Lucky, or What...? E-Book

William A. Pollard

• Herausgeber: Europa Edizioni
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

How many people have coveted their neighbour’s big premium bond win?
How many have thought how lucky someone is for winning big on the National Lottery?
How many, do you think, have just wished that they had more good luck in their lives?
Eight people have had all these thoughts.
What these eight people don’t realise is that the quicker they use up their good luck, the nearer they are to having a shed load of bad luck.
What they also don’t realise is that once they have maxed out on good luck, their ultimate outlook is not what they expect… In more ways than they care to imagine!
Playing an on-line game, the eight finalists don’t know that if they lose the game, they die. Something else they don’t know is that if they win the game, they die.
Either way, they’re dead...

Born in Sheffield in 1950, Bill is now retired and lives with Sheila, his wife of over fifty-three years.
In 1966, at the age of 15½, he joined the army and enjoyed many overseas postings, with tours in Northern Ireland, France, Cyprus, Kenya, Iran, Bermuda and the USA. He culminated his Army career in 1977 as an instructor at his regiment’s depot.
Since leaving the army, Bill has been a television and film extra and has been employed as a surveyor, lecturer, technical adviser to an insurer and, just prior to retirement, as a self employed health and safety consultant.
Bill is a published author and is also a published music composer and arranger.

Leseprobe

William A. Pollard

Lucky, or What…?

© 2024Europe Books| London

www.europebooks.co.uk | [email protected]

ISBN 9791220148665

First edition: March 2024

Edited by Stella Fusca

Lucky, or What…?

To Mark

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to my publishing team at Europe Books for all the help and guidance they have given to me during the publishing process of this book. Their endeavours have produced an attractive and readable storey that will, perhaps, one day be a best seller.

I would also like to thank Sheila, my wife of over fifty-three years, for her patience and guidance during my cogitations over the storey line.

Copyright © William A. Pollard 2024

The right of William A. Pollard to be identified as author of

this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication

may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,

copied or transmitted save with

the written permission of the publisher,

or in accordance with the provisions

of the Copyright Act 1956

(as amended).

Any person who commits any

unauthorised act in relation to

this publication may be liable to criminal

prosecution and civil claims for damage.

PROLOGUE

You’ve just heard about some bloke winning a million quid.

So, what’s the first thing that most people would think about that win…?

‘You lucky sod!’ Yes?

Perhaps that bloke won it from one of his premium bonds. It doesn’t matter. Maybe he won it playing bingo. No, that doesn’t matter. He could even have won it betting on the horses. That doesn’t matter, either. What does matter is that the guy has just used up a substantial portion of the good luck that has been allocated to him… And when his allocated portion of good luck finally runs out he’s in trouble, because all that he has to look forward to is his allocation of bad luck until, that is, his portion of good luck is re-set and re-allocated to him.

So how does this work? Well, bear with me and you’ll see how it works in a moment.

Next question – Who allocates all this good luck and bad luck?

The answer to that question is, ‘Nobody knows.’

Actually that’s not exactly true. The unseen, unknown entity – that’s what we’ll call it from now on – the entity that allocates one’s luck is the thing…? being…? body…? unit …? call it what you will, it’s the thing that allocates and manages luck. No living person has ever seen it. No living person ever will. All that needs to be understood is that when your good luck runs out you need to duck and weave to avoid your bad luck, until Entity has the time, or inclination, to re-set your good luck.

It can’t be an easy job managing luck. Entity has to keep an eye on the level of luck (good or bad) remaining for each and every person in the world. That’s a lot of people.

Don’t forget, also, that creatures have good luck and bad luck, and there’s a lot of creatures in the world. For example, it’s bad luck when a snail is minding its own business lazily sliding across a patio to feed on a delicious looking lettuce leaf, and someone walks out of the conservatory and stands on its shell. We’ve all heard that ominous crunch of a snail’s shell, haven’t we? That person could have watched where he was walking, couldn’t he? He would have seen the snail and avoided crushing its shell, but he wasn’t paying attention and now the snail has lost its home and probably its life. To add insult to injury, the person will probably blame the snail for getting squashed!

Anyway, I digress.

The entity has one hell of a job making sure that everyone, and everything, in the world gets a share of both good and bad luck. The database for this must be huge. Enormous. And there must be quite a large team controlling the allocations - I bet they get really hot under the collar where they work.

So, next time you have a bit of good luck don’t crow about it ’cos your run of good luck is being depleted. How quickly that depletion happens depends on the amount of good luck you experience in any one event. Winning a million pounds will deplete a lot of your good luck pretty quickly because it is, after all, a lot of good luck to get through. If, on the other hand you find a one pound coin on the pavement, that’s a little bit of good luck and your depletion rate is slower.

