The tension thawed, and after a while life carried on as normal. A week later, however, he came home to find that she had bought herself a video recorder. This time he was even madder than last time. He told her off saying that she had to listen to him and she couldn’t go and buy what ever she wanted.
“Why don’t you go buy some videos now?” he asked sarcastically.
Although he didn’t mean it she decided to listen to him and the next day she came home with a pack of five blank recordable videos.
“Do you think I’m Bill Gates?” he rhetorically inquired.
“I wish you were!” she replied.
For the next week he did not speak to her. Their first anniversary was on the coming Saturday.
On Friday it seemed that the effects of her spending spree had worn off, and he acted quite normally towards her. On Saturday when he came home from work, he came in and found that she had prepared a whole party to celebrate their anniversary. Some of his friends were there as well. He was filled with mixed emotions. On the one hand how could he reject a party like this, and on the other hand, how could she go and spend more of his hard earned money.
He decided to enjoy the party without complaining. One of his presents was a lottery ticket. He picked it up and saw the numbers; six, twenty-three, twenty-seven, thirty-two and forty one. If he won he would be able to move out of their old council flat and into a mansion – he dreamt. He thought for a while what he could do with the money if he had won. He memorized these numbers as they meant a lot to him. The evening carried on as more of his friends came.
At eight o’clock they decided to watch the draw on their television. He sat impatiently waiting for them to call the numbers, and soon they came. The first ball rolled, it was six, he could not believe it, he had got the first number right, his heart was thumping, and some of his friends were there watching with him. He quickly called a few more of his friends round to watch with him, then the next ball was twenty-three, he screamed so loud that the whole house nearly shook. Next was twenty-seven. He couldn’t understand why his wife wasn’t sharing his enjoyment and how she could remain so calm when he was jumping about like a hooligan. Then thirty-two and forty one! He had them all right. He screamed louder than he had ever screamed before.
He screamed so loud that he didn’t even hear the bonus ball, but he didn’t care at all, as in any case he was a millionaire. He danced about the room for about twenty minutes destroying things that he felt had to be replaced.
He immediately phoned all his friends yelling down the phone that he had won twenty million pounds on the lottery and that he was making a party to celebrate on Sunday evening.
Whilst they were all sitting in front of the television there was a loud click. He saw that the screen had gone blank. He quickly checked to see if the fuse went but it had not. When he came back, the television seemed to be working fine, and he carried on with his celebrations. After the people left he ordered the first thing that came into his mind via the telephone. When he was asked for the quantity he replied “six.”
He woke up in the morning and read the newspaper. His face went pale when he saw that the numbers were totally different to the numbers on his ticket that was currently under his pillow. He asked his wife what had happened and she told him that she had recorded last weeks draw and bought a ticket for this week with last weeks winning numbers. And last night he had watched the video. He sat down with all the blood drained from his head. He was slowly realizing that he had made a fool of himself and that he was still as poor as he was. He asked his wife why she did it, and she explained to him that she felt that he was treating her a bit too harshly. He had learned his lesson.
The next day Harry woke up and saw six BMWs outside his council estate.
Y:\svn\trunk\engine\docs\working\acumen6\64068.doc Page of
