town, and of course, it's a repeat.

And so my hopeful optimism is no different from the dreams of those who buy the lottery ticket each week. The dangling carrot changes slightly; I have noticed that when the weather deteriorates, I start to sell more classic car spares. Not enough for me to hang up the foul-weather clothes and stay inside in the nearly-warm. More promises of gardening work arrive by emails, from neighbours of customers who have watch me labour to cut down a hedge and dig up the roots, and are impressed enough to ask if I would do some work for them. I thank them for their emails and put them on the list, and look outside the window to the lowering skies that suggest it will be weeks rather than days before the promises I make can be kept.

So what difference is there between my living in hope, and my hoping for luck in games of chance? And why do I never quite get what I need? Is it because hope is engendered by the gap between what I need and what I have? Who is pulling the string on the other end of the carrot?

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they do up and undo us for their sport.