Conversely, If you’re having some bad luck take heart, because your quotient of bad luck is now being depleted and you’ll soon be smiling again when your quotient of good luck has been re-set. Again, depending on the volume of bad luck in any one event, your bad luck is depleted accordingly.

Get the drift?

Something I should clarify for you; luck isn’t as predetermined as Entity would have you believe. It is not set in concrete, stable, unchanging. Just because one is entwined in a run of bad luck it doesn’t mean to say that one will not have any good luck at all. Luck isn’t that cut and dry. Entity’s systems allow one to mix and match luck to make life more balanced. After all, if one had absolutely nothing but bad luck I guess that that person would quickly expire. Perish. Die. Cease to exist.

Likewise, it is not possible for anyone to have absolutely nothing but good luck. If that happened, a person would live forever because good luck would prevent that person’s death.

So some balance in luck must exist, so as to balance one’s life. Entity is aware of that so has built some adjustments into its systems to create that balance in life.

Shall we see how all this works?

PART 1

THE FINAL EIGHT

CHAPTER 1

Jack Johnson & John Jackson

Jack Johnson is forty-five years old and is married with two children. He is a tech entrepreneur with a few million quid in his expanding bank account. With his really expensive silk underpants - which he wears only once - he owns the most expensive car ever made, wears the most expensive suits, walks around in the most expensive shoes and tells the time with the most expensive watch.

He owns and lives in a huge ten bedroomed house in an extremely desirable part of central London. His wife, April, is an ex-model. She’s absolutely gorgeous. His eldest child, Jack junior, is in his final year of university with unquestionable prospects of leaving with a ‘first’. Jack junior has thoughts on being an astronaut and there is every reason to believe that he will be the youngest astronaut to pilot a spaceship to some far-off planet. Jack senior’s daughter, Ophelia, has just started university and is destined to be an Engineer.

Now don’t go thinking that Jack senior has worked his fingers to the bone all his life to achieve such a comfortable and successful lifestyle. He hasn’t. Something out there in the dark matter has organised and manipulated his life for him and is watching, with eager anticipation, Jack’s quota of good luck being depleted. With all the good luck that Jack has had throughout his life he will soon know what it’s like to experience bad luck.

We’ll see how his luck changes in a moment.

*

John Jackson, on the other hand, has led a somewhat miserable existence since he was born.

He must have had every ailment known to mankind in his younger years, but he rode through those times to reach his present age of forty-five years. He presently lives in a rented two bedroomed house in Margate, and he used to be a bin collector for the council. A respected job worth doing, with a liveable wage (just), regular hours and a decent lunch break.

His wife, Mavis, works at a checkout in the local supermarket and his son, Bert, stacks the shelves at the same outlet. Mavis got him that job as soon as he left school, and Bert – not an abbreviation of Bertram, or Albert, or Herbert, not an abbreviation of anything, it’s just the name his parents gave him - Bert enjoys the responsibility placed on his shoulders from such an important role. John’s daughter had been the daughter from hell, and John was bloody glad that she upped and went to live with some waster in a squat somewhere on the outskirts of Sheffield.

John once enjoyed the tea and cakes brought out to him for elevenses by an appreciative housewife during his rounds. Not anymore. He dropped a bin on his bin collection lorry driver’s foot, putting the driver into hospital for a month and making him unemployable as a lorry driver for the rest of his life. Now that’s what you might call ‘bad luck…’ Or perhaps not.

Anyway, the driver sued the firm for negligence and received a massive pay-out in compensation. Enough for the guy to retire to Spain and live in palatial comfort without having to work ever again. This did not please the firm’s CEO. In fact, when John’s CEO found out that the driver was now lounging by a pool in the sun at the firm’s expense, he was furious.

The CEO’s anger was passed down the line to John’s Supervisor, with orders to take appropriate action.

So, when all the bin lorries return to the depot, and they tip their loads out of their arses onto the floor of the enclosed yard to be sorted, John’s whole day is now one miserable round of sweeping the loose detritus into a pile so that a man sat on a comfortable seat in a bulldozer can push the pile further into the enclosure. John doesn’t even get the privilege of sorting the rubbish into the ‘useful’ or ‘not useful’ receptacles.

John really does have to work his fingers to the bone to scrape out a meagre living. At least his wife and son each get a discount on the weekly shop.

CHAPTER 2

Jack’s Luck

Jack is presently enjoying life. Things couldn’t be better.

