What I need to make my life complete
A massive free house. Not too much to ask, is it?
I have told a lie. A lie about something I’ve bought. Not because Jimmy minds one jot what I buy but because it feels a bit, well… silly.
You know that Omaze thing, where you buy a ticket in the hope of winning a home? I’ve never entered before but I spot this house in London and I just think, well, wouldn’t that be handy for us to have?
I mean, look at this gaff!
No, not the Shard. You don’t win that. I mean the massive house with a view of it.
‘It was only ten pounds for the ticket,’ I say.
‘Ten pounds!” Jimmy is laughing. Why not buy a lottery ticket or a lucky dip?
What are the odds, he starts - but I don’t want to talk about odds! Like I don’t want to talk to my dad about directions because then it’s ‘No, you should have taken the A90 and turned off at Cosh-Yourself-Junction and swerved abruptly past the disused petrochemical works and wound up on the B6725.’
Is anything more certain to have you reaching for strong drink than talk of the B6725, or a logical discussion about odds?
I don’t want logic, I want to win. This is about dreams, right? As the dance teacher on Fame once hollered (sort of, I am paraphrasing): ‘Dreams cost and right here’s where you start payin’.’
Is £10 really such a hefty price tag for dreams?
(Between you and me it wasn’t £10. It was £15 as, for the extra fiver, I got extra entries so in fact I have saved us money).
As this odds-talk has shaken my confidence, I do a quick google to check that Omaze is real, that the prize houses are genuine and not AI generated, like the pre-publicity for Glasgow’s celebrated Willy Wonka ‘Chocolate Experience’ which turned out to be this.
But no - it turns out they are genuine houses and real people have won them!
My excitement is ramped right back up again.
Hmm, will we keep our prize house? Or sell it and divide the proceeds between our three offspring so they can all buy their own, sensibly sized homes?
Granted, this £4.5 million home is a little excessive for two people. But actually one of our offspring did melt our rice steamer in the microwave in 2005 and I’m still smarting about that. £1.50 from Matalan, it was - and we’ve never found such an excellent rice steamer again.
Anyway, it’s easy to fill up a house, isn’t it? You’d have your guest room, always made up ready for friends, with edible treats all set out like Meghan Markle does. I’d have a fabulous workroom - so fabulous that, within its walls, books would magically write themselves.
I guess the kids could visit now and again.
Now that’s decided, I start forensically checking out the decor of this London house.
Hmm, yeah, nice. But a bit… boring? And I’m not sure about those two triangle tables that fit together.
Some aspects are fine. See that little room off the kitchen there? What kind of room is that, do you think?
Why, dahlings, it’s a champagne room! That I could handle. I was playing Jeff Buckley’s album Grace the other day, and was happily singing, ‘I like wiiiiine…’ around the flat.
Jimmy corrected me. ‘He’s singing Lilac Wine.’
Lilac Wine? Sounds on a par with Secretary Bird sauvignon from Londis but let’s move on. See that fruit bowl in the pic above, with the little balls around its rim? Is it a bit annoying? A bit John Lewis showroom? I’d almost expect members of the public to wander in and stroke the soft furnishings and ask where the haberdashery department is.
Maybe it’s the stylised perfection that’s getting to me. Rather than displaying a tasteful single fruit variety (ie, oranges), our fruit bowl is basically a holding tank for greasy apples, saggy kiwis and bananas so ripe you can open them at the top and squeeze them directly into your mouth, a bit like Frubes but natural.
But of course, once we’ve won this house we’ll put our stamp on it. For one thing I’ll jettison those unnecessary bed cushions. We’ll fill place with our crap, stash a bad-smelling cheese in the fridge and invite the mice in… and voila!
Once I’ve draped my big old knickers over those radiators it’ll feel just like home.
Oh, I know I’m a sucker for even thinking this way. Because millions of people are hankering after that big house, right? I remind myself of this, when I’m ruminating over whether the neighbours will hate us for being prize-winning knobs.
Maybe I should opt for the Perthshire house instead (no neighbours). Or would that massive lawn cause marital unrest?
I mean, it’d be Jimmy’s job to mow it, right? As punishment for going on about ‘the odds’.
Regretfully, I have to tell you that so far I have won neither of these houses. But apparently the winner has 96 hours in which to claim their prize and I am on it.
Love,
Fiona xx
PS Fancy an actual bargain, in the absence of a free house? My new novel, The Full Nest, is currently just 99p in ebook and you can grab your copy here!
I’m in it every month - mainly because I’ve no idea how to cancel it. 🤷🏻♀️ Every month I think, this is the one, and start working out if I’d sell it or live in it. But imagine the council tax! And the heating bills! Then I think, if it’s big enough, maybe the kids and their families could share and we’d split the bills. Then I realise that wouldn’t work because all of us sharing a house would end up like an Agatha Christie novel. So it’s back to selling it. Then I start thinking about the smaller houses I’d buy for us and the kids with the proceeds, which leads me to the Rightmove site and old episodes of Escape to the Country… *sigh*
My mum often entered prize draws during my childhood. She’d say “I’m going to win £5,000, what shall we spend it on?” (In the 1970s £5,000 was serious money. She never won anything but that didn’t stop her entering them.