He needs to start looking over his shoulder.

Entity has just run a check on Jack’s good luck quota and has noticed that it is ninety-five percent depleted. It won’t be long before Jack’s lifelong run of good luck runs out… And then he will have to start ducking and weaving until Entity re-sets it.

Jack’s just had the ‘heads up’ from a reliable secret source about an investment that is too good to miss. An opportunity to double his money with a ‘dead cert’ investment without even getting up off his chair.

It is a tip on some shares being issued by a company that is ‘on the up’, as indicated by Jack’s stock market insider. He should, according to this source, invest heavily because these shares are ‘certain to triple in value within the next six months.’ So Jack ploughed almost a third of his company’s liquid assets into these attractive sounding company shares. That’s a lot of money, but so what? This investment is going to make a pile of the stuff when those company shares ‘triple in weight,’ to quote his reliable source. Lucky, eh? From tips made by this reliable source Jack has made several such investments in the past, and they have all made him a shed load of cash. With a source this reliable what can possibly go wrong? Jack sat back, smugly smiling from ear-to-ear.

The telephone on his desk chimed. It was his trusted Finance Director. This guy is an accountant of the highest order. He has steered Jack’s business from one good financial call to the next. He has never, ever, let Jack down with his valued opinions and advice.

“Jack, have you got a couple of minutes some time to come round for a chat? I’ve got something you should see.”

“Sure,” replied Jack, looking in his diary. “I’m tied up for about a week. Can we meet up then?”

“No probs, but don’t leave it too long. I’ve got a small window on this opportunity”.

Jack completed his application for the company shares and waited for a reply from the invested company. As soon as confirmation of his purchase was sent to him, he printed off his acknowledgement and gathered up the paperwork to give to his Finance Director. After shutting down his PC he made his way home, smugly thinking what a good boy he had been to make the company so much money.

The following week, as per their arranged meeting, Jack gently knocked on his Finance Director’s door and entered the office without waiting for permission. Not that he needed permission to enter the office, he always knocked out of politeness.

“Hi Jack. Thanks for coming round,” welcomed the Finance Director.

“No problem, Peregrine. I had to come round, anyway, to give you this stuff.” handing over the paperwork detailing Jack’s transaction.

The finance manager looked over the documents and blew out a lungful of air through puffed out cheeks.

“That’s a lot of money out of the company account, Jack. Shouldn’t you have had a word with me before making this purchase?”

Jack paused for thought, then answered, “I got the heads up from a reliable and trusted source. He’s never let me down before.”

“Well, I’ll still run a few checks on the company, anyway, just to be safe. Not that any checks will do any good at this stage because it seems to me, from this paperwork, that it’s a done deal.”

“What was it you wanted to see me about,” enquired Jack.

“Oh, yes. With the government’s recent revision of the UK tax laws I thought we should get some of the firm’s liquid assets out of their hands. My source tells me that there is an offshore account that provides some good returns. The bank account is tied to its country of origin, but the investment is safe because it is underwritten by that country’s government. There is a guaranteed return of investment plus a tax-free fifteen percent profit per annum. What do you think?”

I don’t know,” answered Jack, “I always leave these things entirely in your hands, as you know,” conveniently forgetting about the transaction he had recently made! “What do you think?”

“Well, I got the tip from an insider in the foreign government, so it must be legitimate information. I reckon we could invest, say, thirty percent now and draw on it as and when necessary.”

“Sounds like a plan. Go for it.”

The Finance Director put the appropriate steps in motion and before long received confirmation of the transaction.

*

Spoiler alert!

As soon as Jack had completed his transaction last week, regarding the company’s share investment, he had used up all the remaining good luck that had been allocated to him.

Entity had heard an alarm bell ringing and looked into why the alarm had woken it from an afternoon nap. Interrogating its system, Entity noticed that Jack Johnson’s good luck had been completely depleted by the share investment and so, in line with its own protocol for allocation of luck, it took appropriate steps to allocate Jack’s good luck to someone else.

That someone was John Jackson, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we, because we’ve not heard how Jack’s depletion of good luck affects him.

As soon as Entity established that Jack’s good luck had run out, it started procedures to re-set Jack’s luck. The first thing to address was Jack’s share investment.

Entity decided that the company in which Jack had invested should go bust, so that company’s share value immediately sank to an all-time low. Almost flat line on the chart.

A couple of days after Jack’s investment arrived in that company’s bank, the company’s CEO had been found with his hand in the till and had been arrested. Auditors had been called in by the board and it was revealed that that company’s profits had been frittered away by the CEO on fast cars, gambling, expensive holidays and loose women.

In actual fact, sale of that company’s assets will not now, in any way, cover the debts clocked up by the CEO, so it went into liquidation. Creditors may recover about five pence in the pound, according to the newscast, but as a shareholder Jack has lost everything he invested.

When Jack heard about this, via the TV news desk, while munching away at his dinner one evening it’s an understatement to say that he was gutted. His dinner tray flew across the room and splattered his lobster bisque all over the wall of the lounge, narrowly missing his wife, knocking over the parrot’s cage and smashing several items of crockery that were part of his treasured dinner service, a gifted wedding present from his mum.

On his way to work the following morning he thought about how he could face his Finance Director with the bad news. His best line of defence, he decided, was to put the firm’s loss down to a bit of bad luck and write it off the books. At least the firm won’t have to pay as much corporation tax as it had done in the past.

Unfortunately, because his good luck had been completely depleted, he must now join the ranks of those in the bad luck bubble. So what happens next?

Do you remember the trusted Finance Director’s advice? Well, Jack’s bad luck affected the outcome of that particular investment. A mere few weeks after Peregrine had transferred a substantial amount of the firm’s wealth to the offshore account, the country which owned the bank in which Peregrine had made the deposit froze all foreign transactions and investments, and closed the bank down. That country’s government declared all the money in that bank as its own! Jack lost every penny that had been invested in this ‘safe’ bank, recommended by his trusted and reliable Finance Director, Peregrine.

There’s an old adage which states ‘It never rains, but it pours.’ In Jack’s case, a truer word was never said.

The transactions made by both Jack and Peregrine attracted a copious amount of attention from the UK authorities and a detailed investigation was carried out to identify if any money laundering had taken place. Although none was found, every social media page discussed Jack and his firm’s dealings and some even accused him of allowing terrorist activity on his web site. This was a crushing blow to the firm’s business and over a few weeks Jack eventually ran out of friends, ran out of support, ran out of money, and ran out of business. The stock market’s growth line on Jack’s business crashed through the floor into the basement.

In the process of trying to keep his firm afloat he used up all of his savings, and with no business or investments coming into his company Jack had no choice but to put the firm into the liquidator’s hands.

Now that’s just bad luck, Isn’t it?

Or is it…?

CHAPTER 3

 

John’s Luck

Guess What?

When Jack Johnson ran out of good luck, John Jackson’s good luck quota was immediately replenished one hundred percent by Entity, and he is now ready to start cashing in on some of his good luck.

What do you reckon happens?

Well, for a start he got really fed up with being the compound sweeper-upper. It was a soul destroying job and his supervisor was perpetually on his back.

“You’ve missed a bit,” or, “Can’t you work any faster?” or, “You’re not doing a good enough job,” or, “Isn’t it about time you got a new brush?” or even, “Why do you want a new brush?”

John was ready to punch this pig-faced, obnoxious bloke on the nose but thought better of it. The last thing he wanted was a criminal record for assault, but he had to do something to improve his lot. He applied for promotion. Didn’t get it. He applied for a new position further along the food chain, an office job. Didn’t get it.

Having exhausted all his options for a change at his present firm, there was just one path left for him to take. He would resign from this place and try the Job Centre to see what they had to offer.

One Monday morning his patience snapped. When he arrived at work he tore up his clocking-in card, threw the pieces into the face of his favourite supervisor, told the guy what he thought of him and walked out of the yard.

The supervisor followed John, shouting, “Get back in here and do your job, Jackson or I’ll sack you right now! Come back, now!”

John didn’t respond. He just kept walking until he reached the bus stop outside the yard’s gates. Even so, the supervisor was hot on John’s tail bellowing obscenities at him, but John just sat on the bench in the bus shelter until the bus arrived, arms folded, lips tightly shut, not responding to the tirade of abuse. He quietly boarded the bus, and when the bus doors closed John turned and looked through the window. In a final act of defiance he stuck two fingers up at the supervisor who was, by now, going mental at John’s insolence.

‘What now?’ thought John. Out of a job with rent to find, bills to pay and a wife and son to clothe he pondered over his next move.

Mavis - Mave to those who knew her - was surprised to see John so early in the day. He told her what he had done and she then kicked off.

“What about the rent?”

“How are we going to pay the bills?”

“I’m never going to get that new dress, now, am I?”

Now, you would think that John was still in his bad luck bubble, wouldn’t you? Not so.

John was beginning to think this really was the end of the world when an idea exploded inside his head. He walked out of the rented dump that he lived in and went straight downtown to his union office.